Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Just Lobstering Business with a few nerdy Star Wars analogies

The Sweet Pea and zero carbon lobster project is very much an idealistic and day dreaming sort of adventure. An adventure designed to showcase old and new hardware and methods of fishing, alternative energy, slow food, sustainable fishing and such. Despite the pie in the sky-ness, it's also my job. Thanks to good prices for the catch, a year's more experience and a whole lot of help from some key conspirators, it's also my job these days, and that has to be the coolest thing of all. I'm actually making something of a living. Go figure. Me and my pipsqueak of an operation.

I'm keeping much more data this year as well, such as how many traps and how far I run the engine on a battery charge, what kinds of fish come up in the trap, and how many pounds on the scale at the end of the day. Yesterday, there were three butterfish in one trap. One grayish green one, one pink one, and one really outrageous, audacious neon pink one. They come in bright blue, bright green and black as well. Why the butterfish has such a zany color menu I don't know. Lots of flounder this year, too. They're the most fun to throw back, because after the first confused juddering motion, they take off like the Millenium Falcon making the jump to light speed. Flounder are very quick like that. But the ocean doesn't rotate and go all streaky like in Star Wars.

In the "marine environment is tough" department, the solar panel and charge controller simply stopped working, so tomorrow, I have to parse out the chain wherein photons become worker particles in my galaxy to identify where the breach is. The happy yellow charge light was gloomy yesterday, so, being in doubt, I ripped it out and tomorrow will isolate the problem.

May the photons be with you, for electricity, hot water or beach enjoyment.

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