Phases of the moon

Prawn fishing is done on a "dark moon" i.e. when there isn't a moon. We have witnessed a procession of prawn trawlers three times now as they depart the Port Lincoln Marina for their monthly catch.  It's quite ghostly in a way because they all seem to leave after dark and it takes several hours for them all to motor out of the Marina around 10-20 min apart, each one in a blaze of their own light.

They left  again a few nights ago and they'll be back next week with their catch already processed and packaged for market. We've been told that each year, on average, they spend 43 nights at sea. So far we've noticed them gone for nearly a week at a time. This suggests that they must sometimes trawl the Gulf and at times way off shore. Although we'd arranged to buy a 5Kg from the next haul (contacts) we don't look like we'll be around to collect - darn it!

They move pretty fast so by the time I got the camera out this is as much as I could manage