Jubilee!

The other day an email was forwarded to me with the subject line: Jubilee in Daphne taking place now 10:30 AM Friday, 9/22/11.

For those of you who are not from the the Mobile Bay area, this information is most likely met with confusion and mild curiosity. Allow me to translate. A "jubilee" occurs when there is a naturally-occurring but uncharacteristically low concentration of dissolved oxygen (DO) in the water, causing all manner of tasty sea creatures (crabs, flounder, stingrays, eels) to flee to shallower, more oxygen-rich waters. This of course means that you get stretches of beach where the shallow waters are full of very accessible seafood. Catching them is also made easier by the fact that oxygen deprivation causes the crabs and other sea critters to be very drowsy and behave very strangely.

This quote from Wikipedia really drives home how epic this event is:

The large volume of crustacean and fish that a jubilee can produce is hard to overstate; author Archie Carr comments that "[a]t a good jubilee you can quickly fill a washtub with shrimp. You can gig a hundred flounders and fill the back of your pickup truck a foot deep in crabs."^[4] 

In addition to the sheer mass of the animals present, harvesting them is made considerably easier by the effect that the oxygen deprivation has on the animals. Their behavior has been described as "depressed and moribund",^[2] or "unnatural";^[4] crabs are observed "climbing tree stumps to escape the water" and flounder "slither up the banks."^[1]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Bay_jubilee

If you haven't heard of this particular phenomenon before, don't feel bad. It is not very common. In fact, in the United States it is unique to Mobile Bay. And the only other place in the world it is known to happen is somewhere in Japan.

So just how big of a deal is the jubilee phenomenon? Big enough that it has its own festival! I may just have to wander over and check it out this weekend. You should also know that people who live on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay have "jubilee bells" on their porches--when they see a jubilee event happening, they sound the alarm! As the word spreads, people come running with ice chests to catch their fill of fresh seafood! And apparently the news of a jubilee is now being spread via email, in another meeting of technology and tradition :)

If you want more information, here is the Wikipedia link I drew from, as well as some articles about recent jubilee events. The majority of my information was anecdotal and provided to me by my wonderful coworkers, who are eager to introduce me to the way of life down here on the Gulf Coast :)

Wishing you smiles and sunshine!
-Bethany