Fiji - Little Critters At Rainbow Reef

Rainbow Reef is a great place for hunting little critters and it always surprise you. Even people have been diving there for many years, they still see new species of marine life once and a while, it is really impressive. If you are Marco photographer, you will love this place.
In my other article, I already showed Rainbow Reef is a nudibranchs heaven. Let's me show you some fascinating crustacean critters I saw at Rainbow Reef. 

Skeleton shrimp, also known as ghost shrimp. Despite its name, in fact they are not shrimps, they are a type of crustacean known as amphipods.
They have super awesome look, kind of look like an alien. They have threadlike slender bodies, long and gangly bodies like a stick. Their bodies can be divided into seven segments, have reduced number of leg pairs and two or three pairs of gills.
The front legs form powerful "claws" for feeding, in defense and for moving. It is very interesting, to move, they use the front legs hold on the substrate with claws and then they pull the rest of the body close and move forward. There are three pair of legs which are attached to the rear end of the body, is for grasping or holding on to algae or other surfaces.

Normally, you would find them clinging to bryozoans, hydroids or algae. This skeleton shrimp found by my dive guide, there were 2 or 3 together, inhabited with hydroids and they were all super tiny. This one is already the biggest among them which was around 1 cm body length, it looks like it was with a standing up position when clinging on. They were super camouflaged, looked very similar colour to where they are inhabiting and blended into the surrounding so well. I could barely see it if I do not use a magnifier to look at it. 

I believe this one is a mature female as you could notice that the brood pouch is formed on her pereon which is for holding eggs. On the top of their head, there are two pairs of antennae which are for filtering food from the water or scrape it off the substrate. Such a cool animal. I only saw this incredible creature once. It is a must see if your dive guide know where to find them, remember to bring a magnifier seriously.

Another funky looking critter we found is long snout elbow crab. It has small carapace up to 1.2 cm, spider-like thin legs and their feature thick claw elbow arms with short stout claws. The head is the funky part, they have elongate head and rostrum appendage bearing unstalked eyes. Super cool looking. 

This little guy has body length around 5cm, but it is well camouflaged, the colour and pattern looks very similar to the hydroids next to it. The body is so narrow, if you look at them at another angle from above, it almost disappears entirely. If you do not pay attention, could miss them very easily. I only saw it once. 

Another well disguised animal - sea spider, they are commonly seen at Rainbow Reef if you manage to spot them. Like its name, they looks like spider, tiny body with four pairs long thin legs, but live in the ocean. They are actually not spider, they are kind of arthropods which are with jointed legs and no backbones. 
They are so small, around 2 to 3 cm body-length. With camouflaged body colour, they are very hard to spot and see if they are not moving. It looks like they walk on their slender legs when they move. They have a long tube called a proboscis, which they use to suck the fluids out of their prey. Very awesome creatures.

It is like a paradise to see different varieties of little critters at Rainbow Reef. I was lucky that I dove with some awesome dive guides who have good eye sight to spot all these amazing creatures.