Sheep Crab Wranglers

[MaxBottomtime]

Margaret Webb and Jim Lyle dived the Topaz Pilings this morning and reported that a sheep crab had become entangled in the line. We were planning to make a night dive there tonight, but decided to go over this afternoon and look for the crab. Fortunately it wasn't had to find. It was on the first piling we saw, so we cut it free and re-tied the line.
Visibility was down about five feet from Monday, so I didn't get many photos. There was a reported"hundreds of squid" there on Wednesday night, but we only found a couple small pockets of eggs and no squid. Maybe we'll get lucky on the next full moon and have a real squid run this year.

Channeled Topsnail, Calliostoma canaliculatum

The eggs are cooling

Sarcastic fringehead

 

[Peter_C]

Phil, what do you mean retied the line? Are we talking fishing line?

One day at Fort Ross I was admiring a decorator crab when I realized it couldn't move as it was completely caught up in fishing line. I cut it loose with my shears until it fell to the sand, then pinned it to bottom, and finished cutting it free. Fishing line is nasty, and hard to bring back, so often I just cut it into as many pieces as possible.

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Cave line.

I tied four of the five pilings together so everyone could find them all. There is a fifth one about twenty feet west of the NW one, but it's broken into two pieces and only a foot tall.