Feeding Emperors
Emperor Shrimps - Periclimenes imperator are bright red in colour with white body. They have purple bands on their legs and also beak.
This Emperor Shrimps are always found riding on Sea Cucumber as in this picture or Nudibranchs/Pleurobranch. It is not known if the relationship with their host is commensal other than this Shrimps gets a free ride.
In this picture, the 2 Emperor Shrimps were seen during a night dive and they are reaching out from the side of the Sea Cucumber to the sandy bottom, grasping for food.
The emperor shrimp is a species of shrimp with a wide distribution across the Indo-Pacific. It lives commensally on a number of hosts, including the sea slug ''Hexabranchus''. A. J. Bruce first described it in 1967 based on eight specimens ranging from 4 millimetres to 7.6 millimetres , and found ''Periclimenes rex'' to be its best resemblance.
