Going Local – crabbin’ style

There’s one good thing about living so darn close to the water’s edge.  You can play in it!  The other day we went down to the pier and discovered a bunch of locals were catching a crazy amount of crabs – so, we Sydneyfolk thought we should also try our hand at it.

and boy did we clean up!

We pretty much had dinner and a bit – legally we could each have 40 crabs, but we thought 20 was greedy enough!

We also caught a poisonous fish (only natural in Australia) – it’s a Saltwater catfish – that looks more like a dog in the face.  It came up in our net – I was 100% to throw that sucker back into the water.. but naturally, my Aussie partner wanted to eat him.  Ah… I love Australia!  They’re not like soft whiny Americans or the English – they’re proper men who will risk their lives to consume the natives!  (I love him!)

But in saying that, I made sure to have proper documentation of the thing incase we were taking him to hospital sometime.

Okay – this is AFTER he cut off the head of the thing.

The barbs are on the top and the sides of the fish.  So, I was holding my breath as he chopped it up.  He was already a little bit dead – well, okay, a lot dead… less chance of him locking the barbs up in ‘poised ready to strike’ position… but while looking at good ‘ol wikipeia… i found this little gem.

This protein (venom) is so strong it may hospitalize humans, those unfortunate enough to receive a sting; in Plotosus lineatus, the stings may result in death.^[4]

Awesome – i’m properly in Australia now!  I’ll stick with the crab… And I did.

Here they are cleaned and ready for cooking… (oh and if you ever wanted to know – which you probably don’t… the way to clean the crab is to grab it’s genitals, and then rip all around to the top, pull that off and clean out the guts – ummmm appetising)

After eight minutes of boiling – just in salt water – I’ve got new ideas for my next catch – importing Old Bay Seasoning from the US and giving the boys a little taste of America…

We also caught a super cool crab – we were so far out on the pier that this little guy seemed to be on a suicide  mission for the dinner plate.

The Google gods tell me that this is a Red Rock crab – but what I can tell you is this is the tastiest crab I’ve ever eaten in my life.  His little claws were sweeter than butter and melted in my mouth…

We also met a few locals down at the pier.

Here’s the culprit who scares all the fish away – almost like the ‘fun police’ on new years eve!  (reminds me when I was in UNI at a house party – and the cops would show up – we’d duck and dive, hike fences to avoid the cops – then a few of us dedicated folk would return to finish off the keg)

And… meet the laziest pelican in the world.

Local fishermen would throw him a fish.. .he’d reach down.. but if it wasn’t close enough, it didn’t matter…