The tangled, writhing pile at the back of the Flat Island Venture was transferred one armload at a time into weathered, plastic tubs. Hands in thick, waterproof gloves dug in, over and over, filling the containers with crab and ice, stacking them, making short towers plucked up ashore by a dockside crane.
The transport crew took over from there. With a forklift, they carried the catch away and prepared it for loading aboard an 18-wheeler, to be moved 420 kilometres from the Fort Amherst small boat basin in St. John’s to a fish plant in Comfort Cove.
The crab was as fresh as it gets, with some of the creatures pulled aboard the boat only a couple of hours earlier, at the end of a 12-hour run.
“We’re just there off Torbay. It’s as fresh as— well, you can see it there,” said fisherman Jason Sullivan, gesturing to a stack of containers in front of him.
