After a jouncing trip over the pindan, we arrived at Ngamakoon where a small family from New Zealand was waiting. Annette, Eddie, the four Kiwis, Eddie's nephew Waylan and I hopped into an SUV and tooled off in the direction of the mud flat where we hoped to find a crab or two. The sucking mud felt good on my bare feet, but the mangrove roots didn't! There were schools of mud-skippers on the flate and small fish circled our ankles in the brackish pools. Crabs were more elusive.
Soon enough though, we came to a sharply cut bank on the edge of a mangrove stand. There were large holes in the mud where, according to Eddie, the mud crabs come to mate. Soon enough, Eddie started pushing a long steel rod into the holes. The rod had been bent into a hook on both ends. The idea is to stick the rod in, get a crab to clamp a claw onto it, then pull the crab out by its claw. Sometimes the crabs drop their claws in an effort to escape (claws are their heaviest bodyparts and slow the creatures down ). This is when the hooked ends of the rod come in handy. If the crab "lets go" by losing its claw, you just slide the rod back in the hole and use it like a grappling hook to pull them out by the body or leg or whatever you can get ahold of.
Luckily, the one that Eddie coaxed into clamping down on the rod didn't let go. He held on tight as Eddie dragged him from the muddy bank. What an ugly critter!
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| From Oz Fieldtrip 2008 |
Eddie immobilized the claws by wedging them closed with a few sections of the crab's lower legs.
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| From Oz Fieldtrip 2008 |
After the crab was safely immobilized and in a bucket, we drove down to the estuarine inlet as the tide started to rise. Eddie put on the first demonstration of spear fishing that I witnessed during my trip. Even though he didn't manage to hit anything, I was mightily impressed by the whole endeavour. More on that later...
1 comment:
Ted, interesting read your blog, hands off country
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