Northwest Dive Club

While out diving on the Hood Canal today my buddy Mike came up with this weird little creature.
We have never seen anything like this before.
Anyone have a clue what it is.
Here is a short vid.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/uhnt4X2B4A8[/youtube]

Don,

Don't know what they are called but they are usually all over the ropes. If you have neoprene glove or get up against the rope with your suit you'll find them all over you Where did you dive? didn't see you out there

I was up at the Pinnacle.
Took a new diver out for his first boat dive along with Mike.

I guess I never took a hard enough look at the ropes to see them before.

looks like a skeleton shrimp

Oh my gosh, I used to come up covered with skeleton shrimp in hood canal too! Especially if you hang on to the line during your safety stop. They're wild, but fun to photograph

yep, it's a "skeleton shrimp" or caprellid amphipod. These are crustaceans but they aren't really shrimps- they're much more closely related to beach hoppers (sand fleas)

Here you go. Zoom in and you'll see this bush is covered with tiny critters but the skeleton shrimp is the biggest

Oh GOD I f*%#ing HATE those things! For some reason they really weird me out... They like to latch onto the buoys at C2 (or at least they were around the time of my Fundies class), and we would always get covered in those creepy crawlies whenever we floated around the buoy getting ready to descend, or when we ascended the line back up. We had current (yes, even at C2. Not much though) during my class that kept pushing the kelp on the buoy lines into our faces, so they always seemed to jump off of that and onto our hoods. Hate hate hate hate hate hate hate HATE those creatures!

Yup skeleton shrimp ... I've come up covered in them before. They like buoy lines and kelp ...



... Bob (Grateful Diver)