It's light outside 20 hours a day in Kenai, AK in July.  This is good for those of us with the 20 hour work-day.  Commercial fishing periods are generally open for drift-netters on certain days from 7AM until 7PM, which means we'll get up around 3AM to head out to the fishing grounds, and by the time we've delivered the fish and cleaned the boat, it's 10 or 11 o'clock at night.  But by comparison to a lot of other fisheries, drift-netting salmon in Cook Inlet is pretty easy.  It's a very clean fishery, no by-catch, no heavy gear, no complicated hydraulics, almost no electronics, just a slow boat and a short net.  We set and pick, set and pick, dozens of times a day, snaring a few hundred here and a few hundred there, trying to make a day out of it.  It used to be a very lucrative fishery.  In 1991 the cash buyers were paying as much as $3.15/lb. and 10,000 pound days were common.  This summer the price topped out at $1.15 and 10,000 pound days are unheard of.  Don't get me started on the cost of fuel.  Anyway, "for the money" is a bad reason to be in commercial fishing.  So we do some hiking and some clam-digging, play golf and go to baseball games, bar-hopping in Seward and Homer, campfires, horseshoe tournaments, and fresh grilled wild Alaskan salmon every night.  Not a bad way to spend the summer.

The inaugural Fisher Poets Gathering happened in Astoria, OR in 1998 with a few dozen people from the local area crammed into a little meeting hall, reading their scribbles to each other over coffee and cake.  Last weekend, the 11th Annual Fisher Poets Gathering kicked off on Friday evening with a fancy reception at the Events Center.  Over the next day and a half, fishermen and artists from the Great Northwest, California, Alaska, and as far away as Florida, and Cape Cod, MA participated in workshops, presentations, gallery showings, storytelling, boat tours, and open mic's at a half-dozen venues all over downtown.  The Maritime Museum, Hanthorn Cannery, and local fishermen opened their doors for people to get a little history lesson as well as their hands dirty.  A few of the more accomplished artists conducted workshops to assist those aspiring writers and musicians.  Poetry readings, funny anecdotes, and short songs carried the evening programs at the Columbian Theater and the Wet Dog Cafe, and the R-rated material lit-up latenight at the VooDoo Lounge.  It was standing room only anywhere you went and impossible to find a person who wasn't impressed with the Gathering.  Of course, some of the stories and some of the performers were more practiced and polished than others, but everyone spoke from the heart, and the camaraderie and sense of community were really the best things the weekend inspired.  There aren't any prizes, awards, book deals, or television shows waiting at the end of the Gathering, just the satisfaction of sharing something meaningful.  One fisherman from Alaska related how his fishing buddies depend on his stories and poems for a sense of comfort.  When fishing is slow, the weather is bad, and they've been out by themselves for so long they're starting to lose it, they get on the radio and ask him for a bit of consolation/entertainment.  Fishing is demanding, rough, dangerous, hardcore...whatever.  But its essence is buried in the depths of the subtle and powerful, romantic rhythms of nature.  Fisher Poets strive to capture the humanness of this enterprise, to shed layers of toughness, stubbornness, loneliness, and greed, and reveal the soul.  And anyone can relate to that.  

if i meet someone who is unfamiliar with commercial fishing, or with the ocean in general, and the topic of my livelihood arises, i can usually count on being queried about three particular subjects.  you can probably guess what they are.  first of all, there's the "Deadliest Catch", and have i ever done that fishery, what do i think of the show, and so on.  well, i've never fished for king crab, nor do i have any intention of ever fishing for king crab.  that fishery takes the risk/reward scenario to the extreme.  a guy who worked on the boat right next to mine here in Oregon went up there for opilio crab this year and he'll pocket 15 or 20 grand for a couple months work.  he'll also be coming home with fingers numbering nine.  would you sell one of your fingers for 15K?  of course, accidents can happen anytime, anywhere, but the odds jump tremendously in that type of work environment, and personally, i'll pass.  but the show is interesting, primarily, i think, because the main character, the weather, is so dynamic and unpredictable.  it's certainly the best "reality" show on television.

secondly, there's "The Perfect Storm", and what did i think of the movie, and is it realistic, and so on.  well, i think it was a good movie and i like watching it.  of course, whatever really happened aboard the Andrea Gail at the end is unknown, and the movie is completely unrealistic in its portrayal of some of the events, but it's a Hollywood production so i don't get hung up on that.  i'm grateful for the exposure the film gave to the commercial industry and i'm glad that the men who lost their lives will be remembered and thought of by more people than their family and friends.  

the third question is my favorite: what is the craziest thing you've ever seen out there?  it used to amuse me that people thought that "crazier" things happened off-shore than on land, and i couldn't respond satisfactorily.  but then i thought that maybe it's just my experience has given me a different frame of reference.  i mean, from one person to the next, the respective definition of "crazy" is probably going to change.  so people are just curious about the mysterious, the unknown, no problem with that.  i started thinking about all the times i'd wished i had a camera, or laughed uncontrollably, or just been completely dumbfounded, or whatever.  i've started racking my memory to develop...The Crazy List.

-a bald eagle swooped down and snatched the skipper's little pet dog off the bow.

-a huge sea lion followed the drag net up the stern ramp of the boat and right on deck, chasing a meal.  it takes four guys with shovels several minutes to get that mean bastard off of there. 

-the drag net comes over the side just bulging, bursting with the mother lode.  the mate rips the cord and onto the deck bounce four of the most humungous tractor tires ever known to man, all chained together...and about six fish.

-other drag net contents: a television, that folding door off a schoolbus, kitchen appliances, an airplane wing, and an unexploded missile.   

-the crew of a huge oil tanker summon a little gillnet boat over to the side and drops a line.  the gillnetter hooks up a big, fat salmon and sends dinner up to the crew.

-a guy stands on the back deck of his drift boat, waving nonchalantly at passers-by as he blasts an AK-47 at sea lions eating the salmon out of his gillnet.

-a guy has trouble with ruthless fishermen poaching his pots.  early one morning he finds a dead body floating.  he fishes the body out of the water and props it up in the stern of his boat with a shotgun stuck under its arm, and fishes the whole day.  he has no more trouble with poachers.

-a 15-foot mako shark circles the boat for a few minutes.  the crew stays away from the rail and worries about what he might be considering.

-isopods are caught in deep-water crab pots, about 2,000 feet below the surface.  they look like an alien cross between a giant cockroach and an armadillo, and they smell horrendous.  a mate brings one home and, in a state of inexplicable drunkenness, stuffs it in the toilet at the bar.  the next day it's pictured on the front page of the local paper and the mate, now in a state of inexplicable ire, exclaims "hey, that's my isopod!"

-a massive wave rolls the boat to such a severe angle that a mate is literally catapulted from his work station into the sea.

-the longline slips from the hauling block and starts dragging a pot across the deck.  the mate standing at the rail can't quite jump out of the way in time and the pot smashes into him and shot-puts him into the sea.

-fish that inflate themselves to the size of basketballs as a defense mechanism, big fish with the tails of smaller fish sticking out of their mouths, ugly, monstrous, slimy, spiky, grotesque fish, and smooth, handsome, colorful, beautiful fish, poisonous fish, and a fish that might be the tastiest thing on the planet.  

-in a squall, hundreds of small, brightly colored birds seek shelter in the cabin of a fishing boat.  the mate on watch can't concentrate as they flutter all about and their tiny feet tickle his head and shoulders.

-on a trip across the Gulf of Mexico the mate gets the weird feeling that he should check the engine room again, even though he just checked it a little while earlier.  sure enough, the bell housing on the raw water pump has split and the ocean is pouring into the engine room, about to submerge the oil pan and drown the engine.  disaster is narrowly averted.

-a huge container ship runs directly at a little fishing boat, with zero regard for the fact that the fishing boat has the right of way.  the container ship does not respond to radio calls on any channel.  last-second, evasive maneuvers by the fishing vessel save the lives of its captain and crew.

-a novice fisherman runs his boat at top speed to set his net.  he tears both out-drives off his boat and beaches himself on the sandbar, which he'd mistaken for a great school of fish.

-a sixty-pound king salmon wrestles a 160-pound man over the rail and into the sea.   

this is just off the top of my head.  perhaps there will be another list at some point.  but i still think the Grand Canyon is the craziest thing i've ever seen.

.

check out my first published article, "How to Get Work on an Alaska Fishing Boat", at www.thetravelersnotebook.com.  got me $25 for that sucker.  now i can go to Subway!

this rainy afternoon(it rains here MORE than reputed) was spent at the Columbia River Maritime Museum.  it's kind of small but it's loaded.  the Columbia is an amazing natural resource, and its ebb and flow really shaped the development of the region, from the timber industry, to shipping and trade, and of course, fishing.  the museum's exhibits feature short and entertaining anecdotes which accompany striking pictures and paintings, fascinating artifacts, and detailed, large-scale models, as well as the decommissioned Lighthouse Ship which served as a huge floating navigational aid/haven from the weather before technology rendered it superfluous.  as the museum tells the stories behind the growth of the area, one understands that a river like the Columbia is not merely a natural force, but a political and economic one as well.

 the thing that struck me the most, however, was recognizing the true essence of the phrase, 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'.  technology is the massive vehicle of change.  communication is much faster, harvesting techniques more advanced, production methods more efficient, everything is bigger, faster, stronger.  but contention between people over certain things exists today exactly as it did 130 years ago.  i read newspaper clippings and other historical documents from as far back as 1880 which chronicled the 'buzz issues' of the time as the Columbia evolved: immigrant labor, preservation vs. exploitation, and the fight for fair market value.  it was Chinese, now it's Mexican.  it was homesteaders vs. loggers, now it's real estate developers vs. historical society.  it's still fishermen vs. canneries, but now it's over $2 instead of a nickel.  who knows how the issues will change in the next 100 years, but it's safe to say the fighting will be the same. 

another constant issue particular to the Columbia is vessel safety.  the small area around the entrance to the Columbia River, where powerful river currents smash into high winds and heavy seas and create shallow, shifting sand bars, has been named the Graveyard of the Pacific.  since 1792, over 2,000 vessels have gone down and over 700 people have lost their lives.  the conditions insist that the Coast Guard maintains a relatively intense presence around the Columbia River bar, and a section of the museum is dedicated to their great efforts.  

i got an unexpected little treat while i was there, as a SeaGrant researcher gave a little presentation on some of the wild and strange fish he's encountered over his years of study around the country.  i learned that seahorses are monogamous, squid communicate by changing color, and one little predator actually electrocutes its prey.  it was pretty cool.  and it made me think about some of the unusual things i've seen during my offshore experience.  which gave me the subject for my next blog.  all in all, quite a worthwhile afternoon.

 

the dungeness crabs in Oregon have caught a break this year.  we haven't been able to do that much fishing so far this season.  we've been plagued by the worst weather anyone can remember out here.  it started with the typhoon that hit on the second day of december destroying many people's homes and essentially stranding thousands more with road closures and power outages.  while i feel fortunate to come out of the ordeal unscathed, the cost of this event to us fisherman is huge. once the seas calmed down and the businesses got back up and running we were able to go fishing, but we could only locate a fraction of our pots.  the wave surge was so severe that a lot of our gear was simply carried off at mother nature's whim.  i was told that the weather buoy measured a swell of 72 feet before it got wiped out and ceased transmitting.  we've since gotten calls from fishermen as far as thirty miles away reporting the discovery of our pots.  unbelievable.  and the worst part is that the crabs were there.  when we pulled the pots that we did manage to find they were all stuffed with crabs, forty, fifty, sixty pounds per pot.  unfortunately, by this time they were mostly dead, just a disgusting waste.  although you can't really say that you "lost" something that you never actually had, i figure that little blow cost me, conservatively, 10K.  and i'm the lowest guy on the totem pole.  on top of the opportunity cost is the real cost to the owner in the form of lost pots, line, and buoys, hundreds of thousands of dollars altogether.  it can be maddening for the most important variable of the industry to be completely beyond our control, but that's the chance we take when we make the choice to be fishermen.  the debate rages as to whether or not we should receive government subsidies.  personally i'm opposed to the idea, just like i don't think agriculture or other industries should get the big bail out either.  anyway, things have only marginally improved since then.  it's frustrating because on days that we are able to go fishing we do quite well, those days are just too far in between.  and even moderate success causes a whole new set of concerns for some captains.  the mate on the boat next to mine is called Butterbean because he looks like the mini-me version of that big bald boxer.  well as long as Butterbean was broke he was the best mate on the planet.  but as soon as he got his fat fingers on some whiskey coupons the guy went underground and his skipper's been grumbling about him every morning since.  i've known some skippers who essentially kept their crew broke until the end of the season to ensure that they didn't disappear.  and i've known one crewman who got fed up with the practice and came one night and burned the boat to the waterline.  it's a sad but true commentary on some of the characters in the industry, and i think that the often outlandish circumstances of the business is what ignites many people's profound curiosity. 

Yordy Martinez and six other people left Cuba one summer night on a poorly constructed raft.  Even mild seas regularly capsized their craft.  By the second night they had lost almost all of their provisions and one soul.  Not long after another older woman succumbed to exposure and dehydration.  On the ninth day of the ordeal the remaining refugees reached Summerland Key and a new beginning.  That was 1994.
A sickness exists in the Keys called Keys Disease where the notable laissez-faire attitude of the Keys allows a lazy person to become a sloppy, useless, unproductive member of the community.  It's almost acceptable to drink and do not much else.  I don't know if risking your life to escape social oppression makes one immune to such a sickness, but today, only thirteen years removed, Yordy is living the American Dream better than a lot of Americans I know.  He and his gorgeous Costa Rican wife and their two lively young children have just moved into their brand new three-bedroom house that Yordy is finishing himself on Big Coppitt Key.  He owns a boat and runs a small business, commercial fishing for lobster and stone crab from August through May.  He takes time off in the summer to spend with his family and work on his boat and his gear.  He operates entirely under one general premise: keep things simple and work like a motherf&#%er. 
On this day we leave to the dock before 7AM.  It takes less than twenty minutes to reach the first line of traps.  With the sun still crawling over the horizon, crawfish fill the crate.   Yordy and two other men crew the boat.  The shallow water allows them to haul and set a trawl at the same time.  As one trap reaches the rail, the previous trap is pushed off the stern.  Enough line is tied between the traps to allow it to be emptied, cleaned, and re-baited before the line comes taut and pulls the next trap back over the stern into the ocean.  Meanwhile, the next trap has been pulled to the rail and awaits tending.  All of this means that the crew can pull over 500 pots in about six hours.  On this day we're heading to the dock around 1:30 PM with 600 pounds of crawfish on board.  The price is just over $7/pound right now.  You do the math.
Of course it isn't always like this.  But this is where Yordy's philosophy prevails.  When the industry was really booming several years back, he denied greed and refused to over-leverage himself the way a lot of guys did.  He made less money in the short run, but he kept the pressure off and was able to survive when the fishing dropped off a few seasons later.  He's one of the few operations left with a firm foothold in the industry.  Even the encroaching condominiums and resorts that presumable threaten his existence don't faze the kid.  In fact, a sly little smile crosses his face when I mention it.
"All ah den rich people, they likey eatey the longosta."
Yes.  Yes, they do.
We get back to the dock just after 2PM.  Yordy gives me twelve lobster tails out of sheer kindness and generosity.  I want to talk with Yordy a bit longer, to absorb some more of his vibrant spirit, but he has other plans.  "Brah, I needey go ang workey on my house." 
Of course.
And off he goes to bust his ass and be a hero, just living the American Dream.

the commercial fishing fleet in Key West used to be based right downtown, conveniently servicing the bars, shops, and restaurants that cater to the tourist traffic there.  but now fancy marinas, hotels, and resorts dominate the downtown waterfront and the crawfishermen and longliners have been pushed over the Cow Key Channel Bridge to Stock Island.  I beat the docks the other day to try to find a site and get the word on the street.  guys are sweating, and not just from the heat and humidity.  hurricane Wilma blew through two years ago and significant aspects of the local economy have been seriously struggling since.  people with meager means were forced to simply leave.  people with medium means, including many commercial fishermen, are hanging by a thread.  the price of lobster is up, but no one came seem to find any in any abundance.  and they boys can see the conglomerates' shadow looming on the horizon.  the latest rumor is for two massive concrete piers to be demolished, displacing dozens of vessels and making way for a massive resort/condo complex.  I should be fishing by next week and learn the real deal from the boys in the trenches.

I'm in Astoria, OR for a couple of weeks of gear work to prepare for Dungeness crab fishing season. I just got off the Providence Wednesday afternoon, left Kodiak at 8 PM, and landed in Portland at 6 AM. I was psyched to drive straight out to Astoria and get to work, but my boss told me that he wouldn't be ready for me until the next day. For the first time in a long time, I had a day in front of me with nothing to do. This got me thinking, 'how many days in a row have I worked'? The answer, tracking back to June first, is 126. I would like to say, 'and counting', but that option kind of got taken out of my hands. So I'll have to start a new streak. The other day I bought my ticket to Florida for the end of the month. I catch the red-eye across the country, leaving on a Monday night and arriving on Tuesday morning, so I can keep the continuity for that jump. So now I'm thinking, 'how many days in a row can I work'? I figure I'm easily covered until Thanksgiving, when whoever I'm working with will probably want the day off and I expect even the day labor place will be closed. Plus, since I work primarily outside, I'm bound to run into a 'weather day' here at some point. So it's going to demand some creativity and planning to surpass the number I've already established, but I'm very interested for it to play out, and then discover where I stand at the end, spiritually, physically, financially and all. That being said, it felt fantastic to sit at Henry's in downtown Portland and order-up plate after plate of delicious $2 happy hour appetizers and observe the attractive waitresses satellite around my fixed position at the well-conceived bar. The more social atmosphere I soaked in, the more my Alaska mission felt like a sentence. I'm very glad that this dungeness fishery is structured around day trips. Speaking of which, it took no time to get myself situated out here in Astoria. I hooked up an '89 Ford Tempo for the cost of insurance and a 23-foot Jayco trailer - affectionately known hereafter as 'the Jake' - with electric, water, sewer, and cable for $300 a month. So things are looking good after a disappointing month in Alaska. My new boat, the Melko II, looks good, and my new skipper, "Woolly" Mike, is calm and smart. So the gear work starts and I cycle back to the beginning of the fisherman's mental circle of life, nervous and excited, willing and wary, straining to figure, surmise, and anticipate something essentially unknowable. I'm realizing that I'm an incredibly hopeful person. And that I'm beginning to grow weary of such hopefulness.

The sharpest thing on the planet, without question, is a brand new Victoronox fishing knife.  There is no question about it.  The thing will cut you to the bone from across the room.  The first thing that happens when I purchase a brand new Victoronox fishing knife is that it leaps from its incompetent little plastic sheath and attacks my fingertips.  It takes a moment to notice you've been cut by one of these things, like when you glance down and notice the steady stream of blood gathering around your feet and you think, 'Where is that coming from?', and then you check your hand and it's completely smeared in deep red ooze and then the fierce sting registers in your brain.  A Vicky is so quick it takes your nerve endings a minute to catch up.  So you wrap some electrical tape around this wound that you can't even see and now the problem is not so much the cut itself, but the fact that you're reduced to four operable digits on the one hand for  the foreseeable future because Vicky cuts are loath to heal.  This is how my codfish trip begins.
                                                                            ready!

Actually it begins two weeks prior with twelve-hours-a-day of gear work to get all the huge traps ready to fish.  This is the unglamorous side of commercial fishing that goes unrecognized by those not familiar with the industry.  The hours spent working on pumps, motors, valves, hoses, line, mesh, traps, gear, electronics, cleaning, grinding, painting - the bulk of the work for which no one earns a dime.  It's a huge gamble, to hope that the relatively brief period of actual fishing will make up for all of that time spent, the incredibly gross hours of opportunity cost.  The guys on deck have a hard job, true, but the skipper is the one who has all the pressure to produce, to make the sacrifice pay off for the crew, to put us on some damn fish.  Otherwise he won't have a crew for very long.  Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gear and machinery being put at risk out there on the open ocean.  It's easy to understand why so many of them are rather high-strung individuals.  A certain degree of catastrophe has to be expected with so many variables conspiring out there, so many chances for something to go wrong.  The odds of a flawlessly productive trip are nil.  If you want to avoid trouble you better just tie your boat to the dock and slap up the 'For Sale' sign.
                                                       let's see what we got!

We're 'plus four' on this trip, meaning we've got the skipper, Craig, plus me, Nate, the rookie from Colorado, Justin, the big guy from Dutch Harbor, and Loren, my old buddy from the Totem crew over in Bristol Bay.  Justin and Loren have worked the Providence before and Nate has experience in some other fisheries, so we have the makings of a really good crew.  So the deck is loaded with traps and line, we've got our grub, we've got our bait, and we're out.  Eighteen hours to the fishing grounds.  This, and the eighteen hour steam home with a boat load, is the joy of a fishing trip.  The two weeks in between is a numbing blur of cold, wet, mumbling, grumbling, sleep-deprived, mild chaos.  Everyone talks about quitting - except Justin, who scarcely says a word even when you ask him a direct question - and everyone continues to do their job with vigor.  The weather is poor half the day, and really poor the other half.  When we were on the beach we couldn't wait to leave.  Now we can't wait to head home.  This is the eternal cycle of a trip fisherman's life - in too deep.
                                                       a couple of twenty pounders

Anyway, we all work through our cuts and bumps and bruises and fatigue and foul weather, and eventually circumstances dictate that we head for the beach.  I sleep like a big, fat, happy baby.  We deliver our fish.  We are unimpressed.  I was going to leave Kodiak this week, but I have yet to recoup what I've invested up here.  Call the airline, change the flight.  Bait, fuel, grub - we're out.  One more time around, echoing the wicked hope of every trip fisherman - 'this could be the one.'
                                                                    nap time