Anemone shrimp is a very precious shrimp species.
Its value does not lie in its rarity, but in its beauty and the difficulty of catching it.
If you dive to catch it, the anemone shrimp's extremely small size allows it to hide in the anemone at any time, and its versatile transparent body color gives it the ability to "change color". When fishermen dive to catch it, they usually swim over the anemone shrimp's head without being able to spot it.
As for trawling, even the finest mesh trawling net can hardly catch anemone shrimps which are only two or three centimeters long.
Xiang Yang carefully observed the group of anemone shrimps, which were mainly purple spotted anemone shrimps, and a small part were white spotted anemone shrimps.
Xiang Yang found it a little strange. Although the purple-spotted anemone shrimp and the white-spotted anemone shrimp are both called anemone shrimps, and are both common species of anemone shrimps, they are actually not the same species at all. In addition to the different colors of the spots on their bodies, the spots on their tails are also different. The purple-spotted anemone shrimp has two dots on its tail that resemble eyes, while the white-spotted anemone shrimp has five orange spots with black edges on its tail.
It is truly amazing that two different types of shrimp can live together harmoniously and become one population.
It is worth mentioning that anemone shrimps are easy to raise as ornamental fish. Although they are omnivorous creatures, they prefer to eat meat. Their staple food is generally the food residues of giant anemones. They are typical cleaner shrimps. Keeping them in a water tank can effectively keep the water tank clean.
There was a time when anemone shrimps were very popular in the ornamental fish market, but gradually, for some unknown reason, not many people like to raise anemone shrimps now. There is a saying that the effort and reward of raising anemone shrimps are not proportional.
Because anemone shrimps often appear in groups in the reefs at a depth of 8 to 25 meters under the ocean, it is difficult for fishermen to find them, and every time they are found, they are caught in large groups. Therefore, even if anemone shrimps are very beautiful and can reflect colorful colors under the light, it is difficult to sell them at a good price.
Xiang Yang picked up a purple-spotted anemone shrimp and held it in front of his eyes for a careful look. It was really completely different from other shrimps. Its head and eyes were completely transparent. Even if you held it in the palm of your hand, you couldn't see its head and eyes at all if you didn't look carefully. There was a pair of brightly colored pseudo-eyes on its fan-shaped tail, which was very similar to the butterfly fish. Its pseudo-eyes could induce predators to mistake its tail for its head.
Xiang Yang was not interested in this small shrimp-like anemone shrimp, but he did not leave immediately. Instead, he continued to search carefully on the spot.
Xiang Yang wanted to see if he could find any sea anemones nearby.
Anemone shrimps are a kind of small shrimp that live in symbiosis with large sea anemones. The anemones provide shelter and food for the anemone shrimps, while the anemone shrimps are responsible for cleaning the anemones. So in most cases, finding anemone shrimps also means finding the anemone.
Compared with anemone shrimps, Xiang Yang is obviously more interested in anemones. Compared with anemone shrimps which are not very valuable and have a worrying market prospect, the worst quality artificially cultivated anemones on the market can be sold for dozens of yuan per catty, and anemones with slightly better quality can be sold for hundreds of yuan per catty, and wild anemones can easily cost hundreds of yuan per catty.
Moreover, sea anemones are different from abalones. Abalones are too timid and always like to hide in cracks in rocks, so they are really hard to find.
What about anemones
They will be distributed in groups on the seabed like plants. Once you find them, you don't even need a net bag, you can just carry a sack down to catch them.
Xiang Yang followed the anemone shrimp and swam to where there were more anemone shrimps as much as possible.
After swimming forward for a distance, Xiang Yang found a lot of anemone shrimp shells on the seabed.
This discovery made Xiang Yang very excited.
Anemone shrimps often establish a symbiotic relationship with anemones. Since the stinging cells on the tentacles of anemones are highly toxic, anemone shrimps must cover their entire bodies with the mucus secreted by the anemones to avoid being accidentally injured by the anemones. Therefore, every time anemone shrimps shed their shells, they will leave the anemone until a new shell grows, and they will only return to the anemone after being covered with a layer of anemone mucus again.
Because anemone shrimps are very fragile when separated from the anemone, they usually do not move too far away from the anemone when molting, so Xiang Yang is sure that there are definitely anemones nearby.
Sure enough, when Xiang Yang swam forward for a while and passed a huge reef, he suddenly found that the bottom of the ocean in front was covered with giant anemones that looked like small umbrellas.
Xiang Yang was immediately overjoyed when he found out. He picked out an anemone as big as a millstone and stuffed it into the net bag, filling the entire bag bulging.
Xiang Yang was not greedy. After remembering the location, he swam directly towards the sea.
Back on the deck, there were many crew members resting on the deck. When they saw Xiang Yang coming up, they all smiled and told Xiang Yang the good news, telling him how many abalone they each caught.
Xiang Yang was also very excited when he saw everyone's happy expressions. Today was definitely a day of great harvest for him.
Fang Youqun waited until everyone had finished talking before he spoke up: "Brother Yang, your net is bulging? Did you catch another abalone?"
Xiang Yang shook his head and said with a smile: "I didn't catch any more abalone after I went down there just now."
"You didn't catch any abalone?" Everyone looked at Xiang Yang in confusion. "No way, Captain, there are so many abalones here, and you even caught a single abalone. If you don't go down to catch abalone, what else would you catch?"
Fang Youqun even reached out to grab the net bag tied around Xiang Yang's waist, "You didn't even catch abalone, Brother Yang, let me see what you caught in your net bag, I'll go down and catch this too."
"Don't move." Xiang Yang grabbed Fang Youqun's bronze wrist.
"Uh." Fang Youqun was a little surprised. He didn't expect Xiang Yang's reaction to be so big. He hurriedly explained: "Brother Yang, I just want to see what's in your net bag."
Xiang Yang then let go of Fang Youqun's wrist and whispered, "This thing in my net bag is highly poisonous. If you want to touch it, put on your gloves first."
"Highly poisonous?" Chen Qingsheng asked, "Captain, you didn't catch a bag of jellyfish? That stuff doesn't seem to be worth much."
"It's not a jellyfish." Xiang Yang said this and stopped explaining. He simply untied the net bag and revealed the giant anemone inside.
"Hiss!" There was a sound of people gasping for air all around. "Oh my god, is this a sea anemone? Such a big one?"
Xiang Yang smiled, he knew why the crew members were so shocked. Everyone on the ship had seen sea anemones, and they saw them often. Everyone was very familiar with sea anemones, but the anemones they saw on a normal day were only the size of a plastic bottle cap. Compared with the anemone in front of them, which was as big as a small umbrella, they were completely two different creatures. No wonder they were shocked.