Almost sunrise at Netarts Bay on the Oregon coast. In the distance, sunlight hits the top of Three Arches, and just to the left of the rocks my crabbing boat is visible. They were laying crabbing traps while I was photographing. I wasn't intending to include the boat in my photo; I didn't even see it at the time. There were four different boats laying traps, and one of them was quite close to me, starting and stopping as they dropped the crab traps, and sending an interesting wake my way. That's what I was focusing on when I took this photo. I'm super happy that my boat got included though. Once the traps were set, then we spent the rest of the morning (slack tide time) checking one pot after another, keeping male crabs that were large enough, throwing back female crabs and crabs that were too small. (Small crabs were measured against a guide, and if their shells were wider than the notch in the guide we could keep them). Each licensed crabber can keep 12 crabs, and since I got a weekend license our boat of four could keep up to 48 crabs. We got 45. Not bad for a morning's work!
