280 days of Urbpandemonium #32

[urbpan]

When tidepooling, sometimes you encounter incredibly fast, nearly transparent animals. I would have told you these are impossible to catch and identify, so it's a good thing I hang out with other naturalists. A friend who goes by eumorpha-dream on tumblr caught these grass shrimp (also "ghost shrimp") and identified them as "likely Palaemonetes pugio." They hang out in salt marshes eating bits of organic material, and forming an important strand in the estuarine food web.