OMG!!! A photo with mantis shrimp in your hand??? You can’t touch a mantis shrimp!!! — You’ll be expelled from CMAS, stigmatized by PADI and no other diving association shall give you shelter never, ever in future again!!! — Interested about the background information for this shot? – Read on!

As regular reader of this blog, you have probably already figured out that this is another shot taken on the Philippines. Traditionally fishing is a way of making a living for a large part of the population. And of course, this involves fishing with nets in some areas, which are setup on top of the reef at lengths between 50 to 200 meters to catch reef fish.

Nets and reefs don’t go too well with each other. More often than not, parts of the nets wrap around the hard corals and when the nets are removed, parts stay on the reef creating a permanent deadly trap for a lot of creatures.

Ylfa and I happened to come along such an abandoned net, where we found these two beautiful mantis shrimp entangled in  it. There was no question, we were going to help these animals, even though they are known to be “thumb splitters” due to their ability to cause painful gashes if not handled cautiously.

I can tell you – these two guys seem to feel that they are being helped rather than being threatened. Both of them did not move at all, while Ylfa cut them loose taking special care not to harm their eyes, which where surrounded by the net’s strings.

After cutting them loose, we took the pictures on top of the page, putting the shrimps gently back onto the corals. They seemed to take a “deep breath” as they stayed on top of the coral for about five minutes. Then they quickly moved and disappeared in the crevices of the reef.

Of course we removed the net from the reef and took it back ashore.