Mantis Shrimp

[NOVIZWHIZ]

anybody ever had a runin with one of these?

Mantis shrimp - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

:scared:

 

[Teamcasa]

Yep, Catalina Island has a few of them. Thier nest/hole is tale-tale. Looks like a hole in the sand with a neat ring of shells. Just stay back a bit, they are pretty fast.

 

[Hank49]

I have a friend in Malaysia who swears one cracked the side of his aquarium with a flip of its tail. I've also heard of them severely cutting fingers with a flip of the tail.

 

[Thalassamania]

It's not the tail, it's the claw. The claw moves faster than you can see. I helped a colleague out with a research project on stomatopods, we dove and observed and measured them at least weekly for over two years ... no one was ever hurt.

 

[Teamcasa]

It's not the tail, it's the claw. The claw moves faster than you can see. I helped a colleague out with a research project on stomatopods, we dove and observed and measured them at least weekly for over two years ... no one was ever hurt.

That claw has and will crack a mask before you know it. Do stay back a little.

 

[NOVIZWHIZ]

well....this has nothing to do with diving - but couple of days ago I caught one casting for shrimp...I've been casting for 40 years and NEVER caught one of these. Never even heard of one - this thing was about 6- 7 inches long...and mean - all the rest of the bait stayed bunched up on the opposite side of the bait tank.... a few people I've talked to said they've seen small one inch to inch and a half nothing this big..... I iced him down and gave him to a science teacher friend - then I start reading how they can crack the glass on aquariums.... one old fisherman told me it was a good thing I hadn't picked it up.... (he'd never seen one that big around here either)....he called it a "shrimp mammy".... just wondered if divers had ever encountered one....

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

We saw several in Indonesia ... they're fast, colorful, and look like something completely alien to this planet. Takes a nice picture, though ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[drbill]

Fortunately they can't break the acrylic port on the front of my video camera housing, only glass ones... or at least so I'm told.

Here are two of my weekly newspaper columns on our local Catalina/SoCal species:

Star Thrower Educational Multimedia (S.T.E.M.) Dive Dry Column

Star Thrower Educational Multimedia (S.T.E.M.) Dive Dry Column

They include color images.

 

[DennisS]

I used to occasionally catch them when we would shrimp off the bridges. I never saw any colorful ones, just brownish green. I'd just pull them out of the net, I found out later they could nick you. They taste like a cross between lobster and shrimp.

 

[ReefGuy]

They are plentiful off Venice beach during the summer.