If Mantis Shrimp Tastes Better Than Lobster, Why Don’t We Eat Them? — Transcript

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1. 0:00The fastest punch in the ocean belongs
2. 0:02to an animal about the length of a hot
3. 0:03dog. It has eyes on stalks that swivel
4. 0:06on their own, a body like a lobster that
5. 0:08got stepped on, and two folded arms it
6. 0:11can fire faster than you can blink.
7. 0:13In 2004, biologist Sheila Patek and her
8. 0:16colleagues at the University of
9. 0:17California, Berkeley filmed one hitting
10. 0:20a snail shell with a high-speed camera.
11. 0:22The club on its arm moved at around 50
12. 0:24mph, so fast that the water in front of
13. 0:27it tore into tiny bubbles. And when
14. 0:29those bubbles collapsed, they hit the
15. 0:31snail a second time.
16. 0:33This is the mantis shrimp.
17. 0:35In Hong Kong, it gets tossed in a walk
18. 0:37with garlic and chili. In Tokyo, it's
19. 0:39boiled, split open, and laid over rice
20. 0:42as sushi. In Italy, boats on the
21. 0:44Adriatic land thousands of tons of one
22. 0:46species called canocci every year.
23. 0:49People who eat it say the meat is sweet
24. 0:51and tender, a lot like lobster.
25. 0:53And along the coast of the United
26. 0:55States, from Cape Cod down to the Gulf
27. 0:57of Mexico, it lives in the mud of bays
28. 0:59and shallow seas, and almost nobody eats
29. 1:02it.
30. 1:02So, let's say you want to change that.
31. 1:04You're going to be the first person to
32. 1:06sell American mantis shrimp to American
33. 1:08diners.
34. 1:09On paper, the plan looks easy.
35. 1:12The main species on the East Coast and
36. 1:13in the Gulf is called squilla empusa,
37. 1:16and it can grow to about a foot long.
38. 1:18That's a solid portion of meat, bigger
39. 1:20than most shrimp in a grocery store
40. 1:21freezer.
41. 1:22You won't even need to go looking for it
42. 1:24because shrimp boats already catch it by
43. 1:26accident.
44. 1:28In 2009, marine biologist Jennifer
45. 1:30Wortham from the University of Tampa
46. 1:32published a survey of mantis shrimp
47. 1:34across the northern Gulf.
48. 1:36Her team sampled 56 stations and
49. 1:38collected 2,854
50. 1:40of them from water barely a yard deep
51. 1:43down to around 300 ft. She pointed out
52. 1:45that mantis shrimp are one of the most
53. 1:47common extras in Gulf shrimp nets, and
54. 1:49that their bodies usually get tossed
55. 1:51back over the side instead of being sold
56. 1:53as food, fish meal, or anything else.
57. 1:55Free supply, a famous taste, and a
58. 1:58ready-made story about the
59. 2:00punch on the planet.
60. 2:01Your first problem shows up the moment
61. 2:03the net hits the deck. Fishermen have a
62. 2:05nickname for these animals. They call
63. 2:07them thumb splitters. The tropical
64. 2:10species that punch, like the one Patek
65. 2:12filmed, are known as smashers.
66. 2:14Squilla empusa belongs to the other
67. 2:16group, the spearers. Instead of a club,
68. 2:19it has an arm lined with sharp spines
69. 2:21that snaps shut like a folding knife. It
70. 2:23uses that arm to snatch passing fish and
71. 2:26shrimp, and it works just as well on a
72. 2:28finger. In 1996, a Montauk captain named
73. 2:31Harry Clemens scooped one up in a
74. 2:33scallop net in Lake Montauk. The local
75. 2:35paper described a 7-in creature with a
76. 2:38head full of hooks and two raised arms
77. 2:40like a praying mantis and called it the
78. 2:42slasher shrimp. So the first rule of
79. 2:45your new business is that nobody sorts
80. 2:47the catch barehanded. Every animal has
81. 2:50to be picked out of a pile of wet,
82. 2:51flapping bycatch with gloves or tongs,
83. 2:54one at a time, often at night on a
84. 2:56rocking boat. The second rule is harder
85. 2:59because it's about time. And on most of
86. 3:01those boats, by the time anyone notices
87. 3:04the mantis shrimp, the clock has already
88. 3:06run out.
89. 3:07A mantis shrimp starts falling apart
90. 3:09almost as soon as it dies. Behind its
91. 3:12head sits an organ that works like a
92. 3:14liver and a stomach combined, packed
93. 3:16with digestive enzymes strong enough to
94. 3:18break down the snails and crabs it eats.
95. 3:20While the animal is alive, those enzymes
96. 3:22stay where they belong. After it dies,
97. 3:25they leak into the tail meat and start
98. 3:27digesting it. Food scientists who
99. 3:29studied a Southeast Asian species found
100. 3:31that even packed in iced water, the meat
101. 3:33turned soft and pasty within about 3
102. 3:36days. A lobster can ride in a crate of
103. 3:38wet seaweed for a day and still arrive
104. 3:41at a restaurant alive and waving. A
105. 3:43mantis shrimp squashed at the bottom of
106. 3:45a trawl net has a much shorter future.
107. 3:47That's a big reason Gulf shrimpers throw
108. 3:49them back. Most are already dead by the
109. 3:52time the catch gets sorted, and a dead
110. 3:54one is already on its way to mush. So
111. 3:56your plan needs live animals, which
112. 3:59means fishing for them on purpose. And
113. 4:01catching a mantis shrimp on purpose is a
114. 4:03completely different game from finding
115. 4:05one in a shrimp net. These animals live
116. 4:07in burrows. In summer, Squilla Empusa
117. 4:10digs a tunnel with two doors, 6 to 20 in
118. 4:13under the mud. In the northern part of
119. 4:15its range, it digs winter burrows that
120. 4:17can reach 13 ft deep, deeper than a
121. 4:20basketball hoop is tall. It mostly comes
122. 4:22out at night, and it fights other mantis
123. 4:24shrimp to keep its home. Somebody in New
124. 4:27England has already worked this part
125. 4:28out.
126. 4:30Around 2011, researchers studying mantis
127. 4:32shrimp in Narragansett Bay reported that
128. 4:34a new market had appeared in Asian
129. 4:36restaurants in Boston and New York, and
130. 4:38that a few Rhode Island fishermen had
131. 4:40started targeting them, mostly in Mount
132. 4:42Hope Bay, where the sandy mud holds the
133. 4:44most shrimp. Further down the coast, a
134. 4:46bayman near Shelter Island, at the
135. 4:48eastern end of Long Island, fishes for
136. 4:50them after dark and sells most of his
137. 4:52catch to Asian restaurants in New York
138. 4:54City. That proves there are buyers. It
139. 4:57also shows how small this all is. A few
140. 5:00boats, a few bays, and a few restaurants
141. 5:02that already know what they're looking
142. 5:04at.
143. 5:05To grow past that, you need to get the
144. 5:06meat out of the shell, and that's where
145. 5:09everything slows down.
146. 5:11In the summer of 2026, Chef Arman Joseph
147. 5:13at Leon 1909, a restaurant on Shelter
148. 5:16Island, decided to put that bayman's
149. 5:18mantis shrimp on his menu.
150. 5:20He spent about 2 weeks just figuring out
151. 5:22how to process them.
152. 5:24They have to be killed live, trimmed,
153. 5:26and blast frozen right away, which lets
154. 5:28the shell come off cleanly, and then the
155. 5:30meat gets frozen again.
156. 5:32By his count, it takes one person about
157. 5:3412 hours to work through 25 lbs. He told
158. 5:38a local food writer that getting the
159. 5:39meat out of the shell is incredibly
160. 5:41hard. Compare that to a lobster, where
161. 5:43the meat sits in a claw and a tail, and
162. 5:45you crack it open with one tool. A
163. 5:48mantis shrimp's shell is flat,
164. 5:49segmented, and lined with spines along
165. 5:52the edges. Cooks in Hong Kong deal with
166. 5:54it by snipping down both sides with
167. 5:56kitchen scissors and lifting the top off
168. 5:58like a lid. That works fine for one
169. 6:00plate at a dinner table. It falls apart
170. 6:03for a processing plant that wants to
171. 6:04freeze 10,000 pounds a week and brush
172. 6:07them to supermarkets in Ohio.
173. 6:09Then
174. 6:10comes the customer.
175. 6:11Your animal does have one great selling
176. 6:14point, which is the taste.
177. 6:17in Japan or kanoki in Italy describe
178. 6:19meat that's sweet and delicate, and it
179. 6:22gets compared to lobster constantly.
180. 6:24Some sushi guides call it milder than
181. 6:26lobster, others call it richer.
182. 6:28Joseph's version on Shelter Island was
183. 6:30described as something else again, sweet
184. 6:33and savory, almost like a mild sea
185. 6:35urchin with a soft custard texture where
186. 6:38you'd expect the snap of a shrimp.
187. 6:40Every one of those descriptions sounds
188. 6:42expensive. The trouble is the name and
189. 6:45the face.
190. 6:46Online, the mantis shrimp is mostly
191. 6:48famous as a monster, the shrimp that
192. 6:50punches, the shrimp with the best eyes
193. 6:53in the world. Its eyes carry 12 kinds of
194. 6:56color receptors where yours have three.
195. 6:58In 2014, Hanne Thoen and a team at the
196. 7:01University of Queensland tested how well
197. 7:03they actually tell colors apart, and the
198. 7:06shrimp did worse than people do. So your
199. 7:08mascot is a cartoon super villain with
200. 7:10fancy eyes that mixes up colors you'd
201. 7:12sort in a second. That might sell a
202. 7:14t-shirt. Selling it as dinner is a lot
203. 7:17harder.
204. 7:19Say you win the customers over anyway.
205. 7:21The last obstacle is the one Japan ran
206. 7:23into.
207. 7:25Shako has long been a classic topping in
208. 7:27Edomae sushi, the old Tokyo style,
209. 7:30because for generations it came straight
210. 7:32out of Tokyo Bay. Sushi chefs boil it
211. 7:34briefly, sometimes sear it, and brush it
212. 7:37with a sweet dark glaze.
213. 7:39Females full of eggs in late spring are
214. 7:41a prize treat that only shows up for a
215. 7:43few weeks. The fishermen of the Shiba
216. 7:45cooperative in Yokohama caught more
217. 7:47shako than anyone, and for their small
218. 7:50trawl boats, it made up more than 70% of
219. 7:52the value of everything they landed.
220. 7:55Then, around 1992, after big catches
221. 7:58through the 1980s, the numbers fell off
222. 8:00a cliff.
223. 8:01In 2002, the cooperative brought in
224. 8:04catch limits, mesh rules, and a closed
225. 8:06season in December. The shako still
226. 8:09didn't come back.
227. 8:10Decades of land reclamation and
228. 8:12pollution had left water with very
229. 8:14little oxygen near the bottom of the
230. 8:15bay, and young shako struggled to
231. 8:17survive in it. By the late 2000s, the
232. 8:20catch had dropped so low that many
233. 8:22fishermen switched to other fish, and
234. 8:24the bay stock still hasn't recovered.
235. 8:26The places that eat mantis shrimp in big
236. 8:28numbers have one thing in common. They
237. 8:31never had to build a market from
238. 8:32nothing.
239. 8:34In Italy, canocchie have been part of
240. 8:35Adriatic coastal cooking for so long
241. 8:38that nobody needs convincing. A 2024
242. 8:41study from Italy's National Research
243. 8:43Council reported that the country landed
244. 8:44between about 4,000 and 4,750
245. 8:48tons a year from 2012 to 2021, and
246. 8:51around two-thirds of it came from the
247. 8:53Adriatic. Most of it comes up as
248. 8:55bycatch, too, in a heavy beam trawl
249. 8:57called the rapido.
250. 8:59There it gets sold instead of thrown
251. 9:02back because the boats are close to the
252. 9:03fish markets and the buyers already know
253. 9:05exactly what to do with it. In Hong
254. 9:08Kong, mantis shrimp have long been sold
255. 9:10cheaply at seafood stalls in typhoon
256. 9:12shelters and fishing villages, kept
257. 9:14alive in tanks until someone points at
258. 9:16one. Both places beat the clock by
259. 9:18keeping the trip short and beat the
260. 9:20customer problem a long time ago. In the
261. 9:23United States, all of that work is still
262. 9:25waiting to be done, and only a handful
263. 9:28of people have started.
264. 9:29One of them is that bayman on Shelter
265. 9:31Island. He only found the mantis shrimp
266. 9:33in his waters about a year before
267. 9:35Joseph's dish came out, and he heads out
268. 9:37after dark when they leave their burrows
269. 9:39to hunt. Montauk boats started catching
270. 9:41them around 2020. Rhode Island fishermen
271. 9:44found them roughly 40 years ago. Joseph
272. 9:47pays about $50 a pound, which puts them
273. 9:49in the same range as the area's prized
274. 9:51Peconic Bay scallops, and he serves them
275. 9:54poached in mild olive oil with basil
276. 9:56from his own garden as a $40 starter. In
277. 9:59August 2026, he brought the dish to
278. 10:01Manhattan to a restaurant run by the
279. 10:03James Beard Foundation on a pier over
280. 10:05the Hudson. It's a tiny start. 12 hours
281. 10:09of work for 25 of shrimp won't feed a
282. 10:11country. Somewhere in the mud off Long
283. 10:14Island tonight, an animal with the
284. 10:16fastest punch in the ocean is waiting
285. 10:18for the sun to go down so it can hunt,
286. 10:20and a man with a net is waiting up for
287. 10:23it.