Dump Day

No, this isn't your reminder to put your trash cans out for pickup. I'm talking about crab! One of my favorite things to talk about and...eat!

Did you know a crab pot weighs about 125 pounds?! I'm sure my husband has told me that many times and I just didn't retain it. Until a friend was in town and we went to go check out all the crab pots at our gearshed. She asked him how much each pot weighs and he told her. Then she wanted to see if she could pick one up, like the crew does. As my husband was getting a pot down from the top of the stack for her so she could try to pick it up he stepped on her foot and I happened to capture the moment with one of my favorite pictures ever! Her facial expression, the crab pot, his foot stepping on hers - such a great pic! It always makes me laugh when I see it and now I remember how much a crab pot weighs. Oh and she did pick up the pot!

Dump Day is the day that the commercial crab pots go in the water. It is a 73 hour pre-soak period before the Dungeness crab fishery actually opens. This allows more of a level playing field between the small boats and big boats so that everyone can get their gear in the water safely and the big boats don't have an advantage. Sounds simple, right? It's not; there is a lot that goes into preparing for both Dump Day and the season opening.

The first step to preparing for this fishery is "gear work". This consists of rigging the crab pots which takes 2-3 weeks. Then they have to get the boat ready which could mean a variety of different things depending on what the boat was fishing prior to crab. We start this work based on the original scheduled dump day of November 28th but often times the season gets delayed. Like this year. We're delayed and our season opens February 1st at 9:00am! That means this week it was time to get things moving and be ready to leave the dock with a boat load of crab pots! First things first, pots and bait get loaded onto the boat. Crab pots are loaded on trailers and taken from our gearshed to the dock. It's a long day of hard work! Hopefully we get a lunch break at one of my favorite local restaurants! The next day they get the second load of crab pots staged. There's a lot of crab pots and not all the pots fit on the boat at once. Then it's time to get bait ready and make final preparations to leave the dock safely with the first load of crab pots. That means it's getting so close to my family and friends eating fresh, local crab with me! Yum! If the weather isn't too awful for the crew it should only take about 10 hours to get that first load of 680 pots into the water! Let's hope these crab are hungry! Then they head back to town, load the remaining pots on the boat and get those in the water. Now all the pots are soaking and ready for crab!

So what happens at 9:00am on February 1st when the season opens? They start hauling the pots and catching the crab! It's about 36 hours to get through all 900 pots that are in the water. Wow, they must be so tired! After that, they start over and go through the pots again. And again. And again. At some point during the delirium of repeating this process they come to town, unload the crab and get more bait. Then guess what? The 36 hour cycle starts over. And that, my friends, is what Dungeness crab fishing looks like for my husband and crew. It's a lot of hard work and I feel lucky to reap the benefits.

I "interviewed" my husband for this post and it was a lot of fun to work on this together! He laughed at some of my questions, I got behind on typing when he was talking too fast and sometimes I missed what he was saying completely when I was adding in my funny tidbits. Fun times!

Check out some of these awesome pictures of crab pots and crab boats. Well, boat, one crab boat. And my favorite picture that reminds me how much a crab pot weighs!