Today we got to go Prawn fishing. Ashley, a UVic Environmental Studies graduate
student, works with a local fisherman (named Guy) to collect Prawns for her
research every week. She couldn’t make
it out this week, and arranged for us to fill in for her. Katrina, Kris (another UVic grad student) and
I met Guy at his vessel, the Michelle Rose, in Sidney and spent an hour pulling
up prawn traps near DFO’s Institute of Ocean Sciences. Ashley’s research required juvenile Prawns and
Guy said that he put the traps in the water just a couple hours earlier because
the juveniles enter the traps first; if you leave the traps in too long, the
adults drive the juveniles out. It was
really pleasant on the calm water, and Guy was full of interesting stories
about the BC Coast. This trip was for
science, not the dinner plate, but it was still fun to learn more about an
excellent wild food. I was also
impressed by Guy’s cooperation with conservation scientists like Ashley. He was not only volunteering his time for the
project, but he spoke about the different fisheries that he participates in with
the long term invested interest that you would expect from someone whose livelihood
is dependent on natural heritage, but for some mysterious reason has failed to
manifest itself during some unfortunate periods of our industrial relationship with
the earth.
When we got back I decided it was time to start processing
the apples that we picked with Ryan yesterday.
I quartered, boiled, and sauced about 1/3 of our apples. We have about a gallon of sauce in the slow
cooker to make some more apple butter and another gallon that still needs to be
strained.
Kris invited us over to sushi which featured his smoked Coho
Salmon and fried salmon skin. Then I
dropped by Shin and Andra’s house for Evergreen Huckleberry (
Vaccinium ovatum) pie. It is wonderful having friends that love wild
foods!
Today we got to go Prawn fishing. Ashley, a UVic Environmental Studies graduate
student, works with a local fisherman (named Guy) to collect Prawns for her
research every week. She couldn’t make
it out this week, and arranged for us to fill in for her. Katrina, Kris (another UVic grad student) and
I met Guy at his vessel, the Michelle Rose, in Sidney and spent an hour pulling
up prawn traps near DFO’s Institute of Ocean Sciences. Ashley’s research required juvenile Prawns and
Guy said that he put the traps in the water just a couple hours earlier because
the juveniles enter the traps first; if you leave the traps in too long, the
adults drive the juveniles out. It was
really pleasant on the calm water, and Guy was full of interesting stories
about the BC Coast. This trip was for
science, not the dinner plate, but it was still fun to learn more about an
excellent wild food. I was also
impressed by Guy’s cooperation with conservation scientists like Ashley. He was not only volunteering his time for the
project, but he spoke about the different fisheries that he participates in with
the long term invested interest that you would expect from someone whose livelihood
is dependent on natural heritage, but for some mysterious reason has failed to
manifest itself during some unfortunate periods of our industrial relationship with
the earth.