Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Pot Cod Ends & Opilio Deliveries Begin

I'm sure a lot of you have seen fishing for pot cod on television - they use crab pots, the fish are in great shape when they come over the rail, they bleed them and keep them cold, it is just a premier fish in all respects, Goldfish and I buy a few boxes every year and try to always have some in the freezer. Lots of crab boats fish for cod in between king crab season and opilio crab season.
Last week there was some severe icing on the fishing grounds and the boats were coming in completely coated. The day I took these photos the temps were in the high 30's and the ice was falling off the boats at the dock, saving a lot of back breaking labor. This is the bow of F/V Sea Storm.

Who can resist taking pictures of eagles? (no matter how many they already have on their hard drive?)

Opilio crab, marketed as "snow crab". This is the tail end of a large 240,000 pound delivery by Aleutian #1.

There has been some crazy weather this week - on Monday, I woke up to a ground blizzard as bad as it gets, with 3 foot drifts in the driveway and 50 knot winds. Six hours later, the winds were calm, the sun was out and everything was melting. Crazy island weather . . . . gotta love it!

4 comments:

Lauri said...

I NEVER get tired of eagles. In fact, they are one of the things I miss so much about Dutch Harbor! Besides the great people and the beautiful scenery, of course.

Thanks for the photos!

Lori said...

Enjoyed your post today (which was really yesterday's post). I always love hearing about the details of your ever changing, challenging weather.

Mystic said...

Love the pictures in today's post! Thank you for the slice of DH that you gave us today.
Cheers!
Mystic

Bloviating Zeppelin said...

Yeah, I've heard on Deadliest Catch that the guys sometimes go for cod when they can. And that's a GREAT shot of that mouth-watering stack of opies!

BZ