"Barbie Pink" Lobsterettes, Lobstering
This gathering of clawed lobsters belongs to the family Nephropidae, and we suspect they are Thymops birsteini, or Patagonian lobsterette — crustaceans found on the continental shelf around South America, particularly in the Argentine Sea. Most lobsters are slow walkers, but they do have the ability to make a hasty getaway when needed. Lobstering or tail-flipping involves making rapid abdominal movements that produce a powerful thrust, propelling the animal backwards quickly and allowing them to get away from the threat. Researchers at Fisheries and Oceans Canada clocked lobsters fleeing this way at five meters per second. The technical name for this innate behavior is caridoid escape reaction, but the introverts among us like to imagine ourselves “lobstering” out of our next boring social interaction. While little is known about these animals, they resemble a typical lobster with two large claws, four other pairs of walking legs that can be used to gather food, called pereiopods, and a long tail, which is called a pleon. Thymops have been found in the bellies of Patagonian toothfish, and they have been observed living in and around burrows. ROV pilots filmed this gathering of lobsterettes in the Mar Del Plata Canyon during the Talud Continental IV expedition in Argentina, where an international science team is documenting the abundance of life in the country’s largest submarine, or underwater, canyon.
via: Schmidt Ocean Institute
