By Caitlin Donohue
Loves it when you eat him. Photo by Erik Anderson
There’s a brisk wind running down Market today. And though I hear that it was 80-degree loveliness over the past weekend, I spent the past few days out of town in a place where they have things called “seasons.” So I missed out this time on the Indian summer benefits and am now reaccustoming myself to living in one of the world’s most bizarre weather systems.
But the Bay Area possesses many charms, and primary among these is the sheer fertility of the ecosystem we live in. Particularly when it is producing things I can eat. On Saturday, the National Park Service will be schooling hungry people on this glory of nature. Namely on how to catch your very own crabs in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. There will be a 15-minute demonstration on how to use a crabbing net (nets provided) as well as on which crabbies can come home with you and which will live to pinch another day (rock and red crabs = all yours, dungeness = their life, their love, and their lady is the sea).
After the quick lesson you’ll have the next hour and a forty five to mess with your new favorite hobby, smiling dreamily over thoughts of bouillabaisse and etoufees. And you will have a new dinner option on the table, as the Fort Point pier is open for permit-free public crabbing 24/7. Just cross your fingers that our crabby friends haven’t shared the fate of their herring brethren, whom recent studies suggest have been adversely affected by the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill. Dang polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons!
Crabbing How-To
Sat/3 10 a.m.- noon, free
Fort Point Pier
End of Marina Drive, at south anchorage of Golden Gate Bridge
(415) 556-1693
www.nps.gov/fopo