Port Parham is a well known crabbing location that just happens to have a free caravan and camping site right on the beach - perfect! The only catch (no pun intended) is that it is a first come, first served location - no reservations. It must have been meant to be as we were lucky enough to secure the last open site with a couple more disappointed campers arriving just a minute after we pulled up. Once we got set up it was not long before we were seated in our outdoor chairs enjoying a relaxing beverage to watch the sun going down. It was a bit breezy but at least the wind kept the flies away!
You can launch a boat and drop a few baited crab pots into the water and wait, or, as was the case for us, you can go 'raking for crabs'. Simply wait until just before full low tide and start the long walk (probably 1km or more) with a crab rake in one hand and towing a storage tub tethered around your waist with a couple of metres of rope behind you until you reach the sea grass interspersed with a sandy bottom in knee deep water.
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| Heather with rake, tub and tether rope. All ready to go crabbing! |
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| All 'zinced up' for protection from the reflected sun and making the trek out into the shallows . Note that even in the distance there is no water in site! |
The crabs bury themselves in the sand at the edge of the sea grass so that is where you start raking. If and when your rake makes contact with a buried crab they will respond by lashing out at it with their nippers. They will typically latch onto it which you not only feel but you can also hear - it makes a 'tink, tink, tink' sound as they strike out and nip at the metal. It also helps when the weather is calm as it was while we were out there. With no wind the water does not have too many ripples - amazing what a difference it makes when you can see what you are doing! Anyway, when the crab strikes you flip the head of the rake over while he is still hanging onto it (imagine you are twirling a lacrosse stick). The only thing left to do is turn and shake him off into the tub you have been towing - if the tether rope is still attached then the tub should be floating behind you!
Below is a photo of a crab amongst the sea grass waving his nippers menacingly at the rake (nice underwater photo courtesy of my GoPro camera).
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| Act of defiance from this Blue Swimmer Crab |
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| The beautiful blue colouration of these crabs is how they got their name. |
All that is left to do after the 'lacrosse twirl and shake' into the tub is to check and measure them to ensure they are legal.
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| This legal sized male crab was a keeper. |
The crabs you catch need to be of a certain minimum size and regardless of size, all females with eggs must be returned to the water. We each had a sizing gauge in our tubs to make sure anything undersized was released. The guy in the photo above was a keeper!
Once we got back to camp it was time to put the crabs to sleep by placing them in ice water for a couple of hours. Once dormant, you cook them up in some boiling salt water. Rather than describe the whole process here in the blog, I recommend you watch the short video that Heather made where we do the whole 'how to catch and cook blue swimmer crabs' thing. Click on the link below to watch our weekend unfold! It has some pretty good underwater video of tour weekend - the GoPro is great for this kind of thing. It is a regular documentary if I do say so myself!
It was sunny and calm but not hot, yet even though we suited up, wore hats and smeared on the zinc cream to protect ourselves, we still ended getting pretty burned as a result of the sun reflecting off of the water. Despite this we really enjoyed our quick weekend getaway.
That's all for this installment of WTF? - Where are The Farrows? Be sure to follow the link below to watch the video on YouTube - it really is a good one...would I lie to you?
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