418 Dive Log Australasia JUNE 2026.pdf

Female Imperial shrimps are much larger than the male at the reas. Somehown they capture pigments from the Fire Urchin and blend in to prefection,

I spent a lot of time exploring Soft Coral trees. With John’s help, I photographed cowries, Soft Coral Crabs, Porcelain Crabs, Alpheid Shrimps and Gobies on these Dendronepthya corals. The incredibly rich biodiversity of commensal Crustaceans caught my fancy. Prawns, shrimp, Lobsters and crabs are known as Decapods, ten-legged Crustaceans. Alpheid shrimp, like all of the Decapods have ovaries with vulvas on the sixth segment from the front. Males

release sperm from the eighth segment. He places a sperm packet inside her vulva, which she uses to fertilise her eggs over the next few weeks. On most crabs, you can see hundreds of Shrimp eggs under her tail. Crabs devote a lot of energy to reproduction. She carries them around so they do not egt eaten and regularly fans them with fresh oxygenated water to help their development.

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Dive Log Australasia #418 June ’26

www.divelog.net.au