Abalone at Trigg

The abalone season had come around again and it was time to hunt for some of the tasty little beggars at the local reef. I like the short season as abalone is quite rich and you could not eat it everyday (i'm sure some people would disagree), so having only a few weekends a year to have a feed works out well. I also enjoy the early morning swim and the fact that it's all done in under an hour.

My brother Jimmy has finally come back to live in Perth with his wife (and new baby son), after spending a few years living in LA and playing guitar for the metal/rock band Helmet. I thought it was high time to bring him back to reality and get out there in the ocean and pick up a morning feed of ab's. He was actually really keen to get in the water again, it's funny beacuse the spot where we hunt for the ab's is only a few hundred meters up from where he would take me snorkling when I was a kid. 

So on Sunday we met up at 6:45am at trigg beach and got geared up. As always there were heaps of people getting ready and it can be a real pain in the arse to find a parking space. I had picked Jimmy up an ab knife, gauge and bag during the week as this would be his first time going for ab's. He had some gloves that he had used for snorkling but had forgotten them - oh well, he'll be right. It was a beautiful morning, the tide was really low and the sea like glass. By the time we had walked down to the beach it was 2 minutes to 7am and for that we were thankful as it had become pretty damn hot in our wetsuits.

Diving into the water felt fantastic, there is nothing like cool clear seawater to wake you up out of that early moring daze.  The sight up and down the beaches is incredible on the abalone mornings - literally hundreds of people clambering over the reefs, some still fully dressed with absolutely no diving/water gear. Lots of people don't even seem to be able to swim - it is a real worry as even on a calm, flat day like Sunday, the surge below is still considerable. Some people have to remember that no seafood dinner - no matter how nice - is worth dying for. It was worth noting that even with so many people in the water at one place all chasing the same limited resource, there was not one fisheries officer to be seen. One would think that with a season of only an hour, that they would have every officer available at the main metro sites. They must have been up the road.

Jimmy and i swum around the reef and came up to the sides that would, on a higher tide, be bashed with the sea as this is were the abalone love to sit. Right in the white water. This obviously makes them hard to take on anything but the low tides as you just keep getting smashed against the reef before you can pry the buggars off. It was quite easy pickings and there were some great sizes there that meant I had more than ten in the bag within about 10 minutes. Just then Jimmy swum over and told me he had nicked himself by accidentaly grabbing the ab knife by the blade. Within half an hour we both had our bag limit (20) and proceeded to swim in. Jimmy showed me his cut finger and it was really bleeding now so we dashed up the beach and wrapped it up at the car.  

We met back at my place to shuck and trim the ab's as I've got a handy fish cleaning station in the back yard. A couple of band aids on Jimmy's finger and he was ok - I rekon it probably could have used a stitch or two though. The ab's cleaned up beautifully and I put them in a soy, chilli and garlic marinade to share with guests coming over later that day. Anyway, a couple of pics below of the abalone after cleaning - hope you liked the report.