Subjects

We were on board and sailing at the Ionian Sea. The captain had started asking questions like, “What exactly is this species of shrimps? Why exactly are they so special? Have you seen them before? How do you know we are actually going to find them?”

The mission was of great interest, because shrimps are unarguably one of the crucial resources for fishing in deep waters with trawlers in the Mediterranean and traditionally have a financial significance.

Searching for the red shrimps was impressive, but we were really anxious and had a feeling of awe… Although we went to places we knew they would be, we didn’t have the best results from the very beginning. The sea bottom seemed lifeless. So we started a hopeless “hunting”, but searching for the shrimps wasn’t easy at all…. We were waiting over the ROV monitor, as its camera shed light on the dark cold Ionian waters, locating, 708 meters under the surface of the sea the first red female shrimp… It was as if she was trying to focus on this unexpected source of light with her enormous antennae and realize where all this noise was coming from.

We didn’t follow her for a long time, however she managed to enchant us… “We lost her!”, we whispered… “We lost her!”, also heard the captain’s voice, who was watching through the monitor. A picture stands for a thousand words…

Reaching at the end of our mission, it unarguably was a great success for us to locate and actually see the red shrimps. Few Institutes in the world have managed to record them live, as we did!