collection trip

[TroyPham]

had a great time there meeting everyone. i hope everyone collected all they needed and made it home safe.

Thanks to Maast, Marsh, Dfwmas, and a big thanks to Steve for putting all this together.

[hobogato]

thank you troy for catching (or should i say sucking up) all of those ghost shrimp out of the sand for everyone.

i made it home with four of them, as dis alot of other people. you have a great looking tank as well 8)

[brewercm]

Had a blast and hope more people can make it in the future. Fishing Saturday evening got great around 1230, specks started running and stayed in for over two hours.

Troy, that pink milli is doing great and hope the cheato and caulerpa is on your side. A real pleasure getting with all you guys.

Ace, let me know when your ready to make up the shrimp suckers and we'll do it.

[TroyPham]

thanks guys.. i had fun.

[GaryP]

Troy, I missed you at the dinner. By the time I knew you were there I heard that you already left. I didn't make it to the night collecting trip by the guys from DFWMAS and taldrich13 were cleaning up on the pipefish and shrimp in the sargassum during the day. I found a bunch of gorgonians on the beach, including one really big clump. I gave that to the Prez of MARSH (Shane). I was really sorry to see that more MAASTards didn't make it down to the beach. The folks from DFWMAS were there in force and it was great to meet them.

I'm assuming that brewer is talking about the really big ghost shrimp that are like a small lobster that burrow in the sand? Did those go into the tank, or were they dinner?

I would also like to send a very big thank you to Bigbird for all of his hard work in organizing this and putting on the dinner. He is already working on next years event and told me that they are trying to book the entire Tarpon Inn for next year. It's less then 5 min. from the jetties where we did most of the collecting. They need 20 rooms reserved to lock in the entire Inn, so contact Steve (Bigbird) if you are interested.

[ou812pezz]

My son and I had a great time. Thanks Steve for hosting.

[TroyPham]

Gary, they go in the tank... they make great bait for fishing too. i have 4-5 in my tank and they do a good job of moving the sand around. you can see ther tunnels from the bottom of the tank. i think you had just gott'n there as i was getting ready to leave for the beach. there will be other chances to meet i'm sure.

[GaryP]

Just for future reference, be aware there is a daily limit on the burrowing ghost shrimp. I checked with TPWD to make sure that the regulations weren't referring to the "grass shrimp" that are sometimes called ghost shrimp.

[TroyPham]

yea i know. we were well under the limit.

[brewercm]

So what is the limit, you gonna make me look it up?

[taldrich13]

My girlfriend and I did a little scuba diving off the jetty and saw lots of stuff....seargent majors, gorgonians, a couple spot fin butterfly fish and a few of these:
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j40/taldrich13/jettycoral.jpg
I found a little frag that was broken off :innocent so I kept it. I was only able to take a few pictures because I forgot to charge the battery before the trip :angry but we had fun anyway.

The boats in the channel kicked up alot of junk and screwed up the visibilty for a while but it settled down quickly. This video of some seargent majors was right after a boat went by. It was a bit hard to steady the camera due to the waves from the boats. I was snorkeling when I took this:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j40/taldrich13/th_MVI_2772.jpg (http://s76.photobucket.com/albums/j40/taldrich13/?action=view&current=MVI_2772.flv)