Remember that scorpionfish from a few days ago? Well, it’s certainly not the only thing hiding in plain sight in the rocks and corals and sea grasses around here.

I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of flounders before… but I gotta tell you, they’re harder to find in real life unless you scare one up out of the sand. Can’t you just see him willing you not to notice that he isn’t a patch of sand? Willing himself actually to become the sand? So zen’d out into his environment… “Become the sand. Feel your graininess and be one with the sand…”

Here’s another sneaky little guy- a box crab. I love these for so many reasons. Crabs, first of all, are generally awesome. Their eyeballs are super cool, their legs are fun and tickly, and they have a general attitude that appeals to me on cranky days. Box crabs are special because they fold up into perfect little packages, claws and legs and all, and will themselves into pebble-dom, which of course appeals to me as a Rockapella (my a capella group at Dartmouth calls its freshmen “Pebbles” because they’re baby Rocks, get it?) and as a lover and collector of smooth stones and general cute things. 

Imagine the amount of evolutionary pressure these cryptic little guys must be under (from batfish, stingrays, sharks, and all kinds of other predators) to evolve to look exactly like the stone and sand on which they live. It’s incredible, and incredible fun to solve the eyeball-puzzles they present out in the water! 

P.S. Hi Rockapellas!