Days at Sea 46

One of my new favorite "This American Life" podcasts is a bunch of stories from people about childhood ideas that you learned much later to not be true. So I will tell you all a story from my childhood... my grandfather had surgery on his leg when I was about 5 or 6. When I asked why all I remember was being told it has something to do with rebar (the metal bars that reinforce concreate). Taking this bit of information into my 6 year old mind led me to give our rubarb plants a wide bearth for the next 5 years until my brother set me straight.

DAYS AT SEA 45!!!!

Happy half a contract to me, happy half a contract to me... yes today marks the half way point of my deployment. Not much to say, today was pretty slow. As I watched on of the nets come onboard a fish was caught by the cheek and managed to get free. Then he got free and was splashing around in a puddle on the deck. I really wanted to take my foot and scootch him to the scupper (the whole at the level of the deck to let water run off)and back out to sea but he was a little too far out of reach for a rescue to be possible. I named him Benny in case you were thinking, that fish needs a name.

Days at Sea: 44 Fun Facts

Everything about this boat is Super Sized.
The boat is 300 feet long.
The mouth of the net is the size of a football field.
The net is as long as a football field.
The 2 wenches that pull the net on board are 5 feet across.
There are 2 cranes on board.
There are 2 huge main engines on board
The boat has 5 levels
We process 400 metric tons of fish everyday. Think about a two car garage full of fish, now multiply it by 8.
It takes 2 weeks of 24/7 fishing to fill the freezers.
They serve a meal every 4 hours around the clock
122 crew members (114 men, 8 women) + 2 scientists live on board
They crew work 16 on, 8 off shifts for 10 months a year
On board scientists (ME!) work 12 on, 12 off 3 months at a time, until you decide you have enough money for the year.

Days at Sea: 39 Different Cultures One Boat

Whenever I leave the factory I always try to make sure it is not when the whole factory breaks at midnight for 15 minutes and at 8am. Today I waited in the factory for 15 minutes while they had their break. I feel bad because it is the only time they get to sit down and as soon as I show up they all scatter from in front of my locker and normally 3 or 4 of the processors dont get to sit down then.

When I headed out of the factory the whole line of 50 men and 1 women were heading back into the factory so I stepped aside out of the main aisle. It was interesting how all the men treated me as they walked past. They are from all over the world, some from Africa who are Muslims (they pray outside my door when the sun goes down), some are from Central America and others are from Vietnam. I tried to smile at the ones who smiled at me but as soon as I made eye contact they immediatly looked away. Some gave me a small shy smile, some a small head bow, some looked really unsure so when I smiled at them they gave me a really quick one in return. Some inquired about the size of the fish coming in, they know that I get the first look. I have learned to always say BIG even if I dont know.

I have a solution to the Debt Ceiling problem, smaller shopping carts

We had mechanical problems and had to go back to Dutch Harbor before the boat was full. When the boat broke we were right up against the international date line and the Arctic Circle so it took us 2 days to get back to port. We were in port for 3 days getting everything fixed and then taking the boat out for 'sea trials' before going back to port to offload all the engineers and mechanics that had been flown up from Seattle just to fix the boat. We are back on the fish and so after a paid week off I have to get back to work. Dutch Harbor has one small World War Two 'museum' a small library and a hill to climb. I had already done 2 of the 3 so I explored the 3 aisles of the Dutch Harbor/Unalaska Public Library.

This picture is taken in Safeway. To limit myself to spending $25 I shop in my hardhat when it is full I leave. Yeah a hard hat full of groceries costs $25.

Around Dutch Harbor

Days at Sea 32: The actual question

I became aware of the phenomenon of trying to figure out what people were actually asking when I moved from the West coast to the East Coast for college. There are the words coming out of the persons mouth "where are you from" and what they want to know "are you weathly". I will admit that there might be a similar west coast duality but I don't notice it since I know exactly which question they are asking. Alaksa fishermen have their own set of questions that only later I have figured out what they are actully asking. Here are a couple of examples...

Question: How long have you been observing?
Real Question: We have a bet going on how long you have been observing, I said that your hair was so uncontrolled you must be a long time observer cause you dont care about it anymore.

A note on this: I worked REALLY hard to look like I wasn't new. I took my brand new shinny Xtra Tuffs and went hiking in them and walked through as much dirt as possible to make them not look shiney and new. I only packed 35 pounds for the whole summer so I didn't look like a new observer which are notorious for overpacking. In the end it was my 20 mall haircut.

Question 2: Are you on the boat for the whole season?
Real Question: What is the likelyhood that we might get assigned Chuck this season.

Note: Chuck is a long time observer that EVERYBODY knows. I know all about him and I have never met him. He sticks to the rules like glue, smells and does not leave warm feeling behind him.

Days at sea: 31 Types of Boats

MY BOAT!!!

I have been getting a lot of people who point out that they still don't get what it is that I am doing up here in the Bering Sea. I have been avoiding them as I tried to figure out what I was doing. So now I will begin with some basic facts, kind of like a college tour intro into what it is that I am doing.

There are 2 types of boats I can be put on Catcher boats and Catcher/Processor Boats.

Basically Catcher boats are about 120-200 feet long and have 5-7 man crew plus 1 scientist. bunch of fish stuff the boats tanks and then deliver it to an on shore processing plant. This is the best assignment for a scientist because when the are traveling between the plant and the fishing grounds you don't have any responsibilities.

Catcher/Proccessor (what I am on) take the factory to the fish. They spend 2 weeks at sea and then empty their freezers full of compleated product when they get to land. We have a crew of about 120 and the boats are just under 300 feet long.

Days at Sea: 31

Another question from the audience: What is my favorite "This American Life" podcast so far.

I really liked one that is pretty old but it was about this brother and sister who grew up secular Jewish and then when the brother was at Berkley he became a "born again christian". Then he moved to an island in Alaska called "the farm" to join a Christan commune sort of a thing. I thought it was funny that every time his sister mentioned his new life she always said "born-again christian" never "protestant", "christian" or other much shorter names. I thought it was like meeting a Muslim and always referring to them as a "non extremist Muslim" and how funny that would sound over and over in the course of a 10 minute story.

Other favorite line that I just say over and over in my head cause I still think it is funny is "while Jim was living the life of a B-list celebrity". It was on a podcast about the collapse of the housing market in 2008 and Jim was going on and on about how he was making tons of money selling mortgages that he knew were a bad idea but the money he made let him party at clubs with Tera Reid, Christina Aguilera and buy $1000 bottles of champagne. He thought he was the coolest guy in the room and then Ira Glass used the transition "while Jim was living the life of a B-list celebrity Mike was losing his home" delivered with just a subtle hint of mockery.

Day 29: How this all works

To answer a question from the audience, this is how my job works.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (the people who use my data) only allows their scientists to be deployed for 90 days before they have to come back to Anchorage, AK or Seattle, WA and get their data 'debriefed'. Apparently this entails them asking you about every number you have written down over the past 90 days so they know how accurate each piece of data is.

The joke among observers is that we have a 90 day work week with a weekend that lasts until our money runs out. At that point you call up your company and tell them you would like to work again.

My 90 days started June 7th so I am expected to be shipped back to Seattle at the beginning of September. After that I am spending the fall in Friday Harbor, WA doing biological research at Friday Harbor Laboratories.

Day 30

Internet in Dutch has been down for a week so I was unable to post more pictures.

So I have been in my bed holding on as we have been in some pretty bad weather. It is not scary it is just horrible being seasick for 3 days straight. I have not eaten or slept in 3 days but what has made it better has been that the factory has not been running so I dont have to get out of bed. Everytime I stand up all I want to do is lie back down. But the wind has let up so I am back to normal.

Days at Sea: 24 Indignation

Some of my readers have known me since the day I was born (shout out to the grandparents), some have lived with me all four years of college but none of them probably know the background to this post.

Preschool was traumatizing. Okay so now that you know this I will get to how it relates to life on the Bering Sea.

I wear 4 layers of clothes in the factory and 3 in the rest of the boat. Every time I come out of the factory (about 5 times a day) I wash my hands. Even though I was wearing 2 layers of gloves my hands still manage to get really gross. I never manage to get all 3 of my long sleeved layers pushed up far enough so as the day goes on the ends of my sleeves get wet. I HATE having wet sleeves and go to great lengths to avoid it in "real" life. So I was walking through the boat with wet sleeves getting more and more indigent and then finally I thought to myself "ERRR this is just like preschool" "Woah where did that come from". I only have a couple of memories of preschool but I do distinctly remember thinking that when I got old enough to reach the sink by myself I would never get my sleeves wet, and I have managed to stick to my promise for a solid 20 years.

Then this got me thinking about the other traumatizing experiences of 1992. Going to the Puget Sound sitting down in front of a rock, lifting it up and having tons of baby crabs crawl up my shorts. I did not wear anything but spandex shorts until the 4th grade when they were mandatory for our soccer uniforms. Also that year my older sister told me that she did not like sausage and in my 4 year old mind that became "all things from pigs are inedible". I stuck with that one until I was 20 years old sitting in a cafe in Vienna, Austria starving and I what I ordered included a big slam of ham, and hunger beat out 16 years of obstinacy. P.S. I learned that year that bacon is one of the best things humans have ever created and have never looked back.

Days at Sea: 23 A Day In the Life

So instead of figuring out what day it is, which is harder than it sounds I now mark time based on how many days I have been at sea. Mainly this is because if I take that number and subtract it from 90 I get how many days I have left, a much more important number. I am having a good time but working 12 hours a day then shutting myself in a dark room for 10-12 hours while trying to sleep with my bed moving all over the place lends itself to the thought "didn't I just do this". Here is a day in the life of a fish observer who got stuck with the sucky shift.

11:45PM Alarm goes off
11:50PM Convince yourself to put on several layers of clothes
MIDNIGHT: Report to the factory and start taking data
1:30AM Watch the sun go down
3AM Eat Breakfast
8AM Leave factory (which I have been in since midnight)
8:30AM Start entering data into computer
10AM Run back down to the factory to get more data
11AM Run back up to the wheelhouse to enter data
NOON: Skip lunch and go to room
12:15PM Shower (possibly depending on many factors)
12:30PM Go to sleep

And repeat this day after day so that you think that you dont remember any part of the day not spent in the factory watching fish go past or cutting them open to find out what sex they are.