Northwest Dive Club

Planned to dive the Junkyard today but the wind had things really whipped up. Decided to swing by the pipeline and was quite pleased with the difference. Splashed at around noon to zero current and mediocre viz. Perfect for some super macro shooting. I never made it to the end of the pipe. Max depth 22fsw. There was not much happening on the pipeline itself. Most of my time was spent out in the eel grass and surrounding sand. Lots of tiny critters out there.

Looks fun! What kind of shrimp is that in the first two?

Very cool! I have not seen that shrimp you label as opossum shrimp before
Must have been a north east wind?

Those are some weird looking critters.


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I went with Opossum Shrimp based on Lamb and Hanby Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest p283. A type of mysid shrimp. If I am incorrect please speak up. I have only seen one other - posted below. It was at the Alki Junkyard. Both have been in the sand. They are about the size of a large green pea. YE - not sure about wind direction. I only know it was making a cold day even colder and the water quite choppy.

WOW!!! Super Cool! I've gotta see one of those. Really nice work :-)

Hey, those shots are spectacular! Nice!

Yep, it is a mysid, also called opossum shrimp because the females have a brood pouch on their underside. This kind is solitary; more often you see the schooling ones that mess up the viz in places like Sekiu and Neah Bay (and that many call 'krill', but that is a different beast- though you often see krill on night dives in Hood Canal)

So, these little guys now have a name- and a durn good one too, IMHO. Mysidopsis jenseni
I collected the first specimen 20 years ago at Sekiu, and it's now doing a long-term residency at the Smithsonian.

Free pdf download of the description at https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5399.4.6

Congrats Greg.