Our Nature Cruise

I wanted to go on a dolphin cruise or something similiar for my birthday. When I started looking for tours, I found someone who offered a nature cruise instead. Since we have all seen dolphin before (we even swam with them once), I thought the nature cruise might be more interesting for the kids. It was suprisingly affordable, even including the little extra we paid so it would just be our family. The 2 hour cruise included oyster collecting, crabbing, and shrimping. At the captain's recommendation, we went on a weekday to avoid the heavier weekend boat traffic in the backwaters.

We had a really nice time. The charter was offered by an older man who has been doing this for 12 years. Prior to that he lived on his 48' sailboat for 10 years! He was very knowledgeable and kind to the kids. And of course he was friendly....he was from the south! The cruise was on his covered pontoon boat, so there was enough room to move around and a little bit of relief from the relentless sun.











We pulled up oysters and learned a little about them. We checked a crab trap and learned a little about the blue crab that was in the trap. The part we all enjoyed the most, though, was the shrimping.


They are only allowed to drag their shrimp nets for 18 minutes. While we were dragging the net, the captain's regular dolphin friend started following the boat. Feeding the dolphins is illegal, but the dolphins know the extras from the shrimp nets get scraped right back into the water. It was fun to watch the dolphin surface closer and closer to us. Eventually the dolphin was right next to the boat, which is much closer than we would have gotten on a dolphin cruise.




The catch from the net was dumped into the aquarium and from there the captain dropped net fulls on the trough for us to sort through and identify. We weren't allowed to keep any oysters or crabs but we could have kept the shrimp. We chose not to, but the captain kept several of the larger shrimp. We saw lots of neat little things - lizard fish, catfish, croaker, moon snails, jellyfish, 3 different types of shrimp, and various other little fish. My favorite was the squid. The dolphin waited at the bottom of the trough and ate some of the stuff we tossed back. He wouldn't go near the catfish, but his favorite also seemed to be the squid.
























We had a very nice time. I think it would be fun to do an all shrimping trip the next time.