The Three Hour Tour

We have made some friends in Ang Sila, a small fishing village about a 15 minute drive from TLC (still part of Chonburi). That lead to us doing some clean up and building work for them (the MEI team helped out with that). And to show some of their gratitude, they invited the TREK team and I on a tour on a fishing boat. Sweet.

Before we got into the boat, we got to see one of the things they harvest...jellyfish. GIANT jellyfish. Each one of them was the biggest I've ever seen. We're talking around 18" in diameter for some of them. Check out the pictures. Apparently there is good money to be made in harvesting jellyfish, but I wouldn't eat them.

There is a lot more activity happening out in the ocean than you can see from land. Apparently the water is fairly shallow even WAY WAY out in the water (like a couple of kilometres). I know this because there are clusters of bamboo poles sticking out of the water. Even some elaborate bamboo structures that are solidly anchored in the ocean floor (see my pictures in late March).

First we stopped where guys were harvesting mussels. It looks like they pound bamboo poles into the ocean floor and leave them there for a long time (just sticking out of the water). Over time, mussels and coral grow all over them. Then divers bring them up and they scrape them off. The mussel shells were a nice green colour, not the black that I see at home. In between the mussels are a whole lot of other sea creatures like baby shrimp and tiny crabs.

Next stop was at a boat that was collecting crabs. I think the fishing guys must all know each other cause this guy gave us a bucket of crabs for free. All the crabs were already tied up with elastics, rendering them "safe". They have a way of tying a crab up with 1 elastic band. The coolest thing about these crabs were that their legs were a beautiful light blue colour. He also gave us a horseshoe crab. That was a very interesting looking creature. See the pictures to see what I mean.

After a while the severe rocking of the boat got to Tony and he had to lie down for a bit. Even I was wondering if I was going to start feeling noxious. There wasn't a whole lot of room on deck, as it was a very small boat (about 20 feet long I'm guessing). Plus the deck was at quite a steep angle, not at all flat. And we had around 10 or 12 people on board.

Then we docked at a different pier for a few minutes and some of the Thai guys got out and left. We didn't understand what was going on until they came back. We had stopped for more beer.

We travelled some more and eventually ended up at this processing house on stilts in the middle of the ocean. It seemed to be abandoned but it was big. The stilts were concrete and the floor of the place was about 10 feet above the water (depending on the tide). It too had large concrete tubs, (like the ones we saw on shore with all the jellyfish) but they were all empty. We stayed there a while and swam in the ocean (it was warm). Some of the guys even cooked up some of the crab for the ride home.

All in all it was a really cool experience to see what stuff is out there to be harvested and to see how they do what they do.