It gets easier when you have done it a few times. When you have done it thousands of times, however, you can do it at an amazing rate. By then, it’s almost automatic. Almost – but not entirely: To this day, mechanical automatization of prawn shelling on an industrial scale is impossible. Prawn sizes and shapes vary too greatly, the seemingly easy process of shelling is of such mechanical complexity that to date no machine was able to master is without producing copious amounts of discard – or being prohibitively expensive.