The constant risk of death makes the show unwatchable for me. If these guys were out on the perilous waters because crabs contained a cure for cancer or even the common cold, I might be a bit more interested. But no - they're risking their life for a luxury food product - I caught a snippet of an episode this weekend, where they explained that 30 men died in one year.
We can culture pearls and diamonds, we grow fish in hatcheries, why not crab? Apparently it takes 3-4 years for a crab to mature, so for the first 5 years or so, you wouldn't have any crab to sell - but after that, you could harvest your crab yearly if not more often, with no risk to human life. I know nothing about fish/crab farming, but this seems do-able.
But let's say crab farming in a tank is impossible for some reason - fine. Design sea-going vessels that can't capsize, a vessel that won't allow deck hands to be washed overboard, a vessel that isn't prone to ice buildup or ice impact.
What is this miracle ship you ask? A submarine crab boat (new from EtchCo!). The subcraboat would navigate 20 feet under the water, avoiding waves, wind, and most floating ice.
The crab pots would be unchanged, the only difference: the pots would be raised into an airlock rather than brought up on deck. The water would be pumped out of the airlock, and the deck hands would have a safe, secure environment to unload and sort the crab.
I picture an assembly line setup (or dis-assembly?) where the first airlock is at the front of the ship - the fore crew collect the full pots. The pot proceeds to the center section, where the pot is dumped. As the pot moves on, the mid-ship crew sorts out the toss-backs. The stern crew baits and drops the pot back into the water.
But wait! This would be an expensive ship! Yes it would - but no one would die - how much is one human life worth, let alone 30 in a single year? Captains could pay their deck hands less because the risk would be far less, the conditions would be far better, the ship would receive less damage from the elements, lower insurance rates, etc etc...
Best of all, no one needs to die so we can enjoy crab at Red Lobster.
Brilliant, I’m on board.
ReplyDeleteI know the show and being 100% throw my guts up as soon as I see ripples on a pond level of sea sickness, the show just makes me nauseous. Putting the whole thing under water, makes total sense.
So fuck yeah, let’s not make some dumb fuck who only got the job because he is too stupid to understand the risk, famous.
Just one modification of two. You in a sub on the bottom of the ocean, you don’t need the cages, you need one of those bug vacuum’s you see the shipwreck guys use for finding gold and shit. Number 2, throw the crab in a box attach a float and let it float to the surface for picking up by a boat, I’m sure you can create a box that can be loaded in to the boat without the need of hydraulic winches and a saturated deck hand.
We could just go all skynet on it and automate the lot, but that could get out of hand
Hear hear, D! It boggles me that no one seems to be engineering a better solution - if not for human life, then for higher profits.
ReplyDelete