This is a furry sea cucumber, shot in the Turks and Caicos. These live on sandy sea floors and feed on whatever they find there. We were diving on a large sandy area with lots of these little guys crawling around. They are about 12 inches long and quite stocky. You can see a side-on photo here.
What is interesting about these guys is that they serve as a host to bumblebee shrimps who spend their lives on it. You can see three in this picture, the most obvious one is right in the middle of the picture. These shrimps are very small, between 1/8 and 1/4 of an inch long. They are called ‘bumblebee’ because of the distinctive black and white stripes on their body. There are also some yellow marks on their claws.
You can see another picture here.
[...] sea is full of interesting relationships, some symbiotic, some parasitic, some for convenience, and some we have yet to [...]
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