harvesting mantis shrimp.

Does anyone have advice for harvesting live mantis shrimp from the Ocean? I believe i'll be going to mertyl beach(or however you spell it) on the carolina coast, and I'd like to go out and find my own mantis. Does anyone know of good locations to look, and what to look for? That would be super helpful. Thanks.

 

You can find a Mantis shrimp at Ripley's Aquarium in Myrtle Beach but I dodn't think they'd appreciate you taking it home with you. I'm pretty sure that M.B. SC is outside the normal distribution of mantis shrimps though I did find a report of a lady who caught one there after some bad storms.

 

N. Wennerae venture as far north as NC, but they are probably rare there.

 

I caught a Mantis Shrimp while trawling one day for data collection. It wasnt one you would want in an aquarium though. Up here (eastern long island) it was a species that was simply brownish/gray. Not very attractive.

 

A fellow islander! I lived in Ridge all my life - just moved to albany.

 

would I have better luck with the keys? If so, same question: where would be a good place to look?

 

You would have a lot better luck and you would have a much bigger selection to collect from.

It really depends on what you want.

You can catch N. wennerae, N. curacaoensis, N. oerstedii, O. havanensis and a few others. O. havanensis would be the most interesting to have, but it requires very stable water params, and won't tolerate low oxygen.


Also it is interesting to note that Squilla empusa ranges as far north as maine. I think it is probably the one Beaun caught.

 

The best place to look would be in the rocks. When they want to hide...they're going to hide. And do it very well. You might have to pluck up some carribean rocks and dip them in some freshwater with a good SW stype pH and temp. I've heard anything hiding in a rock will come skirming out that way...you might want to try that? I'm not sure how a mantis will tolerate it though...just throwing out ideas.

I know an LFS near me harvests rock from the Caribbean. I hate the LFS...but they are also notorious for having mantis in their rocks. I heard a story of a guy ordering a large box of rock through the store, and ended up with 20 or so shrimp in the bottom of the box.

 

I doubt you will have much luck at myrtle beach. I spend a lot of time there and getting anything interesting is rather difficult. Our northern temperate waters are just not that exciting. I have never dived at myrtle though, I am usually only in that area in winter. So maybe you will have more luck.

Good fishing though, I caught a shark and 2 rays when I was down there in October off the state park pier. The jumbo spot were running to. What a good beach lunch we had that day.

Also, as said before, anything you pull from there will be a temperate/cold water species, not tropical. I would think the keys would be a much better place to try your luck. Plus you can dive the reefs and gorgonian forests to boot.