Antarctic: Preparing the King-Crab Pots

Yesterday was a very busy and productive day. With the help of the newest member of our team, Ally Brown, we grabbed some twine from the warehouse and spent the better part of our morning checking all of our crab traps for tears and holes. It was very important that we made sure our king crabs wouldn’t be able to escape our traps! Once we were satisfied that all the crab pots were ready to go, we stacked them all in a large metal container that was hauled over to the Palmer. The next step in our crab-pot preparation was to chop up all the bait and fill the mesh bait bags. It was a pretty messy job but thankfully the fish were frozen so it didn’t smell too bad. After our traps were all set and ready to go, we were delighted to hear that the rope we needed to connect all the crab pots had arrived. We had a little bit of time to look at the ropes before we had to leave to meet up with the latest arrivals of our team. All day today will be spent working with the ropes, but more to come on that bit later!

-Steph, Katie, and Dan

Ally Brown and Katie checking the crab pots

The crab pots stacked up and waiting to be taken to the ship

Bait bags filled with delicious scraps of squid and fish