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| Day 15 - Cavendish, Prince Edward Island | ||
 Today21 of us chose to take a boat ride out to the mussel farms for the morning. |
 We boarded the Manada II for the tour. |
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 Our shore captains and our sea captain greet us prior to entering the boat. |
 We are preparing to cast off for another adventure. |
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 Fishing boats moored at the piers along the harbor. |
 Joe Barack is the first to drive the boat. |
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 A string of Canadian Gees swim nearby. |
 This is a mussel boat moored by their mussel farm. Mussel farming is a big business in this area. The mussels grow on bags attached to ropes held off the bottom b the buoys you see in front of the boat. It takes about 2 years for them to mature enough to be harvested. This compares to at least twice that long to grow naturally. |
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 The cormorants love the buoys as a place to perch |
 This one is drying it's wings so it can fly again. |
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 This platform was covered with cormorants. Gray seals also like to lay on the same platform, but not when the Cormorants are there. |
 So the captain cruised close to the platform to scare away the cormorants in hope a gray seal or two would hop up on it. But it did not happen while we were there. |
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 Our first mate is holding a gaff she will be using to snag a lobster trap the company owns. |
 She got it! |
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 And drags it aboard.. |
 with one good sized lobster in it. They feed the lobster and keep it in the trap for a week before releasing it and replacing it with another. The entrances are closed to keep crabs and other lobsters out. |
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 All lobsters have a crushing claw, the large one, and a pinching claw. |
 Everyone was asked if they wanted to hold the lobster, and Susan Shallbetter was the only volunteer. |
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 Then came the time we (well most of us), had waited for and that was the mussel tasting. Our captain gave us a demonstration on how to use the shell of the first mussel as a tweezer to eat the rest of them. |
 And here is the first mate with the first tray of mussels for us to try. For many of us, these were the first farm grown mussels we had eaten. |
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 Jim Hamp demonstrates the proper picking, eating... |
 and then throwing the empty shell overboard method. |
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 We quickly devoured the entire tray in short order. |
 Then it came time for many of us to take our turn at the helm. Bill Shallbetter gives it a try. |
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 And then Sue Schmidt really gets into the spirit with the jaunty captains hat. |
 Shortly after that it started to rain and our captain resumes the helm. |
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 It had mostly stopped raining by the time we returned but the dock was still slippery. |
 This is a plaque explaining the three rivers, the Montague, Brudenell and Cardigan, that wind through villages, and communities in King County , draining into Cardigan Bay. Cardigan Bay is where we toured. |
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 Included in the Caravan was a lobster dinner at a Fisherman's Wharf Lobster Suppers restaurant. |
 It had one of the longest salad bars most of us had ever seen. |
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 Jim is still eating mussels and would probably be eating them for breakfast if we hadn't dragged him out of there. |
 However, Mike Morrell was not far behind Jim in the quanity of mussells consumed. Way to go guys!! |
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 Jean was very proud of her wine bottle with the fish in it. |
 The face of this masked man was hidden so the restaurant owners would not insist on paying extra for the quantity of desserts he carried off. |
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 Terry loves lobster heads, so she was going from table to table collecting them. Most of us gladly gave them up. |
 To finish off the evening we were treated to a fire and some relaxation at the Morrell's back yard. |
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Click here for a Google map of above pictures. |
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