by Carl Safina
WE EAGERLY AWAIT the first fish. The birds practice the refined patience of scavengers. But they know well that the empty hooks are their signal. The fulmars press close, jostling for position. The sky is densely overcast, blue only at the far horizons. Shaun removes a few uneaten pieces of soggy bait from the hooks and flings them to the feathered mob, which rushes forward. Momentary noisy squabbles ensue, and the baits are gone instantly.
Hunger drives everything here: fish, birds, fishermen. Except me. Cal quickly rinses my breakfast off the deck. Embarrassed, I apologize and say again how good his cooking is. Cal says generously, “It happens to all of us. Hardly anybody eats the first night out of port.”
Jim opens a beer, and gulps and spits out three quick swigs.
The first Sablefish come swinging aboard, several in a row. They are a sleeker, more graceful-looking fish than you would expect from so deep, from such cold. They are overall a dark charcoal gray with an olive-green tint, their backs a little darker than their bellies. The smaller ones have a mottled pattern on the dorsal surface. The ones we’re now catching range to about eighteen pounds, but most are between five and fifteen. Their body narrows to a deeply forked tail, which suggests activity and speed. I wonder if any human eye has ever seen them swim in their natural habitat. They sometimes come up on several hooks consecutively, suggesting that the hooks arrested groups traveling in small packs. After five or ten or fifteen hooks without a fish, there may be three or four or six hooks with Sablefish on each.
Now we’re into the Sablefish pretty heavily. The winch brings the line up, and Shaun gaff-hooks the larger fish for security before the line lifts them from the water, to make sure their weight doesn’t pull them off the hook and back into the sea. Very occasionally comes up a fish whose mouth is mangled by an old hook scar—two strikes and out. Quite busy now, Shaun pulls most fish off the hook and swings them to his right into a waiting pen on deck. The incoming line goes through a pair of rollers like two kitchen rolling pins, called the “hook stripper” or “crucifier.” Any fish Shaun doesn’t gaff or remove, and any remaining bait, gets dragged to the paired rollers. When a fish’s head hits the rollers, the hook is pulled from its jaws. It then slides into the on-deck bin, called the “checker.” The rest of the line then goes around the winch and a person sits methodically coiling each skate of line.
Another crew member cuts the fishes’ heads off, removes their entrails, and puts them into the “scraping checker.” Fish are picked from that bin, their kidneys are scraped from against the spine in their body cavity, and their next stop is the bed of snowy ice in the hold below-decks. Mark comments, “It’s pretty efficient; the fish go from point A to B to C to D.”
The fish, some with their faces ripped open, most with gaff wounds, continue arriving in the fish box. If they are in a form of agony, we may feel fortunate that it is a mute agony. They try to do what they know, which is to swim, until, despite their massive shocks and wounds, they simply suffocate in our atmosphere. We hear them slapping around in the checker, a sound we quickly grow accustomed to; a sound that says we are succeeding in the task we have set for ourselves. By the time they’ve come to the surface, they are fish the way we expect to see them: on a hook, detached from the context of their natural motion and their element, basically dead meat. How could we see these fish on their own terms, how they breed and feed and spawn and migrate? We remain impoverished of the experience of seeing them in their interest and intrigue as wild animals, ranging their natural habitats. There are many aspects of fishing I find interesting. Some I enjoy. But some I lament, even while willingly participating.
We’re catching other things besides Sablefish. About 10 percent comprise a variety of other fishes: stingless rays called skates; flatfish called turbot; an occasional cutlass-shaped grenadier; and several species of a group called rockfishes that are long-lived, late-maturing, and rather sensitive to fishing pressure. Of these we see mainly Shortraker Rockfish and Idiotfish (I wonder who the last is named after). These rockfishes are an astonishing Day-Glo orange, the color of the crew’s foul-weather gear. They have enormous eyes for navigating their dark world. Many deep-sea fish are orange or red, even though this color is the first to drop out as you go deeper. By the time you’re down fifty feet, anything orange or red already looks gray. As the light dims with depth, red looks black. Many deep-living fish are pigmented bright red or orange so they will be gray to black where they live, depending on how much light is penetrating—a passive, self-adjusting form of camouflage.
We discard the skates, turbots, and grenadiers. We keep the rockfishes, the Sablefish of course, and the occasional halibut. Every fishery captures and kills marine life it is not trying to catch, and this by-kill accounts for fully a quarter of the entire world catch—roughly 27 million tons of sea life annually killed and discarded. Some kinds of fishing gear have enormous by-kill. In certain parts of the world shrimp nets kill more than eight pounds of juvenile fish and other marine creatures for every pound of shrimp. Alaska’s Sablefish and halibut fleet has relatively less by-kill than many other fisheries.
Masonic’s lines are set on the slope so as to lay across a range of depths. Halibut are more common on the shallower end of the miles-long string. These are not large ones as halibut grow, but they are large anyway, up to fifty pounds—the size of a desk top. They live a life of ambush, lying flattened on the bottom, scanning their scant heaven for scarfable prey. They hatch as free-swimming larvae, and as they settle in for a life sentence of lying on one side—like all flounders and soles—one eye migrates until both are on the same side of their head. This doesn’t look as strange as it is, because nature bundles grace into all things functional. These are large eyes, to help them gather intelligence in the dark, cold water. With those eyes and their rounded lips, a halibut looks oddly friendly.
The halibut and Sablefish come up quite vigorous. Those few that fall off the hook swim away. That’s because they have no internal air bladders for neutralizing buoyancy. Not so the rockfishes, skates, and grenadiers. As they come from the pressure of the great deep to the surface, the rockfishes’ internal air bladders expand so much that they push their stomachs out their mouths like bubble gum. Their eyes are often telescoped hideously as will. The skates look stunned from the change in depth. The grenadiers, so unwanted, come up in the worst condition, dead and all beaten up; apparently they’re very delicate.
The discarded fishes are immediately beset by the fulmars, who tear at them. They peck and pull their bodies so aggressively they prevent them from sinking. The Sablefish entrails likewise become instant bird food.
The increasingly dense crowd of fulmars—now forming a ferocious feathered rabble—already numbers about a thousand. A boat can attract all the birds for many miles around. They coat the water out to a hundred yards, as though the boat were trailing a long, feathered skirt. They keep up an incessant racket of hostile, competitive whining, whistling, croaking, and yakkering. They lack poise and are devoid of decorum. In dense packs, they churlishly churn the water white around discarded fish, heads, and entrails, screaming, squabbling, pulling gobbets of flesh, and wolfing guts. In appearance and behavior, they seem always just one webbed footstep ahead of starvation. Each fish head or gut bunch that hits the water instantly draws dozens of rushing fulmars—jostling, pecking, pushing, noisily threatening each other. The fighting is fierce, but the ferocity comes from hunger, not anger. They waste no motion on animosity. They merely try to get food—whatever that takes.
Quarreling packs fall behind as the boat moves slowly along the gear, then they come flying back in hungering little flocks and join fresh fish fights. Mark says, “When the birds first arrive in these waters—in April, early May—they seem really ravenous, extremely aggressive, almost frenzied. After June the albatrosses thin out noticeably in numbers, and intensity. But these fulmars are on us all season, always very aggressive. They’re so nasty to each other—look at these here, biting each other’s nec
ks—it’s incredible. When you get a huge pack of fulmars around the boat like this, nothing gets in the middle of them, except other fulmars. No other animal seems able to cope with this kind of frenzy.”
The fulmars peck and gouge at the fish heads with such voracity it’s a little disconcerting. Floating heads quickly lose their eyes. I say, “It’s a jungle out there.”
A ferocious feathered rabble
Mark laughs. “It really is,” he says. “And these birds are the biggest threat to people lost at sea around here. If you go unconscious, the first thing that’ll get you—is the birds.”
I turn and look at him with surprise.
“Oh yeah, the first thing that’ll get you. A few years ago while we were in the Aleutians, the Majestic, a boat a lot like this, screwed up a little bit. The crew had loaded the boat badly, and it was unsteady. The wind was blowing only about thirty, but the boat rolled over. I heard their Mayday. It turned out that I was the closest boat. Considering the wind and current, I went to where they should have drifted. As we were approaching, a Coast Guard helicopter got on them. When I saw them come out of the ocean, it had much more of an emotional impact on me than I would have predicted. Anyway, the boat’s crew had been in the water in survival suits for eight hours, and they said that when they were starting to pass out, or starting to sleep in the water, they had fulmars all around them, ready to peck out their eyes.”
If the fulmars look vicious, almost reptilian, the albatrosses maintain their stateliness as they dine on death. Most of them hang behind the boat, detached from the fulmars’ squabbles. Mark says, “The albatrosses don’t seem to fight. They don’t seem to attack each other.”
Churlishly churning the water white
FLECKED WITH WHITECAPS beneath gray skies, the ocean emanates a cold, uninviting countenance. Yet it proves home to many creatures. Visible through binoculars, across the whole sweep of distant view, are moving seabirds silhouetted against the pewter sea and low clouds. A mile away a large flock of albatrosses has gathered over some feast unseen to us. We can see about a hundred of them wheeling and circling and landing in the water. I wonder what they’re eating. Possibly, salmon are attacking herring under those albatrosses. I like seeing them foraging naturally, not mobbed and beggared behind the boat.
Shaun at the rail—gaffing, swinging; gaffing, swinging—suddenly spots a Short-tailed Albatross. It’s considerably larger than the Hawaiian albatrosses. Shaun emphasizes to me something I know very well: how fortunate I am to see one.
Someone says, “I hate seeing the Short-tails, ’cause it scares me to think of what they could do to us. It’s good to know that they’re out here—we just have to make sure nothing ever happens to one.”
Shaun, talking to me while watching the hooks coming up—gaffing, swinging—says, “One day last year we had four Short-tailed Albatrosses around the boat. You’d better believe we were towing all kindsa stuff to make sure the Short-tails would get nowhere near the gear.”
I ask Mark how he became the spiritual leader and guru of the fleet’s efforts to avoid killing seabirds. He laughs and then pauses before saying, “We had never caught very many birds, but a couple of years ago there were so many birds in one area that we were killing several Laysan Albatrosses a day. We’d never done that. We’d killed a fulmar once in a while, but it was really distressing to be killing albatrosses. I felt it was kind of a crime. The Laysan is my favorite. They’re just such strikingly beautiful fliers; all the albatrosses are. I don’t know—it just seemed like it was bad juju to be doing that. Bad karma.
“On the first halibut schooner I worked on, the Grant, we’d towed buoys if we had a lot of birds around. We weren’t using them for conserving seabirds; we just didn’t want hooks going down without bait. Obviously. So while we were in this spot with so many birds, we spent a few days trying different things to keep them away. We were towing different stuff around. After several days we found a combination that worked really well. Since then we’ve tried different things, but variations on the Japanese bird line—basically streamers coming off a line towed from the roof of the baiting station—seem to work best.
“Our bird-avoidance experiments seemed to coincide with environmentalists’ concerns about the endangered Short-tails being at risk from long-lining. Our fleet had a couple of Short-tailed Albatross kills, so we had to do something here. Plus, the problems faced by other albatrosses in other fisheries—. So we figured out a solution that was working for us, and I published an article in the Alaska Fisherman’s Journal.”
Tim suddenly announces, “We got about twenty-five hundred pounds from the first string, plus five hundred pounds of halibut.” He interprets to me, “Not bad; not great.”
We do it all over again.
And again.
Each time we pick up a few miles of fishing gear we rebait thousands of hooks and send the line down and pick up the next miles-long string.
Sometimes hook after hook brings a fish. Sometimes a long series of hooks comes up empty. The men comment repeatedly that the catching is spotty; that the area must have been worked recently by another boat. In this big ocean, where we will see no sign of other humans for days, it seems astonishing that one other boat could have a noticeable effect. But the fish occur in concentrations. They’re not just spread everywhere. That’s why we ran thirty-six hours to get here. Because in the vast sea, there aren’t as many fish in as many places as you might first guess.
OVER THE EIGHTEEN-HOUR workdays of this intended two-week trip, we will take no Sabbath. The six-hour night finds us all in our racks—so devoid of humanity is this place that no one stands watch—but the heave of the ocean and the sound of moving water inches from our heads remain incessant. The ocean continually reminds us that this is not our habitat. When the sea is rough, our bodies occasionally leave the mat. A bit uncomfortable. All through the black, moving darkness, we drift unhelmed, trailing our train of seabirds, sleeping fitfully.
While we endure our dreams, Sablefish are committing suicide in the dark.
Daylight means either setting or hauling. Everyone takes shifts at every task, skipper included. Gaffing, swinging, the sound of the winch, the line and coming hooks clicking through the rollers, cutting heads, throwing heads in the water, gutting fish, throwing guts in the water, coiling line as it comes up, baiting and baiting and baiting, coiling more, packing freshly killed fish away on ice, baiting more; it continues and continues—long after the novelty wears off. Always, the boat is rolling, rolling in the long, sweeping swells. Though everything is methodical, there is so much repetition and sameness that any sense of routine dissipates into one prolonged experience. Days begin blending.
LATE AFTERNOON. Hauling. Shaun Bailey is taking another shift at the rollers. Gaffing, swinging. When one rather large fish comes up, it falls off the line before Shaun gets the gaff hook in. A thing measurable in dollars splashes back. Shaun reaches with the long gaff handle.
Cal shouts enthusiasm. “Get it, Bailey!”
Shaun reaches his utmost as the fish slowly begins to sink. As he stretches farther over the rail his feet come off the deck just as a swell rocks the boat, and in the next instant he is over the rail and in the bone-chilling Alaskan ocean wearing boots and heavy clothing.
The fulmars hesitate. Gal leaps over the fish checker and reaches far over the rail, screaming, “Bailey! Grab my hand!”
His face showing full knowledge that unless the next move is perfect he is dead, Shaun grasps Cal’s hand. But the boat is still sliding slowly forward, and with all his clothing sodden Shaun is so heavy that their grip breaks. Shaun is drifting toward the stern, and in a moment he will be alongside the covered bait deck, and there will be no way to reach over to grab him before the boat slips past him—and by then his clothes could sink him. Mark is already bent over the last inch of rail extending a life ring. Shaun locks his elbow around the ring. Mark and Cal struggle together trying to haul him aboard. Bailey hits the deck uttering a guttu
ral groan that comes from fright and shortness of breath combined. Already cold-stunned, he is having trouble breathing.
When he and the rest of us regain our composure, Shaun goes to warm up and find dry clothes. Warming takes a while. On deck the crew is quieter than usual. Mark comments that no one has fallen overboard in twelve years.
When Shaun reappears, apparently O.K. and smiling sheepishly, the jokes start.
“That is dedication to fishing, man—”
“—when you’re willing to go in after them—”
“And it was a big one too!”
“Come on, Bailey, it’s still your roller turn. Quit slackin’.”
“Hey, Bailey, the trip’s not over yet. You can’t leave us.”
Bailey moves back to his place and Cal goes back to cleaning.
Cal says, “Your eyes were about this big. Last time I saw a face like that, it had a hook in it.”
Shaun resumes working. Gaff, swing. He says, “I knew those clothes could sink me. I knew that in a minute or two my hands would get useless.”
A fish falls off, and Shaun begins to lean over for it, then turns around, flashing a big grin.
