National Fisherman's Melissa Wood shares her stories as a writer and editor covering the U.S. fishing industry.
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Hooked
Hooked!: True Stories of Obsession, Death, and Love from Alaska's Commercial Fishing Men and Women
Edited by Leslie Leyland Fields
Everybody's a greenhorn at some point: Mike Crowley (National Fisherman's boats and gear editor) had been working dockside at Seward Fisheries when he got his chance to sail out of Petersberg on the halibut schooner Attu. The promise of a quarter share if he proved his worth was more than enough for Mike, who admits he would have gone for nothing (even though he spent the first part of the trip hanging over the railing, puking). Before they set gear, he was told to watch the water and "holler out" as soon as he saw the first halibut come to the surface. After hearing laughter from the fo'c's'cle, he very soon leaned that halibut are bottom feeders.
iThat story is part of the new anthology Hooked! True Stories of Alaska's Commercial Fishermen and Women edited by Leslie Leyland Fields. What I liked most about these stories was the honesty of the writers: Nobody comes across as a know-it-all or preachy, and they freely admit their mistakes — which of course make for good stories. On his first time out as a skipper, Sig Hansen tells the story of dropping two lines of 20 crab pots into 400 fathoms of water that he thought was 120 fathoms because of a double echo off the fathometer (that's $50,000 worth of pots gone forever). And Mary Jacobs admits that her bitchiness didn't disappear with maturity.
These are stories about fishing, the good times, bad times and sometimes tragic. I think Hooked! could be helpful reading for the next generation of greenhorns as a reminder that everyone has to start somewhere. We forget this over time, but we've all experienced that knot of anticipation in our stomachs and sleepness nights.
On his next trip, Mike remembers being nervous that he'd end up like the greenhorn he had heard was so incompetent that the crew put him the fish hold for a couple hours then sent him to his bunk for the remaining two weeks of his trip (allowed out only to use the head).
As you can probably guess, Mike turned out all right.
You can find Hooked! at Amazon.com or on Leslie Leyland Fields' website.
Callifornia crabbing: Here's a fun video shot on the decks of the Majestik while catching Dungeness crab off the coast of northern California.
Over 500 lots of seafood processing equipment formerly owned by Adak Seafood will be sold at auction on Tuesday, June 18, starting at 10 a.m. Hawaiian-Aleutian Daylight Time at the Hilton Garden Inn in Anchorage Alaska.
The equipment is located in a recently updated 250,000 square foot state-of-the-art processing facility in Adak, Alaska. Farmington Hills, Mich.-based Hilco Industrial, which conducts 75 machinery and equipment auctions in a wide range of industries annually, will conduct the auction.
Adak Seafood opened originally as Ada Fisheries in Anchorage in 1986. The facility, updated in 2005, is located on the island of Adak, the southernmost city in Alaska near the western end of the Aleutian Islands. The facility processed cod primarily, as well as halibut, blackcod, crab and pollock, Hilco says.
Alaska fisherman and commercial fisheries activist Kevin Adams was elected chairman at the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute board of directors meeting on May 9 in Anchorage.
The governor-appointed board consists of seven members: five seafood processors and two industry representatives actively engaged in commercial fishing. Adams was appointed to fill a harvester seat by Gov. Frank Murkowski in 2004.
With 38 years of fishing experience in Bristol Bay, Adams has long been an active member in the Alaska fishing industry, ASMI says. He has worked for both the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation and the Bering Sea Fisherman's Association, and represents Alaska fishermen on numerous boards.
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