Murex Dive Resort manager, Pim van Schendel captured this amazing behavior footage at Rojos, Lembeh Straits last Tuesday. It shows the emperor shrimp (Zenopontonia rex) using a leopard sea cucumber (Bohadschia argus) not only for transportation, but also as a means of hiding its approach to prey species. He describes it:

“Typical black sand muck dive with lots of Lembeh critters. I found the sea cucumber at the end of the dive, at around 45 minutes into the dive and spent the remaining time, about 25 minutes with the shrimps on the sea cucumber. There were 5 shrimps in total on the cucumber, this one was the biggest.

When I was filming I didn’t realize what actually happened. I saw the shrimp caught something, I thought it was a worm but couldn’t see it very well. It was so small and on the screen of the GoPro5 you can’t really see what’s happening. Only after watching it back on my laptop a realized it grabbed another shrimp and ate it.”

It shot it with a GoPro HERO5, a +15 Backscatter MacroMate and a Scubalamp 6000 lumen video light.