Naturalist who desirevia asini sunt.) So ifaintance when at There among the sea-lakes and ribbon-grass, and under the seaweeds which hang like mangrove-roots from the big rocks, the half-transparent prawns live invisible and unvisited, captured only by night in the wicker-traps of the fisherman, and inaccessible to the
Shrimps love sandy or muddy bottoms, but prawns, like lobsters, are mainly dwellers in the rocks. As the French sportsman said of the French partridge as dis- tinguished from the English partridge, "his foliage" is quite different. The shrimp, on the other hand, has only two long antennm, hooks instead of pincers on his main claws, and is spotted and not striped. When in the water, unboiled, the prawn is elegantly striped, like a tiger, with dark-brown lines follow- ing the joints of his armour, and is altogether a very fine and fierce-looking fellow. The prawn has a long, toothed sabre projecting from his head, staring eyes fixed on the end of stalks, six long -antenna, sometimes twice the length of its body, and a pair of fine double claws like a lobster's. Neither is his knowledge of the natural history of his quarry extensive, for though he knows that prawns shed their shells, and that they do this oftener when young than when adult-the "weakness" from which, he contends, pre- vents small prawns from climbing into the pots, and therefore saves him the trouble of sorting them-he always maintains that the small prawns caught late in the season are "big shrimps." This is a curious mistake, for they are more unlike than the wasp and the bee. This forms the whole art and practice of the prawn-fishery as usually known to the long-shore fisherman. After July these disappear, and the smaller fish are caught. The really fine large prawns, called "spawn prawns" by the men, are caught early in the season. Early next morning he rows out, hauls in his pots, boils his prawns for about a minute in fresh water, and they are ready for market. rows out to the reef and drops his pots among the valleys and hollows which lie between the submarine " kopjes " of the reef.
At low-tide the fisherman steps down to the rocks, and turning over the sea- weed catches hundreds of small "king-crabs." With these he baits the pots, and at 4 p.m. But the work of baiting and setting can be done by any amateur. They are exactly like a lobster-pot, though the opening is smaller, not wider than the breadth of four fingers, and the osiers more closely set. He grows his withes in the sides of the cliffs, just where the springs break out and ooze into the beach, and he makes his prawn-pots himself during odd times on winter evenings.
Prawn tidal pools range professional#
In one item only of his stock-in-trade has the professional fisherman distinctly the better of the amateur. In such good times the prawn-fisherman has what the sailors call "a soft berth," and visitors to the seaside with plenty of time on their hands and a little money to invest, might do worse than imitate his example and compete in the business. One fortunate fisherman made a catch of nine hundred prawns in a single night, leaving a profit of nearly £10 for his trouble. In the present season round the shores of the Isle of Wight they have averaged fifty to the pound, and thirty prawns to the pot have been commonly taken. The average size was from sixty or seventy to the pound weight, and the catches were poor. Last summer the fish were scarce and small.
Like the lobsters, prawns do best in a hot summer, though it is difficult to imagine how "dry weather" affects creatures living in the sea, and as the hot summer of 1893 was one of the best on record for the lobster-fishery, while the cold spring of 1894 was one of the worst, so the number and size of the prawns in 1896 has beaten all recent records. Excess of demand, not scarcity of fish, caused this welcome addition to the fishermen's earnings, for the catch of the season has been among the best known for years. a hundred for their prawns, the Derby-day marking the highest price obtained during the summer.
At the end of May the fishermen received as much as 23s. DURING the past summer the price of prawns has risen higher than that of any shell-fish except the oyster, and if the present prejudice against the "native" continues, the prawn will probably take its place as the most esteemed luxury procured from the sea.
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