DIVE DRY WITH DR. BILL #821: TIME FOR A GOOD CLEANING
No, I'm not talking about spring cleaning at my condo. It's well past time for that and it's a hopeless task anyway. It has been a while since I've seen a dentist so a good cleaning of my chompers is also long overdue. But neither would make a good column for my loyal readers. We divers often witness cleaning behavior right here in our dive park as small kelp bass, rock wrasse, señorita and sheephead pick the copepod parasites off our giant sea bass (actually members of the wreckfish family). But I've written about that before.
No this week I'm going to type a tale of another form of cleaning behavior frequently seen in our waters, but requiring slightly better vision. The red rock cleaner shrimp (Lysmata californica) is the hero of this story. It is probably most frequently observed in holes where morays shelter since it is an active cleaner of those fish. However, I have also seen them picking parasites off juvenile blacksmith and garibaldi. Sources I researched indicate they will also clean lobster as reported by Conrad Limbaugh at Scripps in the early 1960s.
Red rock cleaner shrimp are relatively small, up to about 2 3/4 inches (not large enough for a good cocktail). Their first pair of antennae are quite long. The translucent body is marked with a series of prominent red horizontal stripes. I was surprised to learn in Jensen, et al.'s fine book Beneath Pacific Tides: Subtidal Invertebrates of the West Coast that they can change color quickly and may turn green at night. I've never observed or filmed that... makes me want to get back in the water for a long night dive.
This species has been recorded from Coos Bay, Oregon, to Magdalena Bay in Baja California. However it is rare north of Point Conception. Some sources indicate it is also found in the Gulf of California and the Galapagos. It may submege to about my maximum depth of 200 feet although I don't ever remember seeing one way down there. Besides, I have much longer bottom time when I hover at the mouth of a moray den and film these shrimp doing their duty.
Yes, as you can see from one of the accompanying images, morays have copepod and other ectoparasites (external) just like the giant sea "bass." Few fish would deem it prudent to try to pick them off though as it might be harmful to their health! Without getting anthropomorphic here, the morays seem to acknowledge that the shrimp perform a valuable service and generally don't chow down on them even when they enter the moray's mouth to clean particles from their teeth.
Their sex life is quite different from most Homo sapiens. They first appear as males (protandry), but later turn into simultaneous hermaphrodites meaning they have both sex organs. This later phase can copulate with another individual after "she" molts her exoskeleton. However one individual cannot fertilize its own eggs. Courtship behavior has been noted prior to actual mating. The eggs are then brooded beneath the abdomen of the "(s)he." When the larvae hatch, they follow the words of Dobie Gray and "drift away."
© 2019 Dr. Bill Bushing. For the entire archived set of over 800 "Dive Dry" columns, visit my website Star Thrower Educational Multimedia (S.T.E.M.) Home Page
Image caption: A red rock cleaner shrimp staring me down and copepod parasites near moray's mouth; shrimp on head of moray and a team doing dental cleaning.
No, I'm not talking about spring cleaning at my condo. It's well past time for that and it's a hopeless task anyway. It has been a while since I've seen a dentist so a good cleaning of my chompers is also long overdue. But neither would make a good column for my loyal readers. We divers often witness cleaning behavior right here in our dive park as small kelp bass, rock wrasse, señorita and sheephead pick the copepod parasites off our giant sea bass (actually members of the wreckfish family). But I've written about that before.
No this week I'm going to type a tale of another form of cleaning behavior frequently seen in our waters, but requiring slightly better vision. The red rock cleaner shrimp (Lysmata californica) is the hero of this story. It is probably most frequently observed in holes where morays shelter since it is an active cleaner of those fish. However, I have also seen them picking parasites off juvenile blacksmith and garibaldi. Sources I researched indicate they will also clean lobster as reported by Conrad Limbaugh at Scripps in the early 1960s.
Red rock cleaner shrimp are relatively small, up to about 2 3/4 inches (not large enough for a good cocktail). Their first pair of antennae are quite long. The translucent body is marked with a series of prominent red horizontal stripes. I was surprised to learn in Jensen, et al.'s fine book Beneath Pacific Tides: Subtidal Invertebrates of the West Coast that they can change color quickly and may turn green at night. I've never observed or filmed that... makes me want to get back in the water for a long night dive.
This species has been recorded from Coos Bay, Oregon, to Magdalena Bay in Baja California. However it is rare north of Point Conception. Some sources indicate it is also found in the Gulf of California and the Galapagos. It may submege to about my maximum depth of 200 feet although I don't ever remember seeing one way down there. Besides, I have much longer bottom time when I hover at the mouth of a moray den and film these shrimp doing their duty.
Yes, as you can see from one of the accompanying images, morays have copepod and other ectoparasites (external) just like the giant sea "bass." Few fish would deem it prudent to try to pick them off though as it might be harmful to their health! Without getting anthropomorphic here, the morays seem to acknowledge that the shrimp perform a valuable service and generally don't chow down on them even when they enter the moray's mouth to clean particles from their teeth.
Their sex life is quite different from most Homo sapiens. They first appear as males (protandry), but later turn into simultaneous hermaphrodites meaning they have both sex organs. This later phase can copulate with another individual after "she" molts her exoskeleton. However one individual cannot fertilize its own eggs. Courtship behavior has been noted prior to actual mating. The eggs are then brooded beneath the abdomen of the "(s)he." When the larvae hatch, they follow the words of Dobie Gray and "drift away."
© 2019 Dr. Bill Bushing. For the entire archived set of over 800 "Dive Dry" columns, visit my website Star Thrower Educational Multimedia (S.T.E.M.) Home Page
Image caption: A red rock cleaner shrimp staring me down and copepod parasites near moray's mouth; shrimp on head of moray and a team doing dental cleaning.
