crab terror

I was so thankful to have the morning off (although I couldn’t sleep in much). I spent it lounging, recouping, and enjoying some beach time. Work began again at midday. We sorted all the fish from our late night catch. Best finds were flounder and a huge American eel! He was a pain to measure due to his slimy composure. And we found a few different species of blennies. After sorting it was back into the field to work on our next site: Oakleaf Drive 220 and 186. Same process as yesterday. We set the fyke net poles and then seined the areas (photo: setting the fyke at low tide - the area will later be filled with water). Today’s work was at a natural site and a site that will soon have a sill put into place. It’s really amazing how much erosion has occurred in these areas due to wave action (coming from speeding boaters). The seining was somewhat successful. Well successful in terms of blue crabs. They are EVERYWHERE. And a HUGE pain! I caught the biggest one yet today. Without gloves my hands would have been done for. And in the short amount of time they were stuck in the nets, the crabs managed to terrorize the fish. I picked up one crab that had a

fish in each claw already. Terrible! So in order to save the fish we had to separate the troublemakers. Even in separate tanks, the crabs started to nibble on each other. Out of control. (*the photo is of me carrying 4 crabs to their confinement container.) We headed back to the lab and sorted/ID’d all the seined species.

Break for dinner.

21:00 high tide fyke nets set. And time to get eaten alive my mosquitoes.

Bedtime for a bit

3:30am low tide – fyke nets retrieved. MORE CRABS!!!! And a MASSIVE stone crab (pics later). Not too many fish though. The other team had to deal with a another eel. We also had have eaten squid….guess who was responsible.