The Green Turtle Beauty Parlour in the Southern Egyptian Red Sea (Watch Video)

Have you ever stumbled upon a rock or a coral block in the middle of nowhere during your dive and found it had an unusually high concentration of marine life of all size? Then you probably found a ‘cleaning station’. Cleaning stations, very much like beauty salons, are areas where cleaner fish and shrimps remove parasites, dead skin, etc off the bodies of larger animals, including bigger fish species, marine turtles, manta rays, and even sharks.

The cleaning process is considered in ecology as a mutualistic symbiosis, where both parties benefit from the interaction: the ‘cleaner’ gets large quantities of food; the ‘customer’ has a parasite-free, smooth skin.

For migratory species like marine turtles, cleaning stations also offer an occasion for individuals of a same species but different gender to meet. The following video, filmed in the Southern Egyptian Red Sea leaving three GoPro cameras underwater for about 2 hours, shows a glimpse of the frenetic activity at a green turtle cleaning station. How many turtles did you count?

https://youtu.be/22Y3dx2dJ1Q

Agnese is the Co-Founder of Boomerang For Earth Conservation, a French non-profit organization that was created to implement and support small, local, ethical, community-based conservation projects worldwide. Find out more at www.boomerang4conservation.org.