
Shrimp Trap - nikolay
https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/2016/11/04/shrimp-trap/
======
alva
The PrimitiveTechnology videos are such an incredible example of the wonders
the internet provides. Here you have a guy making such interesting, engrossing
videos, uploaded for free and accessible to all. The series is worthy of being
on the BBC.

I wonder if there are any companies who spot this sort of content with the aim
of getting in on tv screens.

~~~
m0nty
> The series is worthy of being on the BBC

I think much youtube content is _better_ than the output of the BBC, which
shows an unfortunate tendency to "jazz up" its shows to make them more
"accessible" and "fun". If Primitive Technology were on the BBC, he wouldn't
be allowed to do everything without talking (he rarely makes eye-contact with
the camera, even). There would probably be a "panel of experts" to discuss or
direct the course of events, and they would introduce some competitive
element, so several people would be working against each other to produce the
best shrimp trap.

The same thing goes for other channels like Matthias Wandel, Paul Sellers,
Alain Vaillancourt, Marius Hornberger, Louis Sauzedde and Chris on
Clickspring. These are excellent channels, I would recommend all of them if
you are into making things with your hands. But they could never exist on
mainstream TV, and if they did, they would be stripped of their charm and
value to make them more commercial. So youtube > regular TV, imo.

~~~
rawnlq
I am pretty sure if you like primitive tech you would love the historical
documentaries BBC did on this subject.

Primitive tech's presentation and focus on one technique per video is nice.
But for comprehensiveness, you can't beat reenacting the 15th-16th century by
living on a farm for a year like what BBC did in "Tales from the Green
Valley", "Tudor Monastery Farms", and related series.

A lot of the exact techniques primitive tech covered is also covered by those
series:

Fish traps:
[https://youtu.be/ZIbhoR1GBuI?t=302](https://youtu.be/ZIbhoR1GBuI?t=302)

Wattle and daub wall:
[https://youtu.be/Qn1h8DOQGEQ?t=589](https://youtu.be/Qn1h8DOQGEQ?t=589)

Building roofs:
[https://youtu.be/jgjFsR-c0-Q?t=558](https://youtu.be/jgjFsR-c0-Q?t=558)

Smelting lead ores:
[https://youtu.be/ZIbhoR1GBuI?t=837](https://youtu.be/ZIbhoR1GBuI?t=837)

etc etc

~~~
throwaway76543
It's a neat subject, but I think you may have missed m0nty's point, a
perspective which I share, about "jazzing up" with unnecessary dialog.

I just clicked on "Fish traps" and my ears are full of idle banter between the
two people making traps and whenever they're quiet for more than a moment the
narrator breaks in. Someone is speaking at all time and it's obnoxious. This
complaint is entirely distinct from how comprehensively they cover subject
matter.

BBC historical documentaries are far from the worst offender in this area
(American TV is far, far worse), but primitive tech does a much better job
than the BBC of permitting the audience to simply observe and absorb.

------
sdrothrock
For anyone curious about this who didn't want to watch the video, the trap
consists of:

1\. A large woven cone

2\. A smaller woven cone without a tip

The smaller cone is placed in the larger one; shrimp swim into the small cone
to explore, but then get caught in the space between the two cones when they
try to get out (presumably because it's difficult to find the single
entrance).

He mentions that the only skill necessary is basketweaving -- I wonder if it
would be possible to carve something similar (two interlocking geometric
shapes) or if the trap being woven is essential to its function, for example,
for allowing flowing water in to entice shrimp.

One of the parts that stood out for me was

> In practice, a long stretch of creek might have several traps collecting
> food each day without any effort on the part of the fisherman.

If he were to go whole hog long-term, shrimp traps would free up his time for
doing other crafts in ways that spear fishing or actively hunting wouldn't,
though I suppose the local yield of shrimp would factor into that (whether he
could collect enough calories consistently to fund his other efforts).

~~~
iowahansen
100 grams of shrimp are roughly 100 calories. Let's generously assume that one
shrimp from the video yields 200 grams of meat. So he would need to
continuously catch 10 shrimp a day to satisfy a 2000 calorie diet. Seems to me
that the shrimp population of this stream in the video would be exhausted
pretty quickly and he would need to move elsewhere to continue hitting his
calorie goals.

Given that we are surrounded by an incredible amount of high-calorie food
(100g of a Snicker's bar provide 488 calories), it is easy to forget how
difficult it is to source calories in the wild.

~~~
CydeWeys
You're off by a factor of over 20. A reasonable ballpark estimate for the
total mass of a shrimp is 10g. The amount of usable meat is less (though in a
survival scenario you would eat the whole thing, head included). Hell, the
average meat yield from a standard size blue crab is only around 60g.

You would need to eat netfulls of shrimp per day to meet caloric requirements,
not just ten! Anecdotally, I can toss back dozens of appetizer shrimp and
still be hungry for a main course.

------
koolba
This guy is seriously amazing. I've spent hours watching every one of his
videos and I think I ran out of, "WTF?"s by the time I was done.

------
mrkgnao
> I humanely killed the shrimp using the splitting method which destroys the
> central nervous system (boiling alive is more painful).

How do we know this?

~~~
vvdcect
The best way to kill seafood in general would be to use an anesthetic then
gut/puncture its nervous system. Clove oil would be the best example of this,
check dave arnold's post out
[http://www.cookingissues.com/index.html%3Fp=5731.html](http://www.cookingissues.com/index.html%3Fp=5731.html)
and a good method for fish would be killing it using the ikejime method
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikejime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikejime)
.

~~~
muad
Yeah I would rather not drug my food.

~~~
ricardobeat
If you read the linked article, you'll find they use clove oil.

------
Lxr
Can anyone actually start a fire that easily without chemicals?

~~~
krastanov
It is not that easy, but yes. The fluffy dry mass (the tinder) is very
important - it is the thing that catches fire at low temperature. See his pump
drill video for some of the pain points.

------
yandrypozo
This guy is a perfect hacker of primitive technologies. I'm a big fan of his
videos, all of them! I wish I could find more of those.

------
keeganjw
Yes, yes, yes! I didn't know he had a blog. I've only seen his Youtube
channel. Time to take a deep dive into his written material.

------
robtaylor
On reddit overnight there were tens of posts on this from separate users, now
I see this on here.

Is this common / natural or is there some PR at work?

~~~
DanBC
It's natural. Many people on HN enjoy the videos and blogs, so it's natural
that they post links.

