# Mantis Shrimp



## X3NiTH (7 Jul 2014)

I filmed this 5ft from the beach at the Bahia Príncipe resort in Mexico, there's a small reef at the beach edge so I'm getting tossed about in the surf while filming this and having to hold onto urchin encrusted coral very tightly. I'm also having to watch where I'm putting my feet because using the flash under ledges on this very same outcrop I discovered Voltans Lion Fish hiding in the gloom, ouch that would be painful. Not sure if this mantis is packing clubs or swords and at one point I thought it was gonna take the camera out, glad it didn't. I know it's not a freshie but what a little beauty!


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## Mr. Teapot (7 Jul 2014)

What a great video. What a brilliant little character.


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## Ryan Thang To (8 Jul 2014)

So cool. Thanks for sharing


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## Lindy (8 Jul 2014)

Amazing shrimp, those eyes are so cool. There is a very funny video of these on you tube that someone posted on here a while back but it is nice to see one doing something other than attack things. Although I agree, it was eyeballing the camera lol. Thanks for sharing.


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## X3NiTH (9 Jul 2014)

They are armed with clubs! 

Was in the surf again today and the place is heaving with these critters, spotted a black one with white spots well outside its burrow, it bolted before I could film it, so I staked out its hidey hole while I grabbed onto a rock to steady myself, I'm all engrossed having a magic moment when 'Thwack', wtf, right on my knuckle, I totally jumped. Didn't notice the burrow my handhold was next to and the occupying mantis gave me a gentle reminder to get lost! Definitely a gentle reminder, I was more surprised than hurt. Got hit again later on, different mantis, same gentle reminder, have to watch where I put my hands. 

When I get some time I'll try post more vids of these critters and anything else I find particularly interesting to share, I did find another lion fish today hiding under a ledge and got some very close footage, close enough that if it had bolted I would have got a hand full of spines as I was blocking it's only exit, thankfully they are a night time predator.

Sunday should be a good day filming as I'm going swimming with Whale Sharks! I'm petrified of deep water so this is gonna be very interesting. Muwahahahahahaha, now that I've mentioned it here there's no way I can bottle out of it.


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## Humbert (9 Jul 2014)

amazing film, I envy you.
but should you not be careful when approaching them so close? after all, they have the fastest acceleration in the animal kingdom with those clubs as far as I remember, like a bullet.
because they strike so fast, they produce cavitation (air bublles) in the water, which in turn causes a shockwave, very high temperature and even light and sound.
(yeah, I do watch a lot of Discovey channel )
pretty amazing little critters they are.


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## Lindy (9 Jul 2014)

X3NiTH said:


> I'm going swimming with Whale Sharks! I



That will be sooooo cool, they are a beautiful fish.


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## Greenfinger2 (9 Jul 2014)

Superb  Thank you for sharing


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## X3NiTH (10 Jul 2014)

Humbert said:


> amazing film, I envy you.
> but should you not be careful when approaching them so close? after all, they have the fastest acceleration in the animal kingdom with those clubs as far as I remember, like a bullet.
> because they strike so fast, they produce cavitation (air bublles) in the water, which in turn causes a shockwave, very high temperature and even light and sound.
> (yeah, I do watch a lot of Discovey channel )
> pretty amazing little critters they are.



Yeah, that was my understanding of these critters also, so I am being super careful by keeping my fingers behind the camera but the swell in the surf can sometimes drag me of my subject forcing me to make a hand hold on the reef. The reef itself in places is sharp due to the hard corals but there is a super soft carpet of algae that grows like Cladophora over everything (I have a vid of a little crop of what appears to be marine type Marimo balls concentrated into one area that I found nowhere else up the length of the beach), this is also covered in a fine layer of sand making it difficult to spot everything hiding beneath. The mantis that got me was out of its burrow and hiding in a little gully next to my hand, I knew the instant I was struck what did it, absolutely unmistakable, I visually ID'd it before it shot off and it was the same type as the one in the vid, all these mantis are about the size of a thumb! What I have found though is that where I spot a Goby a Mantis is always nearby. 

The Wi-Fi upload here is a little ropey so as much as I would like to post all my vids, I can't, which is a shame, different story when I get home though!

Went swimming in a Cenote today, no plants but there were small black red eyed catfish and wild mollies in the crystal blue waters with sunlight streaming into the depths below, magic stuff, the freezing water was a welcome relief after spending a couple of hours wandering around the Mayan Chichen Itza temple complex (from memory not as hot as wandering the temples at Angkor), when I say wandering what I really mean is spending the time with my camera glued to my face, lol, life sometimes feels like one long photoshoot!

Lion fish vid coming, if it will upload. Not 100% sure if it is Voltans so anyone boned up on marine species can they ID it for me please!


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## X3NiTH (10 Jul 2014)

Lion Fish, query - Voltans?



Filmed in waist deep water 20ft from a busy beach with many bathers in the water!

And here are some Marine Algae Balls!


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## Lindy (10 Jul 2014)

Great! Keep em coming! The shimmering over the algae is glorious.


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## X3NiTH (11 Jul 2014)

Look at what I found hiding in 2ft of water, I'm completely blown away, amazing!



Sharptail eels!

They never moved the whole day and I made a mental note of where they were, which is very lucky because the camera lens fogged up completely (Nikon AW100) and I didn't notice until I was away from the area chasing something else. Gutted when I saw the fogged lens, I had to force dry the camera by leaving it to cook on some hot rocks in the blazing sunshine for an hour with the compartment door open while I ate some lunch, I then got back in the water for a second go getting the footage above. A couple of Mantis punches later (lol, I'm pushing my luck) I left the area satisfied after reviewing the footage while still in the water, which was very difficult to do in the intense sunlight glinting of the back screen, thankfully a cloud rolled overhead allowing a brief moment to check I was framed and in-focus. Happy, I then moved about 20ft further away and just about had a heart attack when I spotted this right below me.



I saw the tail first and immediately thought it was a coral snake, I calmed down once I saw the head and in typical fashion shot some footage!


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## aliclarke86 (11 Jul 2014)

You are getting some cracking footage here mate. Its really nice to see all this. Keep it up 

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk


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## Lindy (11 Jul 2014)

Those eels are not pretty! I love that the mantis shrimp are still giving you a hard time.


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## X3NiTH (12 Jul 2014)

ldcgroomer said:


> Those eels are not pretty! I love that the mantis shrimp are still giving you a hard time.



Yeah they are really mean looking and those hollow teeth would be a nightmare to be bitten by, but four in a row, wow, you could pay your money and go snorkelling on the Caribbean reef proper miles out at sea and not see the nano (bigger stuff definitely!). To put it in perspective I have seen and filmed more on that little stretch of beach than I saw last year when I did an organised dive on the Great Barrier Reef from the Quicksilver Platform and there I was shocked to see the devastation wrought by Crown of Thorns Starfish, you could tell the custodians were removing as many as they could see from around the dive platform area, but it wasn't enough they were still present hiding in the inaccessible corners, and the coral bleaching was immense, what should have been fields and fields of blue Acrophora were reduced to white bones. We were on an personalised organised tour with a marine biologist and when I broached the subject he blanked me! It was then I twigged the tour was contrived, compounded further when I spotted a nautilus shell on the bottom and without mentioning it suddenly became part of the tour. The coral reefs are going and they are going fast, within a couple of hundred years they will be just bones and if nothing changes their only saviour will be repopulation from hobbyist aquariums. Scary stuff!

I'm with you Lindy, I'm glad the Mantis are giving me a hard time simply because the reef is reaching out and touching me in a way that reinforces my thoughts about the place in a way that a lion fish or urchin sting could never achieve.


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## Lindy (12 Jul 2014)

That is a terrible shame about the reefs. I've only done it once but I spent a day snorkeling off Bon island when staying in Thailand.  It was incredible.


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## X3NiTH (14 Jul 2014)

Lobby wifi died on me when I was 95% through uploading the latest vid! I've travelled between two resort lobbies already and it keeps on crapping out on me! It's going to have to wait until I get home, uploading in 360p just ain't going to do it for me, I may try again tomorrow. You only get one hour per day of free wifi in the hotel lobbies and there are three resort lobbies you can travel between giving a maximum of 3 hrs free per device. The desk staff advise against paying for wifi in your room as there have been many complaints about non connectivity, gutted, I really want to upload this video.

Last night was a Full Moon and it was directly overhead like the midday sun, the significance of this wasn't apparent until we reached the whale shark feeding grounds. The drill on the boat/s, (about 20 off them working collectively to locate the sharks) was to take it in turns 2 at a time with the guide in the water with the whale shark. There were approx 10 people per boat, so it may take time to allow everyone time in the water with a shark we were told, we were also told that it would take an hour driving out to sea in our speedboats to the area we could start looking and it could take a further hour to find one. We'll we hadn't reached the grounds before we were told by radio that they had found the whale sharks on the search grounds we were heading for (5mins behind first boats). When we got there it was a stupendous sight, there were at least 50 whale sharks in about a 10 acre area feeding with no apparent intentions of leaving, the guide that was with us had never seen as many whale sharks in such a small area before, they were literally everywhere, they were in front of you, behind you and to the sides of you, and they were huge, a few times I was almost swished by a 2m tail, and we were supposed to keep a 2m distance but nobody told the sharks, seeing one or two is pretty lucky, but more than 50 unprecedented. It was then the significance of the full moon had dawned on us, the reef must have mass spawned in the light of last nights full moon and the whale sharks were reaping the bounty, and we had ringside seats. Absolutely priceless! I just wished the lobby wifi would let me share a moment of it with you all sooner rather than later. The vid I want to post deserves to be posted in glorious 1080p, and if I can't do it at this res it will need to wait until I get home on Wednesday!

Until then!


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## X3NiTH (15 Jul 2014)

I managed to upload a short vid but it's a goody so here we go!


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## Greenfinger2 (15 Jul 2014)

Stunning


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## Lindy (16 Jul 2014)

just *WOW* 

Can't wait to see the main event! So did you just not look down? I couldn't swim in water when I couldn't see the bottom, I'd be waiting for something, like the sea beast that ate Kevin Costner in waterworld, to come up and eat me


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## Nathaniel Whiteside (16 Jul 2014)

I take it my phones being dodgy?


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## BigTom (16 Jul 2014)

Nathaniel Whiteside said:


> I take it my phones being dodgy?



Haha yup. Should be whale sharks.


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## Nathaniel Whiteside (16 Jul 2014)

BigTom said:


> Haha yup. Should be whale sharks.



Didn't think whale sharks would've made particularly good snowboarders.


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## X3NiTH (16 Jul 2014)

Lindy, apparently the water depth where we we're was around 150 metres, you couldn't see the bottom and when you looked down there was cathedral lighting extending into the depths, the water clarity was very poor due to all the planktonic life. I chose to hire a wetsuit as a life jacket is a worse option, for some reason the freedom afforded by the wetsuit decreased my fear of depth (snorkelled once in Thailand in a life jacket and it was a miserable experience, I ditched it in favor for free diving when snorkelling Maya bay on Koh Phi Phi Ley, in saltwater bouancy is not a problem until you get deep). I swam in a cavernous Cenote (haven't posted that vid) that had the same cathedral lighting and a bottom I could not see (beyond 50m), much more frightening due to the very reduced bouancy in fresh water, however nothing in that water was big enough to take me whole into its mouth or sideswipe me with a 2m tailfin. The experience on the whole was so overwhelming in a way that fears just melted away! I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

And for those that are interested, this was a Thompson First Choice package holiday to the Grand Bahia Príncipe on the Riviera Maya, it's so good we're saving to go again!!!

Getting on a plane in a few hours, so sad to be leaving the place, truly magical holiday!


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