TEOTWAWKI
#137 : In Search of the Wily Sushi
They didn’t push it. They kept the speed down to about forty knots. While underway they made plans.
“OK, Time to get to work.” Henry said “First thing is Shrimp. TigerMom said, in no uncertain terms, that if she doesn’t get a metric bunchaton of shrimp we might as well not come back. Oddly enough I believe her.”
“Um...just how much IS a metric bunchaton? I don’t believe I’m familiar with that measurement.” Wilbur said with a grin.
“Just imagine what it would be like to not live up to her expectations and go from there” Henry wasn’t grinning much. He’d encountered her type before.
“So I will.” Wilbur said “That’s one scary little momma.”
“She is that. Luckily we have the power of the force. ” Henry replied “Joshua and his gang of hackers are a force of nature when it comes to thinking outside the box. I’m damn sure glad I’m on their side.”
“ Yup, Hmmm. ” Wilbur thinking about the job “So...let’s see what we have here.”
Joshua had given them a selection of info-dumps and the associated SSmoke construction programs, regarding fishing before they left.
“These are some of our ideas” Joshua had said “The old style of shrimp fishing involved big nets dragging the bottom. Whether it’s true or not I don’t know, but the greenies’s claimed that the nets destroyed ‘fragile ecosystems”. Everything was ‘fragile’ according to the Greenies.”
“I’ve run across some of those fools,” Henry had told him at the time. “while trucking. Those Luddites are anti-human. They seriously think people are evil and I do believe they’d take the side of pond scum over that of their own kind.”
“Funny that you would say that.” Joshua had said with a sad smile “they have actually done that.”
Time to Get To Fishing
“Ok” Wilbur said “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Cody gave me the plans for something that he said was sort of like a conventional shrimp net, but different. Instead of dragging , it skims an inch or so above the bottom. The Retribution keeps the deployed net wide and off the bottom with her two long tentacles. Then she swims slowly along near the bottom, strobing, with her mouth open. Notice how BIG the Retribution is?”
“Pretty Big” Henry agreed.”I’ve noticed.”
“Yup, She can put out a lot of strobe light of very high intensity. The idea is to disorient the shrimp causing them to jump up high enough to be snagged by the net as it passes by. The Retribution is strong enough to hold the net just high enough off the bottom so that it shouldn’t disturb anything on the bottom while it sucks all the critters in. We have a sorting algorithm programmed to use the other tentacles to snatch anything we don’t want out of the catch stream and toss it back over her shoulder. The reject will be back on bottom, unharmed as we go by. Let’s see how it works.” he said.
It worked just fine. They loaded up a bunchaton a lot of shrimp and crabs. Most of which they irradiated then shelled, cleaned and vacuum packed right away. No sense in hauling back trash. The trash, the shells and other offal was converted to SCrystal fast manta’s and sent back to the Banana Slug. Oddly enough the profit from the SCrystal thus created was enough to pay for the whole fishing trip.
On a hunch Wilbur didn’t clean ALL the shrimp or Crabs. The last big batch he merely irradiated and vacuum packed.
“Why are you doing that?” Henry asked him.
“I dunno to tell the truth.” Wilbur said “A little voice tells me it might be a good idea.”
Henry shrugged. “Well we got enough shrimp. I noticed we have a lot of crab and even some Lobsters.”
“Yeah I noticed that too.” Wilbur said “I’m doing the same thing with some of the crabs, and all the Lobsters.”
“What ever floats your boat.” Henry said “Get that done then lets go catch some fish!”
So they did.
Some of the the toothed cetaceans have an interesting way of hunting fish. Dolphins build mud corrals.
Some whales make bubble nets
to corral fish. Cody knew this when he modified the Carbon Prospector Fluffy into the Fish Hunter named The Retribution. He made provisions for that type of hunting.
So it was that fast swimming drones, using bubble net techniques, caused many of the food fish such as herring to form ‘bait balls”. The Retribution opened her ‘mouth’ and swam thru the ball. The catch was beyond words. It only took a few runs to fill their quota on that type of fish.
The Next Episode Is
#138 : SeaMonsters…
The Previous Episode was
#136 : Christening and Launch…
The First Episode was
# 1 : Prologue…
..............
Book One: SoulStone
..................................................
I'm
@everittdmickey
.
I write
SPECULATIVE FICTION
My books on Amazon.
I engage in political commentary
and
generally talk about anything that strikes my fancy
on
Steemit
and
Sola
When watching the LameStream FakeNews Media
it's hard to tell what’s true or when they are lying isn’t it? It seems that they are more interested in influencing public opinion than they are reporting the facts.
SteemPunk Snail Image from Pixabay
I haven't seen you around in a while... I take it, you're doing well...
I'm dong fine thank you.
Posting my normal 4 - 10 times a day.
Wow... I just took a peek... I suppose I'd probably do the same in your position...
All those years of Driving Truck and listening to Talk Radio are paying off now...
Cool, I don't remember seeing the dolphin mud net one before.
Well, definitely going to serve a lot of Wily Sushi in the Banana Slug and with the offer, in general, of seafood, the whole community is going to have a banquet and probably at a very good price because the fishing that Henry and Wilbur are making, apparently it's going to be high volume. We will see how the competition and market between Ernie and TigerMom behaves. ..Clean fishing without destroying the marine ecosystem.