This is actually an excerpt from an email sent out by Steve from Lady Carolina. He writes much more than Tim, so he’s given me permission to include things like this when he describes things he and Tim do together.
On a completely different note: Catching Lobsters. To tell you the truth, I am not much of a lobster coinsure, I can take them or leave them however Kyle and Carolina LOVE them. This means that we go lobster fishing every now and again.
There are several methods of catching lobsters. One, you dive during the day and look for their antenna sticking out of rocks, you then dive down and spear them in the face with a pole spear, drag them out and put them in a dingy. There are a few problems with this method. Firstly, they really do not want to be found and tend to hide really well during the day. Tim and I have dove on reefs for hours and never saw any signs that there were lobsters there. At night on a full moon, just before the moon rises however, they do come out a bit more and are easier to spot.
Secondly, when you stab a lobster in the face it’s pretty much game over for them and it is difficult to tell the sex before you stab them. Also, during the stabbing process the lobsters have a bit of a freak out (understandable) make a lot of noise and flop around violently. Freaking out, making noise and flopping around are the top three items on any shark’s ToDo list. In other words, spearing lobsters attracts sharks.
So, what Tim and I do is dive a night with flashlights. Search around for them clinging to walls or moving from den to den (they are surprisingly hard to see and are camouflaged very well) then you sort of gently swim up and try not to disturb the water around their antenna. If you do, they are gone. Right now. Amazingly super-fast. If you touch their antenna? Gone. It is quite a sight to see how fast they go from zero to out of grasp to out of your view.
We dive, locate and grab them. (The big ones take two hands to grab, and you seriously have to use your feet to pull them off the rock after you grab them.) After we have them secure in our hands, we straighten the tail to see if it is a male or female. Females we let go, males, well, sometimes it’s hard to be male. Bring them to the surface and put them in the dingy. Typically, 2 divers down and one person in the dingy floating along close to the rocks.
Oh, yes. And wear gloves, thick gloves. Those prehistoric spiney spear defenses they have are certainly painful……even with gloves if you grab them the wrong way!!!
Gresham Family Exodus 