When people think of the West Coast, the word ‘crayfish’ springs to mind.
This, in turn, conjures up mental images of happy, bronzed tourists lounging on
the beach sipping wine while someone ‘chucks another prawn on the barbie.’ Am I
right? Every tourist blub mentions the wonderful seafood, especially crayfish,
which abound in our coastal waters.
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| Perfectly braaied |
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| West Coast Gold! (Pics thanks to Google) |
And they do. Abound I mean. But there are rules and regulations that
prevent you from simply wading into the water with your net and scooping a few
to serve with savoury rice, mayonnaise and subtly flavoured garlic butter for
lunch. Before you head out to sea in a correctly licensed boat to catch your
legal quota of 4 crayfish per day, you must first have a permit which last
season cost R92. Also, crayfish can only be caught in season (usually mid November to end of March) and between the hours of 08:00
and 16:00, not before and never after. If you don’t have a correctly licensed
boat, well, you can ring-net or scoop-net from the shore. No diving from a boat
and no oxygen tanks are allowed, but a snorkel is ok! All simple so far and
easy to follow. But, here is the tricky part, read below:
From the 15th of November to the 18th of November 2012, fishing will be
allowed every day
From the 19th of November to 14th of December, fishing will only be
permitted on weekends
From the 15th of December to the 31st of December, fishing will be allowed
every day
From the 1st of January 2013 to the 1st of April 2013, fishing will be
allowed on weekends and on public holidays.
So a calendar is another necessary item to check
what day is what.
The crayfish also have to have a minimum
carapace length of 80mm. Now, a tape measure is a fiddly thing to carry around,
especially when the crayfish is not going to lie still while you try to measure
it. So, the easiest way to make sure that they are the correct size is to take
a few bottles of chilled ‘Graca’ wine. If the crayfish fits snugly around the
bottom of the bottle, (so I am told), then all is well and you can chuck it into the cooler box
along with the ice blocks and extra bottles. Also remember that you may only
transport up to 16 crayfish at a time provided that all four permit holders are
in the vehicle or boat. And the driver should not have imbibed too much ‘Graca’
while measuring, or there could be another problem.
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| Chilled wine to hand too! |
Read on:
Any west coast rock lobster caught, collected or transported shall be kept
in a whole state. West coast rock lobster caught with a recreational permit may
not be sold by any person.
This brings me to another point! Not far from us
is the quaint town of Paternoster. Behind every tree are locals carrying
plastic bags that they wave at you as you drive by. In the bags are crayfish,
for sale, at a fairly reasonable price. The problem is as follows: Unsuspecting
visitors see crayfish and decide to buy a couple to take home with them and
cook for supper. So, they stop and have a look and duck behind trees to do the
deal. The local then quickly bundles a bag of newspaper wrapped crayfish into
the boot of the car, takes the money and shakes hands on the deal. The visitors
drive away planning their supper. Just before they drive into Vredenburg they
arrive at a Police road block. The car is searched, the crayfish are found,
confiscated and a hefty fine imposed. Sometimes the car is impounded if the
occupants get nasty! Or, and this is happening more often, the bag of
‘crayfish’ turns out to be newspaper-wrapped rocks!
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| Our Crayfish Factory, behind walls and fences! |
In the ‘wild’, crayfish are found on rocky
seabeds close to shore and live on mussels. The males take between 7 and 10
years to become a ‘catchable’ size but the females are slower and take up to 20
years to reach full size. We have a crayfish ‘factory’ here in Jacobsbaai.
There are tanks and tanks of live crayfish eating away and growing daily until
they are ready to be ‘harvested’. Every day the refrigerated trucks arrive to
load up their ‘West Coast Gold’ and transport it to Cape Town. Most is exported
sadly, we cannot buy from the factory and I think much of the crayfish we eat
in restaurants is imported! Daft hey?
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| Rob with crayfish remains. The birds got there first! |
The best place to eat local crayfish is in
Lamberts Bay where a ‘Kreeffees’ or ‘Crayfish feast’ is held every year. But
that comes with Rock concerts, ‘boere dans’, feasting and fun!
I’d rather stay at home with hake and chips!
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