This weekend was a mix of experiences. A company picnic, and an introduction to marine wildlife, and way of life, in person. It’s decidedly different than the marine life and way of life experience through plexiglass.
The company picnic was very much like the last one I experienced the last time I had a full time job. Except it was chilly so no water balloon toss. Good food. Good company. Fun times.
It was held at a place called Balcarra park, somewhere in the Port Moody area. Nice park by an inlet, mostly full of recreational boat traffic and some really nice houses.
Ever curious, and enamoured with water and mountains, I went with a couple workmates down to the shoreline and then out to the pier and dock where a couple and a family were crabbing.
Surprise, surprise, the tide was low. Unlike Kits, here there were rocks covered in mussels. Huge, black, oval shaped objects that actually move! That spooked me. My coworkers got a kick out of that. And apparently that was just the warmup.
Low tide exposes rocks. Pebbles. Rocks. Boulders. I watched as one of my workmates starting pulling on a large rock, trying to turn it over. I went to help just as it flipped and lots of tiny objects scattered around in a tizzy, searching for cover.
Crabs. Baby crabs. Tiny crabs.
I was unprepared for that as well, but bent down for a closer look. Seeing tiny crabs up close is different than seeing through in the pages of a boom or through plexiglass. They picked a couple up for me to inspect. How interesting.
I learned this is a thing to do growing up along the coast. Looking for crab. Picking mussels. Generally inspecting and discovering wildlife. How cool to have physical contact. So we went out to the pier and down to the dock.
While on the pier, I saw a seal! I’ve never seen one so close, in the wild before. They certainly don’t behave the same as they do when in a tank, being viewed by millions of kids, teenagers and adults. They put on a show, swim around and you can almost always see them.
Not so in the wild. They don’t want to look at you or be bothered, they vanish beneath the surface. They come up, swim leisurely along, this one in particular as there were people on the dock crabbing. And, according to one couple, seals really like chicken, which is what they use for bait because the crabs also like chicken. A seal bit through one crab trap and ate the raw chicken.
Note to self: avoid the mouth of seals in the wild.
There are signs on the dock that explain what you can and cannot catch, and they also explain the minimum size a crab must be to take it home. The couple pulled up a trap with a crab in it. Turned out to be too small, but it was not interested in being disentangled from the trap. It wanted the bait!
Needless to say, it was an educational and entertaining outing.