Foraging at sea
The second foraging tour I signed for, via foragesf.com, was the Wild Seafood Tour. This one I liked a little less because there was more talking about things we couldn't see, and less walking and observing things in front of us. But I still learned a bit about digging for clams, and different regulations about what you can or can't take from the ocean.
The setting was beautiful, around the San Francisco Yacht Club in the Marina neighborhood. The Golden Gate Bridge is in the background.
Here the guide is reeling in dungeness crab - two of the were caught in the snare!
Below, he is showing how to measure the crab with a crab gauge. If it's under a certain width, it must be tossed back in the ocean. Since we were were east of the Golden Gate Bridge, i.e. within the Bay, we couldn't keep the dungeness crabs no matter how big or small they were. That's because the Bay is designated as a nursery for dungeness crab. Red rock crab are okay to take though, as long as they are above a certain size.
The crab's facial expression looks very sad here!
I really liked this tiny crab from the intertidal zone. Unlike the dungeness whose eyes are in the middle, this one's eyes are at either end of its very square body. And it only has one claw, the right one. It's cool how its body is asymmetrical!
