Playground

by Richard Powers

She lavished attention on one of the loudest noisemakers, a pistol shrimp. There were six hundred species, but she had fallen in love with one during a month in the reefs of the Solomon Islands. The creature’s claws were not typical pincers but consisted of a special jointed structure resembling the hammer of a gun. The shrimp cocked this hammer, then triggered it to slam against the claw’s lock, making a tremendous snap. The noise of these tiny shrimp rivals anything in the deep, even the booming of the great whales. When a whole colony of pistol shrimp start snapping together, the chorus can jam the Navy’s most sophisticated sonar. The snap of a single pistol shrimp is louder than the roar of a jet engine from half a block away. And the explosion made by its snapping claw creates a wave of bubbles strong enough to stun a large fish or break a glass jar. These bubbles contain so much energy, they emit flashes of light almost as hot as the surface of the sun.