How do garden eels eat?

From the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Northern California, here are 12 minutes of garden eels feeding on brine and mysid shrimps.

The garden eels above are in a controlled environment; how to garden eels eat in natural currents?

See these three-foot long grass-like creatures adapt to the water currents of the Red Sea en masse in the New York Times’ Science Take video below. From NYT:

Alexandra Khrizman and colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University made more than 100 dives and planted cameras among garden eels to determine how they handle currents, and whether being stationary interferes with getting a good meal.

The remote cameras were necessary because, Ms. Khrizman said, “The eels are very shy…”

In calm water the eels take any shape that works, striking in any direction at the tiny animals in the water… The shape makes the drag four times less than it would be if they didn’t reshape their bodies. And they can still feed effectively, unlike free-swimming fish, because they aren’t fighting the current.

Watch these videos next:
• The rippling locomotion of Ribbon Eels
• a Stomphia coccinea sea anemone swimming
• Swimming Feather Starfish