Gulf Life

I finished last month doing something that I love: being at sea playing with fish! I was on the Oscar Dyson for work with the Gulf of Alaska Project (my little part of that big project is looking at the bioenergetics of baby fish like walleye pollock and Pacific cod).

I love research!!!

Don't worry, while I was there I also looked for my little crustacean friends! First, along for the trip with me was a fellow crab lover:

Dr. Jodi Pirtle researched red king crab for her PhD!

Jodi was doing really awesome work with mapping the seafloor. Another researcher shared this special little find with me:

MEEEP!

I'm not sure what kind of crab it is. We were trawling off of Kodiak, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was a little king crab, but I honestly don't know. Any guesses?

I didn't mind touching that little angel, but this next thing took some mental pep talks to actually handle:

yes, I touched that

(the board is in centimeters, so this gal was 43 mm long!)

(see this post for why I don't like isopods)

ugh, I hate to admit it, but she's actually kind of cute

Off the boat, I enjoyed Kodiak's crabbing culture. This was a beautiful view to start my day and a beautiful view to end this post. Enjoy!

crab pot sunrise

Dungeness crabs rock!

I couldn't come up with a good title for this post because I'm just too full of Dungie crab goodness to think. But I have some pictures of a recent outing with some friends and I thought I'd share some tidbits of information with you about the Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister) fishery.

SOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOD!

The personal use fishery is open all year round in Southeast Alaska, which means you can catch Dungies in the winter, spring, summer, or fall! All you have to do is call go out crabbing. (Sorry, I got stuck in a James Taylor song.)

enjoying a sunny summer Juneau day

The 2010 commercial fishery landed 3.569 million pounds of Dungeness crab in Southeast AK, with an exvessel price (in Juneau) of $1.75 per pound (it was $1.71 in Petersburg and Wrangell).

the mighty claw: both strong and tasty

Southeast Alaskans aren't the only predators getting in on this crab action: otters, sea lions, and even the occasional sculpin will feast on the crabs:

Sean holding a crab claw piece taken from the stomach of a sculpin we caught

(totally NOT from one of the crabs we'd just eaten...) 

I hope you learned a little (laughed a little?) and, if you're in Southeast with a crab permit, will enjoy these guys from the proper areas and at the proper size (6.5 inch carapace width). Thanks! And thanks again, guys, for all the Dungeness crabs!

crab pots and mountains: perfect Southeast view!

How We Survived a Sea Lion Attack

World Oceans Day is tomorrow!

What will you do to celebrate?

I've been enjoying the ocean's bounty, fishing and spending time with friends on their boat. This was actually yesterday, but we went out with the hopes of catching some salmon. My friends had set some crab pots as well, so we checked on those first:

Smoker family crab pot: Crab On!

a couple legal Dungies (Cancer... oh, excuse me, I mean Metacarcinus magister) = crab cakes!!

Then things took a turn. The engine stopped working, so we were a bit stranded while we called various dads for advice. In the mean time, we were pretty close to Amalga, so the ladies and I figured we could paddle for shore. I swear we were actually making progress!

Courtney giving it the ol' college try

And then things got ugly!

"Oh, hi sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus). How are you?"

(My husband was all excited since he studies these mammals.)

"Hey, you humans! I hate your paddle! What are you doing putting it in my home!?!?"

(Photo credit to my husband on this one!)

"Sorry, we're just trying to get to Amalg.... AHHHHH!"

"GROWL! SNARF!"

"Oh man, I could see it's face!"

"It wanted to get in the boat!"

"It wanted to bite some man flesh!"

Seriously, this sea lion hated when Courtney would paddle. It charged the boat several times. Luckily, after we stopped paddling (as to appease the sea lion beast), the engine was miraculously fixed (through some tinkering and the haze of gas fumes). And so, our brave group headed back to safety, alive and in one piece (or five, I guess).

the relieved crew

The End

Ghost Fishing

friendly ghost fishing?

Recently Virginia budgeted $3.5 million for a Marine Debris Removal Program in an effort to clean their waters of lost crab pots. These “ghost” pots, so called because they continue to trap and kill animals without their attending fishermen, were targeted as part of a larger ($15 million) project to restore the blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) population. What resulted was a 70-[water]man-effort pulling 24,859 crab pots from Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries over the past 3 years! In addition, 3,336 peeler and eel pots and 152 nets were removed.

Chesapeake Bay: red dots are buoyed crab pots,

peach dots are unbuoyed crab pots;

check out the interactive marine debris site viewer here!

All the pots were located using side-scan sonar tracking. Fishermen who had been shut out of the crab dredge fishery, which had been closed in 2008, were offered the pot retrieval work, making this program not only help the benthic population but also the human population of Virginia.

a pile of pots

In both my work on a lobster boat in Long Island Sound and commercial fishing vessels in the Bering Sea, ghost fishing pots were hard to avoid. Bering Sea fishermen regularly find crab pots, lost due to storms or lines being cut from propellers or ice flows. When a pot was found, it was brought on board, the netting was cut so nothing else could be caught, and then it would be dumped at set locations where other fishermen throughout the Bering know to avoid (pretty neat, actually).

Bering Sea crab pot stuck in our net

Ghost fishing can be a huge problem for both healthy and recovering stocks; VIMS scientists supervising the Chesapeake Bay program estimated that each derelict pot can capture about 50 crabs each year it’s lost! Just within the last year of the Marine Debris Removal Program, 9,970 ghost pots were snagged with more than 11,000 animals trapped inside. Imagine how many animals will be saved, for future stocks and future managed harvests, now that the Chesapeake is without more than 28,000 pots!

dead blue crabs in a derelict pot

"Sea-Fever" tribute to Legoless

Well friends, Legoless has finally succumbed to his injuries, may he rest in peace. Please know that his last moments were eating herring with one of the female crabs.

I know he wasn't really a sailor, but the last stanza of "Sea-Fever" kind of made me think of all my past crabs (I had to memorize this poem when I was living on a schooner).

Sea-Fever

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

~John Masefield

Ask A Grad Student: Joel Webb

Want to hear about other crab lovers' work? Here you go!

Joel works as both a grad student at UAF SFOS in Juneau and as a shellfish biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He's helped me with crab sampling in the Bering Sea and sharing his extensive literature collection, not to mention his amazing memory of past crab research.

Age: "Old"

Degree: M.S in Fisheries (pursuing the next one...)

Current City: Douglas!

1. Describe your project, in 4 sentences or less.

Why aren't snow crabs taking over the world? Because most (~>99%) of them die before they can reproduce. However there may be times when the location, abundance, and number of eggs carried by mature females is related to the number of mature crab years later. By characterizing the number of eggs carried by mature females of differing size/age for several years we will estimate the number of eggs produced by the population and look for possible relationships between egg production and the abundance of small crab several years later.

Joel's trawl survey ladies ready to be measured

2. You work at sea a lot. What’s your favorite part of shipboard life? Your least favorite?

My favorite survey experience is seeing the patterns of crab size/age across the distribution; least favorite aspect of shipboard life is looking at the scale after three weeks of fried food.

Joel hard at work!

3. If you weren’t going to study crabs, what animal would it be?

The Tapertail Ribbonfish

4. After you get your PhD will you pursue a job in academia or stay with Fish and Game?

ADF&G all the way! :)

5. What is your favorite piece of crab paraphernalia?

A small tapestry acquired in Guatemala showing what could be a crab!

 

Thanks Joel!

Tips From a Crab-Samplin' Seafarer

• Pack sweats. You can wear sweatpants all day, every day, and no one will judge you!
• Seasick? Dramamine is good if you want to sleep through a tsunami (true story). Bonine (aka Meclizine) is where it's at: it's the less-drowsy form of Dramamine. I take one the day before I head out to sea to let my body adjust to it, then I take one my first and second day at sea. I also rely on ginger tablets or green ginger tea (yum!). **It's different for everyone though, so while this may work for me, something else might work for you**

ginger!

• Work on deck. For one thing, if you tend towards seasickness, fresh air is the best medicine (and puking on deck is way better than puking in the head). It's also a great way to burn calories: just staying balanced while standing can blaze through the cals! This is especially helpful if your cook specializes in tater tot casserole or there's an abundance of Cheetos (which, trust me friends, there always is) and you have a wedding dress to fit into a couple of weeks after you get back to land.
• If you work with a head-set and you keep feeling like your hair is being constantly pulled by it, you're probably just being electrocuted over and over again... on your head... because it's wet everywhere, all the time. Genius.

OUCH!

• What's left under your mattress by the person before you is fair game. Adam (my husband) once found a stack of "gentlemen's" magazines that was so high his mattress was noticeably uneven. I found something even better: 2 TOBLERONE BARS!!!! This prompted a Sundae Sunday party!

• If you get a chance to walk on land, DO IT! I was once on a boat that only offloaded to trampers (and thus stayed on the boat for 27 straight days!), so I was never able to actually visit St. Paul until I worked on the NMFS trawl survey. It was beautiful and so worth just taking the time to meander!

touring St. Paul

northern fur seal

sneaky fox