Held up in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor

Jan 24, 2009

Due to the nature of this fishery I'm now in, it is unlikely to venture more than 12-16 hours from port and the cannery. There is no processing on board this time. The fish are actually stored in a "live tank" directly under the deck of the boat. When fishing is good, the boat could be filled up in 3 days of good tows. If fishing is not so good, and the fish are hiding, it will probably take closer to 5 or 6 days. There will be a lot more time spent inland at port this time around than last. There is rumor from the captain that we could held up in port for close to 5 days on the first offload. All that time I'll be getting paid the same as if I was at sea, but I'll be inland and probably spending money here and there. As nice as it will be to keep in touch much easier this time around, I was looking forward to the kind of isolation this job can provide.

This boat fishes using a large net thrown out the back of the boat. It tows the net for 4 to 12 hours at a time depending on the density of the fish. A typical tow with yield close to 90 metric tons. I personally only deal with around 300 to 500 kgs of each tow. I work in a small area on deck away from the large net with my sampling tools. My responsibilities are to give an average weight of the target fish, and all the by catch as well. By catch is all the fish caught that is not the target fish. My job is to identify all the fish within my sample, give average weights and then take specimen samples from specific fish in order to help the fishery get a better picture of age, sex, weight, length, population, and area of population for the fish being caught in the fishery.

I hope that last paragraph gives you a better idea to exactly what it is that I do while I'm out at sea. Mostly I eat, sleep, watch movies, and read. There is a lot of down time, and I am left with a lot of time to think. Life is simple and straight forward. There are no social obligations. My day isn't planned around what is on TV that day. The biggest concern I have is to make sure to make a new pot of coffee if you drank the last drop. A mistake only made once. A side note, this boat has liquid creamer. A treat I did not enjoy on the last two boats. Liquid creamer was reserved for the Captain and mates use only. A stash I dipped into a couple of times when I was ballsy enough to ask, and they were generous enough to oblige.

As you could imagine, the stressless life style of this job is extremely inviting. For me, it was a feeling acquired rather than innate. I've know a handful of people whom I trained with, who could not stand the weeks to months of silence from family, friends, and society. Those who have taken to this job, look forward to it. This week at sea, 3-5 days on land, then a week at sea followed by 3-5 days on land is rather annoying. Now having been at sea for 43 straight days, 21 or 30 doesn't seem so bad. It actually seems inviting. The one upside to being in and out of port so often, I can keep this blog more up to date. Something I know my parents will enjoy. This fishery is uneventful to say the least. So for this contract I think I will focus more on the island of Dutch Harbor and the history of the surrounding the different parts of the island. I will spending a lot of time on it, and I suspect I will run into a couple of characters here and there that will bring an interesting story. If you have an specific questions that I could answer, please ask.


- Casey

Don't call it a come back . . .

Sorry about the time passed since the last entry. As soon as I hit land, I had a lot of catching up with life to do.

November 8th was the last day of the fishing season. I got off the boat after 43 days on board. Said my goodbyes to a great crew and an awesome experience aboard a boat that I was apprehensive of when I first boarded. The trip could not have gone better.

I spent the night of the 8th and the 9th in Dutch Harbor. I ran into four friends from training and we ate, drank, and shared or stories of our first foray with our new career. Each one of us had similar experiences, but in different parts of the Ocean. We all had some unique experiences and pictures to show one another, and in Jason's case, incite some jealousy from the others with his pictures of Whales (Humpbacks and Killers) riding right next to the boat for over an hour.

We all entered into this job looking for something adventurous. All of us leaving or looking for, something different, yet the same. 6 of us from training in Anchorage met up again in Seattle after 2 1/2 months of the adventure and unknown that we had signed up for at the end of the Summer of 2008. Every single one of us happy to be back on land with some money loitering in our previous bleak bank statements. Each one us glad of the decisions we made to take a chance, head to Alaska to count fish for three straight months.

I enjoyed showing off Seattle to my new friends who had never been to the Northwest before. I spent three weeks in Seattle doing my debriefing. During this process, I have to go over every single number that I had entered into the database to make sure there were no typos, miscalculations, or worse, miss identified fish. This was a slow and tedious process, one that I was not prepared to have to endure. But the process allowed for me to get paid while being in Seattle, in the U-district, free of charge, with some great friends of mine for 3 weeks.

After all of the paperwork was combed through, it was off to Spokane to visit the city and friends I had left at the end of July. I weathered all that mother nature threw at Spokane. I was in Spokane for about 5 weeks. I supposed to be back up in Alaska on the 29th of December to start my new contract, but due to all havoc that 6 inches of snow can bring to SeaTac airport, flights to Anchorage were canceled. On top of that, there was/is a strike in the Pot Cod fishery. My company was setting me up to board most of the fishing vessels that fish for Cod using Pots (just like the crab boats). Once the strike hit, they didn't need me anymore, so the start of my new contract got pushed back to January 12th.

I had a week of training in Seattle. 50-60 biologists learning about the new regulations and going over different ways to take our samples and do our jobs to better help the fishery service. Pollock season starts January 20th. So everyone of us headed out to Dutch after training to get aboard Pollock trawl boats. This is where the boat fishes for Pollock using a giant net out the back. The boat brings any where between 20-80 metric tons of fish aboard in one pull. Pollock is the fish that is used in most food that is labeled "fish". Fish sticks, filet-o-fish, fish and chips, even fake krab and filler for chicken mcnuggets use Pollock. The pollock fishing fleet is the largest of the fishing fleets in Alaska. The fish is so abundant, they are more like a weed then they are a fish. Close to 48 % of the fish taken from the Bering Sea, by weight, in a year is Pollock.They are sexually mature at a very early age, and they produce a lot of fertilized eggs per breeding season. The row of the Pollock is where all the money is made. The row is sold to Japan by the Kilo and seems to be in great demand.

I am a board a catcher vessel delivers the catch to a plant to process. No processing aboard the ship. So the crew is considerably smaller then the last two boats I was on. It's just me, the Captain, and three deck hands populating this 120-200 foot vessel. So due to the nature of being a catcher vessel, the boat will only be out to sea for short trips then back into dock to offload. The trips will only last 3-5 days. A tad shorter then then the 21 and 43 day trips I endured last season.

This is the start of the next season, and the beginning to a new year. A completely new challenge working in a completely different fishery. I've seen the Bering Sea before, so I'm coming at her with a little experience under my belt. Although she'll be biting much harder this season. It's winter. "A" season. Better fishing, against stronger weather. Throw in some ice build up on the boat, ice formations in the sea, and 20 - 40 foot swells, and things get fun. We'll see if its as bad as it's been made out to be.



- Casey