Student Snags Big Shrimp

[Lester]

STUDENT SNAGS BIG SHRIMP

Saturday, April 30, 2005

By Jim Waymer

Florida Today

This shrimp is no shrimp. It's a vicious, stealthy predator that can stab or clobber prey with the force of a .22-caliber pistol.

"I'd never seen one that size," Eduardo Gonzalez said of the 10-inch mantis shrimp he recently caught at Sebastian Inlet. "I pretty much cut the line, because I wasn't going to deal with getting the hook out."

The Melbourne 24-year-old snagged the mantis shrimp in the inlet channel last week, with a jig and a piece of shrimp as bait. The crustacean failed to put up much of a fight with Gonzalez who'd thought his hook was caught up on rocks.

"I've never seen a mantis shrimp in the wild," said Gonzalez, who's working toward a master's degree in ocean engineering at Florida Tech.

The creature has traits of both the praying mantis and shrimp: thus the name. I belongs to the Malacostraca family, a diverse group that includes both land and marine species, such as sowbugs, krill, lobster, crayfish, crabs and shrimp.

There are two types: ones that use club-like appendages to pulverize their prey, and those that use sharp claws to spear them. Gonzalez caught a "spearer," which buries itself then stabs hermit crabs and fish that pass by.

In the wild, the shrimp can grow to between 12 and 15 inches and is found in the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean.

"This is not an especially huge specimen," said Kevin Johnson, assistant professor of biological oceanography at Florida Tech. "I think they're more oceanic than estuarine."

Gonzalez and Johnson plan to preserve the mantis shrimp for a professor at the University of Tampa to study.

Fishermen usually throw the mantis back or eat them, so it's rare to have one fresh for study, Johnson said.

"Whenever fishermen do catch them, they have tails as big as lobster, so they eat them," he said.

Inset:

Evil in aquariums?

Aquarium enthusiasts know the mantis shrimp well.

It infests aquariums via decorative rocks.

Photo Caption:

Dr. Kevin Johnson, an assistant professor of biological oceanography at Florida Tech, observes a mantis shrimp that graduate student Eduardo Gonzales hooked while fishing at Sebastian Inlet.

Contact Waymer at 321-242-3363

jwaymer@flatoday.net

cheers

[optimus prime]

i hear a tank breaking......

[ckkoon]

Alien...!

[gOTHIKa]

kill it, dry it, then wear it on your back for spinal armor

[Achilles Tang]

FRY AND EAT IT!!

I just recently dined on fried mantis shrimp... bloody expensive at Crystal Jade!! One pc around $30 bucks!!

[mUAr_cHEe]

FRY AND EAT IT!!

I just recently dined on fried mantis shrimp... bloody expensive at Crystal Jade!! One pc around $30 bucks!!

henry of ML sell more expensive leh.....

heehee....

cheap cheap already lah, boss!!!

[somebody]

freaking huge alien!!!!!!!