Shrimp Harvest

This past weekend I participated in my first pond harvest. It was extremely smelly and dirty, but I actually had a pretty good time. But I tell you what, those of you who eat shrimp may think twice before eating shrimp once you see some of these pictures.

When I got to work early Saturday morning, Tim said I would be getting in the pond with him to run a seine net. I thought he was joking. He wasn't. Apparently we had been overestimating the amount of shrimp that had survived in the ponds, so for the past however many months, we'd been throwing in too much feed. With shrimp, you have to feed them a sinking pellet, so you can't really tell whether or not they're eating. Well, they weren't eating all their food, and it had been accumulating in the deeper spots of the ponds and rotting. It was so deep that anaerobic bacteria were thriving in it and releasing hydrogen sulfide, which smells horrible! I don't even know how many hours Tim and I spent dragging sludge with the seine net over to the drain. See that log of dark green stuff on the photo below? That's a huge chunk of sludge that Tim and I are dragging over to the drain with a net.Here's the drain. It's a 10" diameter drain pipe.
In the first pond, the water quality was so bad that once we starting breaking up the sludge, the shrimp started to die before we could even get them out. I've never seen that show about America's dirtiest jobs, but I think that what I was doing could probably make the show. I know there are a lot dirtier jobs out there, but this was pretty nasty.
What was supposed to happen was this: we release the drain and let all the water and shrimp drain out of the pond. Here's another photo of the drain that the entire contents of the pond are supposed to drain out of...Everything goes from the drain through this hopper (made in Idaho!) and the shrimp get directed into the basket, while the water gets directed to the drain outside of the pond.Here is the drain that the re-directed water goes into. Check out those green, slimy bubbles!
While the pond is draining, Tim and I were supposed to use the seine net to direct shrimp to the drain. That way, the process would be kind of slow and steady instead of having a huge mass of shrimp go through the drain all at once when the pond totally emptied. But that didn't happen on the second pond. We ended up having to pull a huge seine net a few times to get the shrimp out.

As soon as the shrimp came out of the pond, they were rushed to the lab where they were chilled on ice to kill them and keep them fresh. Then they were bagged and put in freezers.
One thing I wasn't prepared for was having the shrimp brush up against my legs and jump between my legs and stab me with their stupid rostrums and/or telsons. I still have little scratches all over my legs from those little buggers. It probably took me 20 minutes to get used to them touching my legs on the first day. Until that point, I kept screaming every time one ran into me because I'm really jumpy. I always have been.

In order to appreciate this photo, you'll have to click on it to view it larger. This is me as soon as I got home from work on Sunday. I have pond scum splattered all over my shirt and shorts. My legs were really gross, but I hosed them down before I came home.
But it's all over now. I got four bags of shrimp, lots of little scratches, some good experience, and managed not to get sunburned. Plus, I got a full weekend of pay, which should help pay for a new set of tires (which I very badly need). Overall, a good experience!