I’m a terrible blogger. Oh well.
J I tried uploading one yesterday with lots of
pictures, but the internet is very, very slow here (just like there isn’t cell
phone service unless you go with an Alaskan provider, the internet isn’t top of
the line either!). But, while I type
this I’m going to try to upload a few so maybe this will have some…
Our first weekend here Laura, one
of the providers at the clinic, and her husband, too Nate (my roommate) and I
out to check their crab pots. The first
day we went out was just absolutely gorgeous- this place is truly breathtaking
when the weather is nice! It was cool
enough just to be out on a boat. I’ve
been on a boat out in the sea/ocean before, but never on a small fishing boat,
so it was a pretty cool experience.
Their boat isn’t large enough to go out of the bay, but it was great
none the less. The boat is very “bare
bones” and doesn’t have any seats- just the motor, a crank for the crab pots,
and a bucket to put the crabs (and of course other boat safety features and
stuff).
When we got to the first pot, Laura
showed us how to get it up. First you
hook the float they use as a marker for where it’s at (he also marks them on his
GPS) and pull it into the boat and hook the rope on the crank wheel (I
guarantee you I’m not using the right words!) and then help guide the rope
up. It pulls it at 1 foot a second if I
remember right. The pots have a large
range of how deep they put them but the deepest one we pulled was 130 ft (they
have four out). They play with how deep
they are depending what they get up. The
females are usually at a different depth than the males (you can only keep
males) so if they find females they know they need to change the depth…but that
they’re in the right place.
So…back
to the first pot, they had set this one out deeper to get the snow crab. They wanted to get some for us in case they
didn’t find the king crab while we were here.
When you pull it the boat you have to check to see whether they are male
or female then measure them. The
measurement of a “keeper” goes by their body and they have gauge that you just
hold up to the body to see if they are bigger than it. Then…they go in the bucket and you drop the
pot back!
We took
turns pulling up the other three pots.
They were all in shallower in the bay (around 60-80ft deep) to find the
King crab. The first 2 were empty except
for a couple snow crab, but the third one had 2 kings in it. Unfortunately, one was female and the other
one was too small: but at least they knew that they were getting closer to
finding the kings!!
After
we pulled all the pots we went back and took the boat out and headed back to
Laura and Duane’s house to cook them.
Hopefully the picture loads and you can see the pot. They get the water boiling and put the crab
in the pot and let them cook for about 15 minutes, and then you pull them out
and dunk them in salt water for about 20 seconds to “quench” them, so that the
shell comes off easily. Laura and Duane
have been here about a year and half so they have been learning how to do all
this stuff and perfect their system.
Duane seems to have pulled it off pretty well though, because after we
quench them, we hung out outside drinking some coffee and enjoying a few crab
legs. Pretty much nothing tastes better
than that!!
Oh wait…I
almost forgot about the worst part…getting them ready to cook. You have to take the crab and hit it against
the bucket in the middle and pull the legs off…and then do that again on the
other side to get the rest of the legs off.
It’s a little brutal but I guess the best way to do it… Then, you have to take a knife and clean off
the gills. Yuck. When you’re doing all that, it really, really
makes you wonder what in the world possessed us to ever eat this creepy, gross
creature…but hey, they are delicious!!
We went
out again with Duane last week before they left on their trip and found a
couple kings! Unfortunately, we did not
find too many, but we did get two big keepers.
Soooooo tasty!! I hoping that
when Duane gets back on Thursday we’ll get to go out with them again…and that
we find more Kings!
Love y’all and miss you!!
Here's the pot of crabs and the pot they boil them in! And boat in the background :)
Here's the view from my front porch: with a mini rainbow
And due to my impatience, that's all I got for pictures right now!
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