Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Goin' Trawlin'

The Journey Man

I'm getting pretty pushy in my old age! Not only had Jack been kind enough to feed me whitebait, but I also convinced him to let me tag along with him when he went fishing on the Tasman Sea.


He kept warning me about getting seasick, but I can honestly say that I've never been seasick, and I've been on plenty of boats, yachts and ships over the years. The closest I got was a bit of queasiness on a cruise ship in 1997. But I overcame it.


Anyway...the type of fishing he does is called trawling. Trawling is basically putting out a large net several meters long and with the help of chains, having the net drag along the bottom of the ocean, pulling in bottom-feeding fish. After a few hours, the net is pulled in and you have a plethora of fish to sort through.


I'm not going to write you a novel, I'll let the videos and pictures do the talking. Enjoy the fishing!

A gorgeous sunny day

Below: A Tour of the The Journey Man

Below: A life-saver!

Below: Throwing out the line





Birds zoning in on the catch



Below: The first catch



When the guys pulled in the net, they found that they had caught some crayfish too! What luck! We only kept a few and threw the rest back in the ocean. The guys believed they were on the march because it's not crayfish season and yet there were a lot of them and they were all adults.

Below: Post-embarrassment video!

Below: The variety of flatfish



Red Cod in the foreground and gurnard in the background


A combination of different flatfish including brill, sole and turbot

Below: The Chiller


Evening pinks on the mountains

Floral Sunset on the Tasman Sea


Below: Electric Skate on the second run

Below: Who knew there was such a thing as sea lice?

We got back to Westport at 10:00p.m., having gone out at 11:00a.m. On the way back, Jack filleted a gurnard for me to cook up and also gave me one of the crayfish he picked up.

I was starving by the time I got back to the backpackers. Can you imagine how hungry? I had only had a piece of bread with butter in the morning and three cups of tea, two of which I had on the boat and subsequently threw up. So, now I can honestly say that I have been seasick and it wasn't so fun! Thankfully I only threw up tea, but I didn't want to push my luck and ingest anything while on the boat.

So I didn't eat anything until about 11p.m. that night and I had stir-fried vegetables with fresh gurnard and crayfish! Delicious! What a nice way to end the day! Thank you to Jack who was patient and kind enough to show me the world of commercial fishing. It was really cool!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

OK this entry has got to be one of THE COOLEST so far...What an awsome job. bUt I'm sure it was hard work, and a little stinky with all those fish guts. Minus the sea lice I'm game for commercial fishing...do they need a female personal assistant on the boat..LOL...
Hey, by the way, you looked great even after throwing up...
a.

WARRIOR

L said...

Thanks for your kind, kind lies. The smell was what got me over the edge. I had been able to hold on to my stomach contents until they dumped the fish onto the boat and we sorted through them. With the overpowering smell of seafood (nothing really awful, just normal seafoody smells) my tummy told me, "okay! it's time!"