Alpheus sp. Fabricius, 1798
Finding and photographing Alpheids: YEAHHH WOOO OUUGHH YEAH
Identifying the Alpheids: ooooooowww no *sniff* aauughhh what huh agghhh augh *cough* ugh.
I love snapping shrimps they're one of my favourite crustaceans but OMG are they just jumbled cables in shrimp forms when it comes to taxonomy and identification. These specimens are probably a species from the A. brevirostris species complex, close to species like A. dispar. The biggest identification keys are usually the chelae and specific pereopods which I have not the patience to flip through 10 papers and check like 200 species so it's gonna have to come to me in a dream at some point.
Alpheids are less common in bycatch hauls as their distributions are often shallower than fishing depths for commercial shrimps like sweet shrimps or sakuras and with them having the highest diversity around intertidal to subtidal reef environments.