You never know what you’ll catch fishing from a dock. Chances are many anglers would have dropped the rod and run screaming if they had reeled in anything that looked like this odd creature caught from a dock in Fort Pierce, Fla.
According to a post on the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Facebook page, Steve Bargeron was fishing from a Fort Pierce dock when he watched a fellow angler pull this crustacean out of the water. Bargeron said it was about 18 inches long and was striking its own tail. Bargeron grabbed it by its back like a lobster and threw it back.
Scientists with Florida FWCC have determined the creature is a scaly-tailed mantis shrimp. There are several species of mantis shrimp that inhabit Florida’s coastal waters. Their range consists of the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and down through the Carribean to Brazil. They are carnivorous ambush predators with keen eyesight and swift powerful claws used to capture large prey like fish and other crustaceans. Rarely do they grow longer than 12 inches, so there may be some trick photography going on here.
Mantis shrimp are not shrimp. They are stomatopods, and their deadly claws have earned them the nickname “thumb-splitter.” There’s no word on whether or not scaly-tailed mantis shrimp are good to eat. Different species of mantis shrimp are widely enjoyed in Asian cuisine, where they are prepared like shrimp or eaten raw as sushi. It is said their flesh is closer to lobster than to shrimp.
[easy-social-share]