On the tentacled folds of a carpet anemone, this male shrimp sat facing his slightly larger partner, who carries a bopyrid isopod in her gill chamber. Clinging with jointed legs, they seemed to be performing a bobbing dance, rocking to and fro and swaying slightly more than the water warranted. On their cnidarian home, the pair enjoy comfort and relative safety in a soft bed of stinging tentacles that serve as sentinels and on occasion snacks for the transparent crustaceans.
The size, shape and extent of the white markings on the carapace and orange spots on the telson appear to to be unique to each individual, with the white stripe that joins the tiny eyes being the main chromatic constant. Their emerald hosts, in sizes from tea saucer to dinner plate, occupy sporadic pools on the seagrass lagoon of Cyrene, where the fringing reef captures sediment to elevate the sea floor and offer visiting monkeys a brief glimpse of life below the waves. Unlike free-ranging crabs and prawns that duck to shelter at the approach of a shadow, these glassy frames with their delicate claws tinged with purple remain bold and betray no signs of distress on this island of sinking hope.
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