What I did on my summer vacation Part 1

Or, why did I disappear for two months.

Thats right, after much friendly harrasment encouragement I am back. Summer was a crazy hectic time, I worked a lot, still managed to have a whole whack of fun, and learned some new things. I knit numerous first socks. Some even became pairs. I made significant progress on the fishy oxygen testing, I even got a little vacation in.

But the piece de resistance (Ok Ok, I dont speak french, not at all..I can't even correctly pronounce that let alone spell it)
I Learned to Go Lobster Diving.

Following, is the account of my first ever lobster adventure.

Lobstering is AWESOME. I caught two (well, I caught four, but because this is my first time, I managed to hang on to two). I also got really excited and burned air like I havent in a long time. Saw tons of stone crab too, and lots of cool sleepy fishies, my favorite were the lookdowns. As I got out of the water, chaos was ensuing, today is the first day of mini season, and so we started at 5:30am, just as slack was starting (there was still a little bit of current when we got in, but not too bad), by the time I got out of the water close to 7ish, there were about eight boats clustered around the bridge with dive flags and more students had hit the water too. By tomorrow, all the regulation size lobsters will be gone. :( (it is ok, because more will migrate out of deeper water, and you're not allowed to take females with eggs or small ones, the florida catch is pretty well managedd) (The smaller ones will be wilier too).

How to catch a lobster:
Wear gloves
having a light attached to your mask is REALLY helpful.
So you swim around, we were lucky enough to be doing this in the dark, when lobsters are out, so I just snuck up on them, put my net behind them, and then tapped their anntennae with my "tickle stick" (yes that is the name) to get them to shoot backwards into the net. If you are out in daylight, you use the stick to poke at them till they come out of their hole, then tease them into the net.

Once they are in the net, the...interesting...part begins. Getting an angry, thorny lobster, who really really wants to escape and/or kill you from your net (which is just a fish landing net) in which it is totaly entangled, into your catch bag. This is where that hands free light comes in really really handy. Also the gloves. And contrary to intuition, you put them in tail first, so you have to kind of hang on to the tail really tight so they cant shoot away (and they will be trying, and waiving their anntennae trying to kill you)and untangle them with your other hand and open the bag, and sort of force them in tail first (or if you can time it right, let them shoot into the bag, but there is potential for escape with this method). Close your bag and reapeat until you either have your bag limit (6) or you run low on air (like me).

Take your catch home
Gloat a little

Thems be the lobsters at home in the catch bag

In the sink, precleaning, the dish brush for scale.

And me, thinking "Look what I caught"

Ok, Tomorrow (or sometime this week anyway) the saga continues: Rhode Island, Boston, and a little vacation time.