Assortment of crustaceans from shrimp trawler bycatch(Not in actualy scale)
A love letter to the unnamed, undescribed and overlooked crustaceans
A lot of the species I collect usually aren't subject to underwater photography or aqaurium trades, and let alone commercial uses as food hence they end up in piles of bycatch. They get relatively little attention and remain as a collective, discarded , grinded in fish food or becoming colorless specimens in jars. And yet they're colorful and diverse with their strange appendages and bristles, dots of pigmentation forming their own stories to tell. I think they deserve a little spot of their own in our appreciation towards marine life.
Unnwanted or low value catch are dumped together before being trucked away to be grinded into fish feed in factories.
The collected specimens are either discarded by workers or left in bycatch piles, deemed as unappealing. Obtaining them means getting my hands soaked in foul smelling ooze excreted by the mass of death. Their entry into our peripheral is not the most flattering, but peeling away the mucus and muck are organisms so bizarre and wonderful it's as if we weren't meant to behold them with our eyes.
My "studio" that I photograph their fresh coloration with.
And to end their story with proper adoration, inviting them as my muse, I hope, is much more deserving, even if they're long gone to agree with the arrangements.