Description

As you progress through your diving career, hobby or life in general you start to appreciate the small things in life quite a bit more than you used to, this holds very true when searching for underwater critters and animals to take photos of or point out.

I’ve selected this image to feature today because I find it interesting, you may not, you might just be thinking, why the hell did you take a photo of sand? Also what is “the sand” sitting on, that is totally freaky.

If like me you have a penchant for tiny macro critters and also love camouflaged critters you might be noticing this is not just sand. I mean yes it is sand, but it is sand that a Decorator Crab has used to hide itself from predators and maybe people with cameras.

Look again at the sandy centerpiece of the image, notice the crabs eye on the upper right hand side, looks like a small white frosted cookie of some sort. You can also make out his legs on either side of his body and if you look even closer you can see transparent parts of his body between gaps in his sandy attire.

What is the landscape this little guy is on? Well that is actually a Cushion Star, divers everywhere will know what a Cushion Star is, but hopefully you’ll look slightly more closely at them from now on, they regularly have Cushion Star Shrimp and well camouflaged critters hiding on them!