We spent the other day wondering around downtown Newport. One of highlights was the Newport Shipyard.  A boat yard that specializes in REALLY big superyachts.  Just amazing the money flowing through that place.  I am used to boatyards and  marinas where Harmonie feels like a big boat.  Against most of these, she’s a toy!

Right next door, for full contrast, is the commercial fishing dock with it’s “rough” looking boats and the associated smells and sights.  From the commercial fishing docks, comes our blog quiz for the day.

Stacked all around the dock were lobster traps and fish traps of many kinds. Most of them I had a pretty good handle on, and could at least come up with a good guess for what they might be used to catch.  But one trap had me totally at a loss.

A stack of “whatsitfer” traps….

It didn’t look like it could catch anything.  Just a simple rectangular box with half the top open.  A bag or screen inside to hold bait.  Some weights to hold it on the bottom.  That’s it.  No doors, no tapering baffles.  Just an open box. Certainly easy and cheap to make, but not something that looked like it would hold anything inside long enough to bring to the surface. Only when we snagged a friendly commercial fishermen walking by was the mystery solved…

So today’s quiz is:  What animal is so dumb it can get into this trap, but can’t get out again?

A hint:  They sold for $4/pound at the dock.  OK, that’s not much of a hint, but it’s the best I came up with!

I’ll post the answer in a day or two.