Between Boats

I’ve completed my time with my first boat and am in Dutch Harbor awaiting my next assignment. The boat I was on is done fishing for awhile and is docking up for around a month. The last few trips we experienced quite the mix of weather and fishing conditions. Early on, we had beautifully clear, calm, and warm (almost 40º) days with hauls of fish consistently around 55 metric tons. Then in the middle of each trip we’d have a stretch of rough weather with chilly temps, horizontal snow, large swells, and small hauls between 2-5mts after a number of hours towing the net. These days were tough. Wanting to wrap the final few trips the captain and crew were discouraged, it was rough enough that people were getting sea sick, and unsecured items were being thrown about the halls and rooms.

It was a kick working with my new lead observer John. After his first career he “retired” to observing which he has been doing for 15 years. From his wealth of experience and love for sharing stories I learned a lot about being at sea, gleaned tips on being an observer, and had many a good laugh.

I thought I might be heading down to Seattle for debriefing after this last trip, but for now I’m awaiting deployment to another vessel which may be tomorrow or a few days from now.

Factory and Crew

My observer station is at the far end of the factory, adjacent to the sorting belt which is the first part of processing. At randomly predetermined intervals I give the signal and the guys on sorting line help me collect baskets of fish for sampling. There are around 30 factory workers (all guys except one Samoan gal Maria) who work rotations of 16 hours shifts. They are a hardworking bunch. I got to know the guys on the sorting line the best and they were real friendly and helpful. It was interesting what a diverse crew we have we crew from Somoa, Mexico, Ghana, Japan, Philippines, Washington, Rhode Island, and North Carolina.

Haul Back

When the captain (day) or first mate (night) is ready to bring up the net the haul back begins with the whir of the net reels. In around 20 minutes the doors are pulled up with a loud rattling thud. After the doors are secured, the net reel continues until the first part of the net comes aboard. At that point a high tech monitoring device, which allows the captain to view what is entering the net, is removed and set aside. Soon thereafter the remaining length of the net and codend (part containing the fish) is pulled aboard alternating between two large cables called gilson lines. After a while you get used to the boat sounds and can tell what’s happening on deck from anywhere on the boat. Once the codend is completely up the captain or mate comes down from the wheelhouse to check out the catch, live tanks are uncoverd, a zipper-like rope is pulled from the end of the bag and the fish are dumped into the live tanks to await processing. Larger codends are sequentially dumped somewhat like squeezing a tube of toothpaste.

Back in Harbor

I'm briefly back in Dutch Harbor while the boat offloads all their fish and refuels. This was a longer time at sea because after filling up once we offloaded to a tramper (foreign purchasing vessel) at a small island much closer to fishing grounds called St. Paul. The lead observer that I've been working with, Sam has completed her contract so I'll be working with another veteran observer who I just met today named John. It looks like I'll be with this boat for at least a couple more trips. My body does seem to be adapting to pitch and roll of the boat even when it's rough. I'm eating real food now, where as about half of my first trip my diet consisted of the saltines and water I could keep down. I sleep great on the boat and am actually having a tough time falling asleep back on land without the usual rocking of the waves and hum of the engine. I've gotten used to showering in a staggered athletic stance and have become much quicker at getting into all of my layers of rain gear which initially took a clumsy 10 minutes -probably much to the amusement of the crew. The flow of my duties is also much smoother. I'll generally take 5 or 6 samples a day depending on how big of hauls their pulling up. For a single sample I take around 5 big baskets of fish off a belt, and then sort and weigh them by species. For every new species I see I make a drawing and record identifying characteristics. Once in every three samples I record the sex and length of ~20 randomly selected fish. Out of those 20 every 5th haul (bag of fish they bring onboard) I get to collect otoliths. This is probably my favorite part so far. Otoliths are pairs of inner ear bones that are encased just behind the fish's brain. Back in a Seattle lab they are able to determine fish ages by counting the otoliths rings (like counting tree rings). In the flatfish that I'm working with, they can be very small (the size of a pebble or smaller) and it's challenging to make the right cut so that you don't have to go hunting for them. As observers we're also responsible to watch for accidental catch of marine mammals as they dump the codend (really big bag of fish [up to 60 metric tons]). No mammals yet - evidently it's fairly rare to snag one. They call the bringing up of the net a "haul back" and we're notified 15 minutes prior. Off time during a shift is variable from day to day. A couple of days over this last trip I worked around 9 or 10 hours straight while another day when fishing wasn't going well the captain decided to steam to a different fishing ground and I had around a 6 hour break. There's always paperwork to fill out and data to enter onto the computer but when that's completed there can be time to read, nap, eat, or listen to the iPod, etc.
... well that's probably good for one post - much more to share but I should probably break it up a bit. Thanks for the comments!