a few photos from out fishing

[monoxide]

Hey guys,
i took my camera to work with me this time in the hopes of getting enough time to take some photos and show everyone what i do but we were really busy so i only had a chance to take a few photos from the last night we worked aswell as a few on the way back home.
see if you can guess what i fish for from the pictures, shouldn't be too hard

i had to compress them a lot to get them under 200k so the quality isn't that great.

[Ian Robinson]

Those are great looking prawns....

[ving (David)]

judging by the first pic i'd say you are a little leatherjacket trawler!

interesting pics for sure, thanks for sharing them

[Starkler (Geoff)]

Yum Yum!

I guess its like working in the proverbial chocolate factory when first starting out with the temptation is to gorge on the product until you cant stomach the thought of eating another prawn

[fringe_dweller]

wild job M! great pics, didnt know we had prawns that big here, guess they dont get sold here locally lol we dont get much of the good local stuff i would guess. not for aussies?
is that wind farm the one down the bottom of YP? I was down there last w/e, didnt do any fishing tho, sure brought back old memories of doing that down there

[RB (Andrew)]

Great pics Mono, thanks for sharing.
Interesting indeed, have you been in that job long?

[monoxide]

Thanks guys,

i've been working as a prawn fisherman (King Prawn) for just over 7 years and i've worked in both Spencer Gulf and St Vincent Gulf where i'm working now.

a little bit of info:
the Spencer Gulf prawn fishery is one of the most productive in the world and has 39 boats in the fleet, the St Vincent Gulf prawn fishery is a little more casual with only 10 boats but still pumps out a fair tonnage prawns each year.
because the St Vincent gulf cant produce the amount of prawns that the Spencer can we target the bigger prawns, its nothing to see a prawn that weighs ~120 grams

you can buy our prawns locally throughout the year although a lot of our product is exported to Europe/Asia, we have to do this to keep the fisheries going as the market is flooded with imported Vannamei prawns that are absolutely terrible (i wouldn't use them as bait) compared to the locally caught ones and i'm not just saying that because i catch them.
we also have to comply with VERY strict rules/regulations just to be able to get our product to the shelves and you can guaruntee that the imported prawns do not meet anywhere near the standard that the king prawns from either of our 2 gulfs do.

Kearn: thats the wind farm at Troubridge Island.
Geoff: yep, you can get sick of them but theres so much you can do with a raw prawn

by the way, im not trying to make everyone run out and buy our product just trying to get some information out there, not a lot of people know what goes on in these industries or even what they are getting when they go to buy some seafood from their local market

the best thing about this job is that i only work ~60 days a year and its this time of year that i've finished for the season, so no more fishing till christmas

[fringe_dweller]

Originally Posted by monoxide

Kearn: thats the wind farm at Troubridge Island.

yep thats the one we saw on the way to Innes nat park last w/e as we passed edithburgh, sure is a large wind farm I know its been there for years, but been a long time since went to bottom of yorke peninsula

thanks for the mouthwatering info .. only work 60 days a year! where does one sign up for duty cap'n leaves lenty of time for astroing! ive learnt more about our local world/oz on this forum than anywhere else just about

[monoxide]

lol, the only problem is it really clashes with astronomy when you are working as the prawns are VERY nocturnal and will hide back in the mud when there is any moon in the sky hence we fish the dark of the moon.

you'd find it pretty hard to get a job doing this as the people doing it have either been doing it for a long long time or they work on family boats, the boats always looking for crew are the ones you don't want to get on, plus its very very hard work with long hours. if you are really busy you might only get a couple hours sleep a day over the course of the entire run.

[fringe_dweller]

Originally Posted by monoxide

lol, the only problem is it really clashes with astronomy when you are working as the prawns are VERY nocturnal and will hide back in the mud when there is any moon in the sky hence we fish the dark of the moon.

ahh i think remember the bloodworms were similar from fishing days, that was when the fish came in for a feed i think? cool tho

Originally Posted by monoxide

you'd find it pretty hard to get a job doing this as the people doing it have either been doing it for a long long time or they work on family boats, the boats always looking for crew are the ones you don't want to get on, plus its very very hard work with long hours. if you are really busy you might only get a couple hours sleep a day over the course of the entire run.

what about the other 305 days of the year! oh well cancel my application that sounds like real hard yakka i knew you guys wouldnt be mucking around out there TJ was only joking

[Ian Robinson]

Originally Posted by fringe_dweller

ahh i think remember the bloodworms were similar from fishing days, that was when the fish came in for a feed i think? cool tho



what about the other 305 days of the year! oh well cancel my application that sounds like real hard yakka i knew you guys wouldnt be mucking around out there TJ was only joking

I get terribly sea sick so not the job for me.

Money isn't too flash either from my trawler fishermen pals tell me.

[monoxide]

im not sure what your friends are fishing for but theres nothing wrong with the money prawn fishing plus i wouldn't take 6 months off if i couldn't afford to (prawn fishing is my sole job)

not that i'm trying to blow my bags but with the qualifications i have i could work on any boat/ship anywhere in the world but i'm still catching prawns so i guess that says something

[Ian Robinson]

Prawn trawler skippers and deckies (from Newcastle) , I've been out with them a few times as a guest (and to do some deep sea fishing for snapper with them) , they caught a stack of prawns and fish when I was on board, but I did a lot burleying and was very glad to get back onto terra firma ... took ages for the rocking sensation to stop.

The quantity of bycatch that they caught and wasted (as a lot of the bycatch was killed in the trawling and sorting process) was a shock to me first time I saw at first hand what happens in a prawn trawl.

[monoxide]

i don't know what the rules are up there but its illegal for us to even have any fishing tackle on board let alone keep any scale fish on board even if it is just a single fillet of fish you got from the shop. (massive fines + potential loss of licence) our fisheries are VERY strictly moderated.
we occasionally have the fisheries board us while we are trawling to make sure of this.

bycatch is a problem in any fishing industry but with prawn fishing it really depends where you are and how you set your gear, in the photos i posted you can see that we were catching almost pure prawns with the odd leatherjacket etc also you can see our hopper setup which is designed to keep most of the bycatch alive and it works extremely well especially when compared to just dumping everything onto an old style sorting table.
every person i have taken out has been amazed at how low the bycatch rate is, i think the expectation is to see us out there tearing up the bottom, im not trying to make it sound good for those that might be concerned but in this case i guess a picture says a thousand words.

also in our fishery we do surveys before we fish every run to see where the prawns are/their size/see if they are spawning/the catch rate per minute/the bycatch ratio/the species of bycatch
you can get more information here:
http://www.sardi.sa.gov.au/dhtml/ss/...D=268&tempID=1