Out and about in a boat...

I made a quick decision Thursday night that if I was going to go out on Mr. Bean's prawn boat it had to on Friday. I had hoped to go Tuesday, but that day didn't work and then Mr. Bean told me on Wednesday that prawning could get shut down earlier and he might have to head out of the area...so, Friday was the day to go. I was up at 4:15 am and was on the road to Pender Harbour an hour later and I actually beat Mr. Bean to his boat!

By the way,"Ricco Garbanzo Bean" is a nickname. Rick has been helping me with my website since it's inception and when I have him do test orders in the shopping cart he always signs in a "Ricco Garbanzo" and, so, I call him "Mr. Bean." Rick and his wife Roxanne are good friends and we all used to call Egmont home at one time. Rick and Roxie now live in the "Harbour" and I live in Sechelt. So, above, you can see Rick's "skookum" prawn boat - it's a beauty and moves like stink on the water! On the left you can see Rick at the wheel joined by his crew mate Steve. Fishing is high tech these days and Rick has a computer monitor beside him that shows hydrological charts for the area and allows him to plot his trap lines and gives him GPS co-ordinates. Above the montior, is a depth sounder so Rick can see the lay of the land below the water. Prawns can be found at various depths and so Rick likes to set a trap line over a range of depths.

Rick has a stacked licence which enables him to set 10 lines of traps. Each line consists of two "skates" of rope (1 skate = 1800 feet), and 50 traps.  So, over the course of Rick and Steve's 10 hour day, they winch in those ten lines and set them out again - about 9 miles of rope and 500 traps emptied and prepped. Now, I was going to find out what it was like to work those lines!!

Here's Rick and I on the left and Steve on the right. I think at this point we were about half way through and I was still able to smile. What a day! Rick hauled the lines out and emptied the trap contents out onto the sorting tray in front of us and then tossed the trap to Steve who rebaited the traps and stacked them for setting out again. The acceptable size prawns are put though the slot on the sorting tray and are caught in a basket below and each basket holds about 9 lbs of live prawns. When a basket is full, Steve grabs it, closes the lid and it is placed in a holding tank that has constantly circulating sea water and is kept at cool temperature so the prawns are still frisky when they arrive at the fish plant.

Sorting involves not only tossing back the undersized prawns, but tossing back the sea critters that crawl into the traps and that are attracted by the smell of the bait or by the presence of the prawns. So, you find every variety of sea crab and rock fish, sculpins and white fish, sea snails, and octopus! Over the day, we had about 3 or 4 immature octopus among the prawns, but in the traps containing a fairly mature octopus there were no prawns - it had eaten them shell and all. Bald eagles had a tid bit or two from the boat. When some rock fish are brought up from the depths, they die and those dead fish get tossed into the water for the eagles sitting in the trees along the shore. We also saw a good size black bear a one point during the day. It was on shore at low tide turning over rocks for find the yummy little sea critters living under them.

So, how far did we travel? Here is a Google map with my edits.

You can see Sechelt in the bottom right hand corner which is where I live now. I drove up the coast highway to Madeira Park which along with Garden Bay are the two largest communities making up Pender Harbour. Rick and other fisherman keep their boats tied up at the community wharf in Madeira Park. By boat, we left Pender Harbour and headed into and up the Agamemnon Channel. Our goal was the top of Hotham Sound where Rick has his furthest line set (red X). It was strung out right in front of Tom and Michelle's place - finally, I get to see where they homestead! I think Rick had another line in the Sound and then we headed into St. Vincent's Bay for a few more lines and then it was back to the top of Nelson Island and into the Channel for more lines.

Sad to say, I didn't get any pictures of all those yummy prawns flipping around on the sorting tray (no time!), but we did have to stop and take a picture of this one...

She was huge! - as you can see when set next to an iPhone and my rubber glove. It is believed prawns have a life span of about 4 years and she had to be close; yes, a real survivor and because of that we threw her back in after taking a few pictures. By the way, for landlubbers reading this post, that is not a pastry in the picture but a starfish!

Well, that was my big adventure and today I am dog-tired! Just too much fun and fresh air; however, it will be an early night tonight and back to Three Ducks tomorrow; well, maybe Monday.

Come and get me, I dare ya!