Meeting with spotted shrimpfish

Pieces of sea grass sway in rhytmh of ways. It is peaceful melody. I see how chirpy they play. Everything take me far from reality. I just watch the movements and fall deep in my thoughs. Suddenly I see that grass become alive. That´s impossible, my fantazy is cheating on me. Grass is dancing some weird dance. Close and back, to the left and right, they also make some formations and circles. It looks beautiful. Somethiíng sparkle. I look closer and see something really small down on the piece of grass. What is it? It sparks everywhere, could it be some kind of small rock? Looks like an eye, small diamand eye which look all around. It examines me deeply, guard every my move. I take my hand closely. Grass run in different directions, after a while they reunite again and continue in dance. All pieces look the same – white and browny color with white stripe on body. It is not a grass! They are fish. Now I recognize them. They swim upside down and mimic movements of leaves and grass around them. Perfect camouflage! I didn´´ t find out till I see their amazing eyes. This fish is spotted shrimpfish (Aeoliscus punctulatus), growsmore than 15 cm, lives in Arabic and Red sea. It lives in groups, group could have more than hundred members. I don´t see them for the first time, I come across with them often mainly in 5m depth how they hover above the bottom and search for food, which they suck by tubular mouth. Their diet is mainly small crustaceas in zooplankton and others invertebrates living on sandy bottom. What really fascinate me on these fish is they synchronous swimming. When you watch them everything disapear, you are just hypnotized by them. They are so small and unnoticeble. Some divers don´t know about them. We are watching these creatures- me with camera my dad with video camera and our friend Honza. Some divers are going by and think that we must be crazy to watch stupid grass. One of the divers couldn´t hold his curisity and come closer to us. I point him the fish, after a while he finally see them and his eyes are full of exciting. He signalize OK and swim back to his group. I see how he scan sandy bottom now, keeping attention to every grass and leave. I have to laugh, that´s so funny. I see another great shoal of these fish. I have seen shoals with about 10 members but this one is really huge. You can´t over sight it. Here is about 60 pieces and all of them are so big, about 10cm- some maybe more. That will be perfect for making photos. We are trying to keep them togethr so I could make photo of whole shoal, but we are not lucky. Shoal separates to 5 smallest groups and run to different dirrections. They don´t like to be photograph. Just a few metres behind us they reunite again to this huge formation and happily they continue swimming above the sandy bottom.