by Robson Green
Deckhand Seamus is showing me the ropes. We need to bring up the pots that the crew baited and set a mile off the ocean floor a couple of weeks ago. A machine starts winching them up. We need to turn into the weather to get the catch on board, and as we do so a wave smacks me in the face like an angry wench. Her hand is bitter cold. As I recover I ask Seamus at what age he started doing this.
‘Fourteen!’ he shouts.
‘Fourteen?’ Why on earth does he do this? There must be easier ways to make a living, I think.
‘Fucking and fishing: that’s what Dad taught me.’
Wow.
Actually, Seamus and the rest of the lads are men of a certain ilk: strong, dependent on one another, courageous, fearless, and, in a strange way, really caring. Like soldiers or miners, brothers in arms in the face of adversity – in this case, Mother Nature. Their bond is essential because if there’s no trust they literally could die. The number of times Seamus pushes me upright or catches me before I fall is amazing, as if he has a sixth sense for my safety. The guys work their arses off, heaving and lifting the catch onto the boat, all the while being tossed around like toys. I suddenly understand what having your sea legs means – it’s not only being able to withstand the physical urge to vomit but also to move with the boat as it lurches left, right and centre.
I am put in charge of the gutting the fish. Seamus picks up a very large knife, takes a sable and bumps it on the head, then decapitates, disembowels and throws the flesh down the chute. He continues with the next fish: three bold moves with the knife and on to the next. The blow to the head of the first fish was just for TV; in reality the sablefish are decapitated before they can blink, if they could. I take the knife and wield it dangerously as I try to remain upright. I steady myself and chop the deep-sea creature’s head off, gut it and throw the carcass down the chute. The smell of rancid guts is pungent and inescapable. I continue with the next. Head off, guts out, down the chute. It’s a brutal, hellish scene of certain death, with potential death all around us.
Head off, insides out, down the chute. Another and another. Seamus watches over me but I can take no more. I run to the side of the boat but quickly realise I can’t vomit over the edge as it will blow back in my face. I puke on deck, all over my boots, a lurid yellow goop. But, unlike with a tummy bug or after an excess of piña coladas, I get no relief; I just feel even worse. As the men heave another load onto the deck, so do I. Our work rate is in sync: every ten minutes another haul, another hurl.
It’s dark now and a bit like being tossed about by a cat that’s popped your eyes out and eventually will eat you whole, just not yet – there’s more pawing, chasing and batting mid-air to be done – and all I want to do is die. Bob guides us through a rising swell to more marker buoys. He is a worried man tonight, not because of the weather but because he needs to balance the books. The last two locations haven’t been yielding.
I have been on board for twelve hours now, working, falling and puking. I’m dog-tired. With the light gone I have no sight of the horizon and no perspective of which way is up. But although I am weakened, the anger inside me is growing and seething. As we pull up by another marker buoy, I help the lads land another pot. A wave hits me clean in the face. I can’t breathe as I inhale the icy seawater. It’s up my nose, in my lungs and stinging my eyes. As I try to recover another wave comes. POW! I am punched backwards and in that moment I think I’m going over into the swirling black nightmare. As everything breaks down into slow motion I yell inside: ‘I don’t want anyone else to be Taylor’s dad. I’m his dad! I want to be there for him, no one else.’
Seamus picks me up. What I need now is a good slap but no one gives it to me so I am going to pass one on to someone else. I summon all my strength, stumble across the deck and swing for Jason: ‘Bastard!’ He’s stood by all this time watching me puke and fall and he’s the one who got us into this bleeding mess in the first place. I boom: ‘Turn the fucking boat around!’ The Arctic winds scream around our heads as another wave smashes port side. We fall. In the film version this is the point where I get Jason by the collar, pin him down on the butcher’s block, chop his head off and gut him and throw him down the chute. As if reading my mind, Jason scrambles away.
The soundman has fetched Bob from the wheelhouse – fuck, who’s driving? I stay on the floor. I don’t want to fall anymore. Bob shouts down at me over the winds, which sound like a million banshees.
‘We can’t turn, Robson! The boat’ll flip and then it’s night-night.’
He offers me a hand up. I accept but am immediately bent double for another projectile puking fit.
Another wave smashes the side. At this point I decide to give in and accept that this is how it’s going to end. I’ve never been a religious man but in this moment I am having more words with the Almighty than ever before. I think, nowadays, in the age of science and reason, many see religion as anachronistic and irrelevant to them, but all I can say to those without faith, including myself, is perhaps we’ve never been in a position where we’ve really needed it? Out on the high seas or on the battleground or at a refugee camp, cold reason and science are just not enough. For the first time I pray that I will be reunited with my family. I pray with all my heart and soul and I vow never to complain about being an actor again, as I don’t know the meaning of hardship. All the while I’m having my spiritual epiphany, the crew of the Ocean Pearl graft away, landing pot after pot without a break, undeterred by the vicious storm.
Seamus takes me and the TV crew below deck. He confirms it’s a force-10 storm, which is two off a hurricane (12) on the Beaufort wind force scale. The waves are over twenty feet high and the wind is reaching speeds of 65 m.p.h. He offers us some fried black cod, but we all shake our heads in unison and snaffle another couple of seasickness pills, which are bloody useless. He shows us to our digs. There are four bunks to a closet. I share with Mike and two fishermen and, like a nightmarish version of The Waltons, we say goodnight. The other three guys snore as if they all have serious medical issues. I diagnose sleep apnea and a very bad case of bulimia for myself, as I need to get up every ten minutes to puke.
Finally the wind drops a few knots and Bob is able, very slowly, to make a turn for home. Bob and the crew are happy to stay out fishing, but my pleading every five minutes with Jason has obviously paid off. It went something like this: I’m lying in the closet on the bottom bunk, I shut my eyes, oh God going to be sick, I run to the toilet, dry retch, dry retch, flush, wash my mouth out and knock on Jason’s closet door: ‘Please, Jason, I can’t take anymore! For the love of God!’ I go back to bed and repeat the process. It was worth the begging, though, because we are heading home. I get a burst of energy and rush up to the wheelhouse to see if it’s really true. Bob, being the hero he truly is, has taken pity on me after thirty-six hours of hell and guides us back to safer waters. The crew are apparently pissed off – they’re losing money and it’s our fault. I apologise.
Bob offers me a glass of red wine and a fillet of black cod, which the crew eat for breakfast, lunch and tea.
‘I couldn’t, Bob, I’m sick to my toenails.’
He insists I drink with him. As I sip the claret I feel as if I’ve taken a quantum leap back to the seventeenth century.
‘Thank you for the experience. I will never forget it, Bob.’
His face cracks into smile. We finish our drinks and shake hands.
After dropping us off, the crew head back out to endure another five punishing weeks at sea. I honestly don’t know how they do it, especially in light of what I found out several days later. Just weeks before we arrived, Bob had lost an entire boat, out of his fleet of a dozen trawlers, in a force-9 gale. Sadly, eight of the crew members were also lost at sea. It’s a sobering thought and one that should make us all value our fishermen all the more. So when you’re next eating black cod, give a nod to Bob and his crew – and whatever happens don’t you dare waste a morsel!
As soon as we reach the shore I
ring Vanya. She has been trying to get me for days. She was worried and knew something was wrong. Taylor knew, too.
‘I can’t wait to be home with you,’ I say.
Nothing on the face of God’s earth is as important as my family. I’ve been humbled by the experience on the trawler and have discovered a new-found respect for Mother Nature, not only in her beauty but in all her might.
Chapter Four
ALASKA
‘Thanksgiving’
November 2008, Series 2
Everything is alabaster, including the sky, frozen by the White Witch’s own hoary hand. It’s bitter, harsh, perishing, arctic, glacial, numbing, polar, penetrating, raw, COLD! But unlike in the Narnia books, I haven’t just fallen through the wardrobe to get here; instead I have endured another commercial plane journey, over 2,000 miles this time. It’s more mundane than magical – well, the flying bit is definitely magic, but the loos and the tea not so much. I mean, that’s the paradox of the human spirit, isn’t it? We can make a tube of metal fly through the sky with all our clobber on board but we can’t improve the food or the plumbing! Well done, the Wright Brothers; buck up, Gate Gourmet.
A clinically obese passenger across the aisle from me asks, ‘You been to Alaska before?’ I shake my head.
‘It’s staggering,’ he says. ‘Over a hundred thousand glaciers and most places you can only get to by plane. I hope you got your warm clothes and boots or you’ll be getting chilblains.’
He then goes on to tell me about the terrible problems he has with his feet. I look concerned but inside I’m thinking, Yeah, you can’t keep them out of the bloody pie shop, mate. (Will I go to hell now?)
I walk like a zombie to a waiting transit van to begin a six-hour butt-clenchingly awful journey due south from the city of Anchorage to a place called Homer. We are driving in a blizzard in the dark, which makes Ice Road Truckers seem positively tame.
My Extreme team comprises Jonathan, the AP whose job it is to make sure all the filming runs smoothly, director Jamie Goold, Mike Carling on camera, soundman Patrick Boland and location fixer Hector MacKenzie. They have all been in Alaska for two weeks doing a recce, but it would seem in that time Jonathan still hasn’t gained confidence behind the wheel. The conditions are treacherous and the van is slipping all over the place. We are all on edge. Jonathan is a luvvie like me and really shouldn’t be the designated driver. I vote for Hector, who emigrated to Alaska with his wife twenty years ago. He’s an old-school rough, tough, no-nonsense Scot, and, I’m betting, a superior ice-driver.
Jonathan is craning over the wheel. He can’t see the road, the windscreen is frosting over and . . . what’s that? He hits the brakes and we go into a spectacular skid, turning round and round until we end up parked on the wrong side of the road. We have all had enough. I strongly suggest Hector drives. Jonathan is only too happy to hand over the task but starts having a tizzy because he feels the journey is just too dangerous; he doesn’t want to be on board anymore. I know the feeling. He starts hyperventilating. In a bid to calm him down, Jamie suggests we change the tyres to studded ones to make it a bit safer. Unhelpfully I tell him to ‘man up’, hypocrite that I am: ‘As my Uncle Matheson says, no place is worth going if it’s easy to get to.’
Finally, after a change of driver, tyres and underpants, we arrive at our first Alaskan angling destination – Homer on the Kenai Peninsula. The Kenai, which is as big as the UK, Italy, France and Spain put together but only has a population the size of Newcastle, is a Mecca for salmon fishermen from all over the world. The fish are healthy and plentiful in this unspoiled paradise and only the very lucky, like me, have the chance to cast a line here.
It’s really beginning to sink in that I am going to places most professional and amateur anglers can only dream about, and no one more so than my Uncle Matheson. For decades he has dreamt of dipping his fly rod in the Kenai River and exploring the unspoiled Alaskan wilderness. And what’s more he’s a trained taxidermist so he would doubly love it here, because at every turn, from the airport to the hotel, from the shopping mall to people’s homes, there’s always a stuffed creature, or usually several, on display. It’s a fishing and taxidermy utopia. I’ll bring Matheson here one day, I think, but right now what I need is a stiff drink.
Home from Homer
My first impression of Homer is, well, that I can’t see a bloody thing, save a small wooden cabin otherwise known as the The Salty Dawg Saloon Bar. I enter; the smell of stale hops hits me. This is a place where men are men and moose are frightened. Dollar bills are pinned to the walls and hanging from the ceiling, with all manner of messages written in marker pen: ‘Shelly loves Buck.’ ‘Noah will pistol-whip Buck if he touches Shelly.’ An old salty dawg sings Country and Western songs in the corner, strumming his guitar and puffing on a harmonica – except that they’re more ‘Cold and Northern’ songs about being chilled to the bone and coming back from fishing and getting the dry-land blues. I feel slightly melancholy.
Keith Kalke introduces himself. He’s an all-American hunter with a camo baseball cap, an impressive moustache and eyes that could pierce steel. Unlike the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, Keith started hunting and fishing with his father aged just five. (In 2011, it was discovered that Sarah wasn’t quite the out-doorsy girl she’d claimed to be.) Keith orders a beer and I order a white wine. No one including Keith bats an eyelid at this, which is disappointing as part of me (the mad part) wants a bit of a ruckus. There is none. Apparently, there are one or two Alaskan fishermen who enjoy a glass of Pinot Grigio as much as I do. Well, it goes very well with king salmon and there’s certainly no shortage of Oncorhynchus tshawytscha (from the Ancient Greek meaning ‘hook nose’) up here. We’ll be searching for the king in the morning, and Keith is very confident we’ll catch.
I raise a toast: ‘To good king salmon fishing!’
‘Slammin’ salmon!’ says Keith, and we will be.
At this time of year, millions of Pacific salmon of all species, including the king (or chinook), pink, chum, sockeye (or red) and coho (also known as silvers), are making their epic journey back to their freshwater homes after years of feeding in the ocean. And what’s more amazing is that they are returning to breed and then die. This life cycle is known as semelparity – from the Latin semel, ‘once’, and pario, ‘to beget’ – although no one knows why Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus) expire after breeding while Atlantic salmon (Salmo) survive. It’s one of life’s eternal mysteries, but without their sacrifice the ecosystem in Alaska would struggle to thrive. These fish not only support human life in this winter wonderland but also the lives of birds, otters, bears – and the forests themselves. The salmon bring with them vital nutrients from the ocean, such as nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus, which, via the wild animals that love to feast on them, fertilise the trees and plant life. Almost every organism around the river basin of Alaska has salmon in its DNA.
After a breakfast of tinned hot dogs, waffles and cream at our Travelodge-type hotel, I meet up with Keith and his son, Ross. We are going out on his boat, the Ocean Hunter, in pursuit of piscatorial royalty, and I’m excited. We drop anchor near Yukon Island in Kachemak Bay, part of the vast estuary where the Yukon River meets the mighty Pacific. Keith begins to explain the method of fishing we’ll be using.
‘We’re running a twenty-five-pound test line with a flasher. This is gonna be like a school bait fish. All it’s going to do is attract and get their attention and they’ll come up and look at this and they’ll see the bait dragging behind it,’ he says in his rugged way.
‘You give them a little tease and then they bite,’ I say, nodding.
We’re also putting on a downrigger, a weight to keep the bait at a depth of fifty feet.
Almost immediately Keith shouts, ‘Fish on!’
‘You are kidding me!’
The line is away. I take the rod. The odds are stacked in my favour because unlike the fly reels I use, which are basic storage facilities for the fly line
with little or no tension at all, these reels provide up to fifteen to twenty pounds of tension along with a line that has a twenty-five-pound breaking strain. Nevertheless, if you don’t keep yourself focused and the line tight, you will most likely lose your prize. I land the fish.
‘King on deck!’ says Keith.
In over thirty years of casting a line for salmon and trout, this is Keith’s fastest bite ever.
‘That took us, what, a minute?’ says Keith.
Thirty seconds, more like. I try in vain to deliver a PTC that will enlighten, educate and inspire the viewer but what they get is, ‘Hey . . . Woo, man, that’s a FISH! You’re the man, Keith! You’re the lad!’ I present my catch to the lens saying, ‘This is the number-one salmon of them all. You’ve got your sockeye, your pink and your chum salmon but this is why we came to Alaska. Every salmon fisherman’s dream is the king salmon.’ I then drop the fish. I bloody drop it. Keith and his son share a look of incredulity. Their silence speaks volumes.
Some time later, I manage to mend bridges when we start talking of our shared passion for fishing. Ross says, ‘Once you get addicted, you’re done.’ And he’s right: it is an addiction, but what a healthy one – and you don’t need to spend months in the Priory to get over it, which is a key point to underline to loved ones when explaining long absences and substantial financial investment in the sport. ‘Yes, I know it’s expensive, darling, but if I gave up fishing and took up crack . . . In the long term, fishing would be cheaper.’ Google the cost of the Priory. You could come to Alaska five times over and still have cash to spare for bone fishing in the Bahamas!
