Carp spotting inside the green room

Managed to soak my DIY mini-BRUV camare trap in a small lake in Germany. Looks like a carp swam by to inspect that weird looking frame from a safe distance. Admittedly, although the bait ball was propped with more yummy bait, its presentation has to improve to become not just smelly, but also visually appealing.

Shark bay

At a rocky headland along the Mid-North Coast of New South Wales, I baited and deployed the drsnapper underwater camera trap (which is pretty much a BRUV – Baited Remote Underwater Video station with a mechanical trigger function). A wobbegong shark (Orectolobus spp., a species of carpet shark) seemed to show some interest in the bait odour (chopped mackerel) or at least it stayed about for a little while. I picked a pretty choppy day for it with a southerly blowing, so the drsnapper PVC frame contraption equipped with an underwater action camera (modified as prototype camera III) got moved around a fair bit. Although the bite of a wobbegong shark can be pretty nasty, it felt more like a pudel dog was circling around my legs than a shark.

Crustaceous crunchtime

Testing whether various crustaceans are strong enough to pull the trigger. Kicking off this wee series with the common shore crab (Carcinus maenas), following later on will be an edible crab (Cancer pagurus) and finally a European lobster (Homarus gammarus). As bait, I will use a ground-up dough produced from fermented fishwaste to check how well these species will repond to its (hopefully) generous odour plume.