Standby to witness the hand capture (and later release) of the world’s biggest yabby…
And now here’s the back story to that video .. which has now gone viral on Facebook with almost 7 million views as of June 2022… and currently growing at a rate off 100,000 views a week!!!
We were down at my Dad’s place (secret location in Far Northern NSW) which has forest area and a creek running through his property.
Dad had decided we were going to go yabby hunting and the kids were super excited! Only problem was we had to wait for it to go completely dark and we were in NSW who are on daylight savings time… which meant 8.30pm!!! … which is late by my standards:
Never the less I stayed strong and headed down with the rest of the yabby hunting clan:
The noise in the video is Dad falling over with the bucket as he’s trying to get to our location… because he was the only one game enough to stick his hand in the water.
And then here we have his return home:
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE…
Since posting this first video on social media I have learnt a LOT about crustaceans so please allow me to enlighten you… or if you were already enlightened, just bare with me as there’s an interesting twist at the end.
This “yabby” is actually a “freshwater spiny crayfish”
Yes, I stand corrected that the yabby is in fact a crayfish, HOWEVER…
Where I’m from in NSW, we call freshwater crayfish yabbies (even though scientifically they’re not) and as the local Department of Primary Industries (DPI) fella said to me:
I reckon if you caught it in your own creek you can call it whatever you want.
And now here comes the interesting twist…
My new DPI friend has said to me that there are a lot of different species of freshwater spiny crayfish in Australia AND it may even be the case that this species is specific to our creek!!!! WOAHHHHHH
What an exciting adventure these past few days have been!
I am now left wondering how Grandad, who up until last week couldn’t figure out how to turn his mobile phone on and off, can become a social media legend!
And although he’s loving the celebrity status at the local tennis club, is freaking out that people are now going to be infiltrating his creek.
Good times my friends – this is living x
