Maine – Sand Shrimp
On July 8, 2019, at the same beach where we found the sand dollars and bristle worms, there were a group of students out netting sea life. They were involved with a summer program at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor (we will be getting back to them in some later posts). And one of the common species that they were netting were these nearly-transparent little shrimp.
I believe these are Sand Shrimp, Crangon septemspinosa. I believe the name “septemspinosa” means “seven-spined”, butI really don’t know which of their many appendages would be the “spines” so I can’t really count them.
They certainly do have a lot of appendages sticking out of their face, though. Shrimp are crustaceans, more closely related to crabs and lobsters than they are to insects, so instead of having two antennae like insects do, they have four.
Sorting out which appendages are antennae, which are legs, and which are swimmerettes/gills is a bit beyond me here, so I didn’t count them.
Like a lot of other creatures on the beach, given half a chance they will bury themselves in the sand to hide.
These don’t appear to be the kind of shrimp that one normally buys to eat, but that doesn’t mean you can’t eat them. According to this posting, at least:
“Took some pointers from my Asian friends. Short soak in white wine, roll in flour and fry them up whole. They are pretty good and have a nice crunch to them this way.
Pretty tasty if you can get past the whole “these are bait” thing. So if you ever get skunked while fishing, you can always take your bait home and still have a nice meal.”
Comments are closed.