Mandurah. And crabs.
Intrigued? This one could also go in the "Old Pharte Memoires" really. They're memories I have, I'm old. (And yeah - of course I do.) Do I mention Belle of the Belltower Times often enough? The BT reminds me of the Western Australia in the 80s and 90s, with a healthy tang of RIGHT NOW.
I went "prawn dabbing" under the old traffic bridge in Mandurah. When prawns were running, a hundred people with long tube nets on long poles would go there every night, crowding the landings underneath, watching for the luminous eyes drifting on the outgoing tide and guiding them into the long sock, and on a good day you could dab up several kilos of them.
By 2AM - 3AM everyone would drift home, and usually put a pot of salted water on to boil, and enjoy a handful of the catch fresh, with bread and butter.
But that's not Belle's story in this case. No, this is the Crabbing Hero, the one that putt-puttered around on their dinghy pulling up crab pots and filling their esky with blue manna crabs.
 |
| It's a very funny Blue Manna crab. Cos it's a very funny story. |
Now Mandurah's Inlet had a fertile crab breeding ground before the authorities changed the whole flow of the place so new developments wouldn't have to be assailed by "seaweed stench." But my story took place not long before that happened.
People were dropping crab pots off the walkway, then lifting them, throwing back the soft-shell young and egg-festooned females, measuring the remaining crabs, and putting the legal-sized ones in their esky, mindful to only get their legal limit.
All except this one family. Crab pots would come up, be tipped straight into their bucket without checking, and be rebaited and dropped. We watched as they caught 20, 30, then up to 50 little softshells that should have been going back to breed up and be the legal size in a year or two, and finally someone had obviously had enough. I'll call him Ahab.
Ahab was a regular fisher and we all knew him. More importantly, he knew all the "Fishies," the Fisheries inspectors that patrolled the bridges, beaches, jetties, and boat ramps, and most of us knew that they often went plainclothes during peak times like this. When Ahab spotted a pair of them he walked over to the family, said hello, and then looked into their esky and raised his voice a bit.
"Geez that's a lot of crabs!" he said. "WHAT'RE YA GONNA USE 'EM FOR, SHIRT BUTTONS?"
Two Fishies in mufti snapped their heads around like they were on springs, and we all happily watched fifty or more softshells and undersized crabs getting tipped back into the estuary along with every other crab these bastards had caught, followed by a very serious-looking ticket being written as the family was escorted off the walkway and their fishing gear confiscated.
Sometimes Hmmm... just becomes Mm-Hhmm!
We need more Ahabs, especially these days with seemingly every person or corporation out to profit from not respecting the ecosystems, the land, and other people. If this has struck a chord in you, if this makes you angry, then I can only say this: Stay angry! Get activated! Let others know, write to government figures, write to newspapers, to CEOs and managers at companies. Start petitions, sign petitions. Share this article and my others like it, go to my News Stand to see all my other posts and share links to the News Stand and any articles you found interesting, and if you can, donate here or here. Or subscribe to my once-a-week newsletter and stay in the loop. Just don't sit there and do nothing, be an Ahab!
No comments:
Post a Comment