What's Going On With This Shrimp?!?

[Panaderia Canadiense]

OK, so I was peeling and deveining some blonde mangrove shrimp I bought this morning from the fishmongers here in Ambato, Ecuador, and in one of them I found this weird black lumpen thing. I discarded the shrimp and its lump, because it creeped me right out and I figure better safe than sorry. Sunday is fresh catch day so these are no more than 12 hours out of the sea, and they're an small-scale traditional fishery so anything is possible.

I'm very curious if anybody else has ever found this in a shrimp. If so, what the heck is it? A parasite? A cancer? Did the shrimp swallow something untoward and then cover it with shrimp excreta, sort of a shrimp pearl thing? It was hard and kind of gravelly in texture (if that makes sense), and it separated easily from the flesh of the shrimp. I was too weirded out by it to try dissecting it.

[Keith_W]

Eggs, perhaps? Were they in the belly of the shrimp?

[HungryC]

It was diseased....there are a host of parasites, viruses, bacteria infecting shrimp. Handbook of shrimp diseases found here: http://nsgl.gso.uri.edu/tamu/tamuh95001.pdf

Definitely not eggs.

[Panaderia Canadiense]

Keith, I know from shrimp with roe, and this was not one of 'em. Thank you for the link, Celeste - I'll check it out, and now I don't feel so bad about turfing the shrimp.

[gfweb]

The gravelly texture makes the diagnosis...it was a rock shrimp!