So we had a friend at the eel plant who was a lobster fisherman in his off-time, and agreed to send us out on the boat with one of his buddies who does it actively. It was a wicked experience. Sadly, not in the way I intended it to be. Lobster fishing is a tough business around this area. The fisherman say that since the confederation bridge was built, the lobster are dissappearing. Most of them will take any excuse not to go out, because it almost guarantees a loss of money if you do. Not enough pounds of lobster to afford the costs of boating and employees. We had enough trouble getting to the wharf as it was. The first day we were scheduled to go we went to the wrong wharf entirely, waited around, then asked a fisherman about our contact. The fisherman laughed a bit and told us where to go. By the time we got there, the ship had sailed.
The next day we arrived extra early, around 5:30AM, to ensure we didn't miss anything. Greg, our man in the sea, arrived around 5:50AM only to tell us that it was way too rough and windy to even think about going out. I confess I was a bit relieved. Keeping my lunch would have been a side note to staying on the boat at that point. I needn't have worried, apparently my lunch doesn't much like me in calm water either.
Now I know I get seasick, because I had a spat of nausea in Victoria, fishing for salmon. This was the uppermost rung of seasickness. We were pulling up the first trap when it hit me like a sack of bricks. Happily I had the decency to run to the opposite side of the boat to let loose. Feeding the sea some more. It's a greedy sea, and demanded much of me that day. We were out around 7 hours, and I basically was wracking and vomiting the entire time. It sounds arduous, but seasickness is a strange sickness, comes and goes like the wind. For minutes at a time I would feel nothing, then all of a sudden I was curled over the railing leaving the seagulls and fish a bit of the cold pizza I ate for breakfast. I eventually found a position which enabled minimal nausea, sadly it was a position from which I could see nothing. After a couple hours I just fell asleep, dreaming of lobsters and waves, waking to vomit on occasion. Happily, by around noon, I was quite fine for some reason, and even helped bind the claws of one lobster before committing the last scraping of my stomach's interior to the malicious waves. They seemed to sneer.
It was actually still a very worthwhile experience. Greg and his son Justin have the lobster fishing down to a routine, and pull, empty, examine and fill traps with the utmost efficiency. Fabian played clawmaster, battling the largest beasts with the mother of all weapons, elastics. Basically lobster gets sorted into two sizes, canners and markets, depending on size and weight. Pregnant females, oversized lobsters, and the very smallest are all thrown back to the deep, surviving to be caught another day. Of the 150lbs we caught, a few were extremely large, most were middling, and some small. The last trap we pulled up yielded the two largest of the lobsters we caught all day. I took a few pictures before reassuming the safety position.
It was a good day regardless of the veritable vomitorium show I put on, and we even got some crab and lobster for dinner. It's strange to be out for a full shift and get back in at 2PM, a very opposite schedule to that of the kitchen. Enjoyable to have the day ahead of you. Mine mostly consisted of showering and brushing my mouth into submission, but hey, opportunities abound.
We cooked a little bisque out of all our shells for the crew of the eel plant, and then we were back on the road to Nova Scotia, the beginning of the end. For the record, sunrise over the confederation bridge is a sight not to be missed. I secretly think its why the fisherman go out at all. Nova Scotia comes next.
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