It is eating a starfish, one arm at a time.
The harlequin shrimp is a few centimetres long, patterned like a carnival mask, and it eats nothing else. A pair will find a starfish, flip it, and keep it alive for days while they feed, a habit that would be horrifying if the shrimp were not so beautiful that nobody minds. They are thought to take up the starfish's toxins as they go, which is why nothing eats them in turn.
This one is on a night dive at Tulamben, the remains of its meal underneath it, lit by two strobes brought to a point so the black behind it is total. The blues and browns are the animal's own. October 2018, the night before the tunicate.
A harlequin shrimp in blue water, Tulamben.
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Eight lines from the dive
Photographed in Tulamben
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