Another Opossum Shrimp

I shared a photo of the first Opossum Shrimp I was shown by Eric a few weeks ago – before that I didn’t even know such a thing existed. Fast forward a few weeks, and I’m diving at Monastery Beach in Carmel just south of Monterey. I honestly didn’t expect to get to dive Monastery in the first place as it has the local nickname of Mortuary Beach because of the rather tricky entry and exit that requires near perfect conditions for divers new to the site. On a whim, we stopped by and had such conditions so we jumped in. At about 75 feet down, I see this tiny (only a couple millimeters long) orange “something” drifting back and forth in the swell, and I instantly knew it was an Opossum Shrimp and took as many photos as I could to ensure I got at least one good one. Had Eric not shown me that one several weeks early, I wouldn’t even have recognized it as an animal and would have just thought it was an orange bit of debris… There’s definitely something to be said to training your eye for what to look for when scuba diving…