🦞 Crustaceans · Lysmata seticaudata
Monaco cleaner shrimp
Gambluin Maltese, also Gambli
A tiny barber working the dark end of the reef
Meet the Monaco cleaner shrimp
A slim, almost see-through shrimp about 4 to 5 cm long, tinted a translucent orange-red with fine white or pale lines running the length of the back and faint red banding on the legs. The antennae are long, white and constantly in motion. In a torch beam the eyes glow like two small beads and the body looks far more colourful than it does in ambient light.
Around Malta and Gozo it lives on rocky reef, in caves and overhangs and all over wreck structure, from a couple of metres down to about 45 m, always favouring shade. It is a cleaner: it sets up on a fixed patch of rock, waves its antennae at passing fish and picks parasites and dead skin off anything that stops. Moray eels, groupers and combers will hold still and open their mouths for it. It also scavenges detritus when no customers show up.
Common spots include the caves and overhangs at Ċirkewwa, the Blue Hole and Inland Sea tunnel in Gozo, and the shaded plating of the Um El Faroud. Often there are several together on the same square metre of rock.
When to look: All year; most active and most visible at night or in permanently shaded cave and wreck interiors.
Diving with them
- Look for pale waving antennae against dark rock before you look for the body; that movement is what gives them away.
- Find the cleaning station and wait rather than chasing shrimp; fish will come to you if you hold still and stay off the rock.
- They photograph best with a snooted or angled light, since a flat head-on strobe washes the translucent body out.
- Check the shaded underside of overhangs and the inside of moray holes, where the shrimp often sit right beside the eel.
- Keep fins clear of the wall; the whole colony will retreat into the crack if you stir up silt or bump the rock.
Can it hurt you?Harmless
Completely harmless. If you offer a bare hand it may climb on and pick at your skin, which is the extent of the risk.
Easily confused with
- Golden coral shrimp (Stenopus spinosus), a larger cave shrimp with a spiny orange body and very long white antennae
- Rockpool and common prawns (Palaemon elegans, P. serratus), which are clear with fine banding and do not clean fish
Where to meet them: 14 sites
Cathedral Cave
Gozo
MV Pippo
Malta
Mtahleb
Malta
Slugs Bay
Malta
Further reading: Diveshack Malta marine life guide · Diveshack Malta: crustaceans recorded in Maltese waters · Decapod crustaceans in Mediterranean marine caves: a review · Il-Miklem: Maltese crustacean names (gamblu)