11 inch mantis shrimp!!!!

[pkc]

Hi all.
A couple of us from the aandtsociety had a day off today and decided to have a snorkel.
Little did I know that I was going to be apart of a horror movie.
I was just going backwards and forwards from the bottom in around twenty eight feet of water in an area where I would normally find a sea horse or two on the sponges there, but instead I found a massive mantis shrimp digging for something (maybe a crab).
I took a short film of it and before I could get ready to take a better one it came up at me as I had gotten a bit to close, so I swam up and it turned back so I got the blunt edge of the knife quickly under it to carefully coax it up to the shallows and it got one jab in through my glove before I let it go , which was fair enough considering what I was making it do.
The second short film is of swimming with a mantis shrimp (that I assume is a rarity) as it tries for another spiking.
mantis pictures by AandTpics - Photobucket

[metalhead]

Yikes!!!

[Ninong]

That's a big one alright!

[pkc]

I have seen thousands of mantis and had a spike or two,but this one was right out of a horror movie.

It came up at me not scared of the size of me.

It most likely didn't like the paparatsi,ha ha.

I assume it new it was big and nothing scares it.

I took a fish down stairs to it and it tried to come out of the water to get me,now that is a gutsy marine creature.

It is much calmer this morning.

Mark is going to look after it in one of his many tanks until the next club display.