Thursday, 14 February 2013

Fishermen have their share of survival stories, but one that comes to mind for me, on Valentine's Day, is that of Nando Parrado, one of the members of a Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972.*

Parrado accomplished the impossible. He survived the crash, hiked out of the Andes while starving and suffering from a fractured skull. Grieving the deaths of his mother, sister and teammates, he wanted to tell his beloved father what had happened to his family, “each [stride] brought me closer to my father... each step I took was a step stolen back from death.”

Yet so close to death, he realized he was not pushed forward by hopes of staying alive, but of love he had for his father:

“Death has an opposite, but the opposite is not mere living. It is not courage or faith or human will. The opposite of death is love. How had I missed that? How does anyone miss that? Love is our only weapon.”

Those sentiments have stayed in my mind for a long time. But while Parrado's account is extraordinary, fishermen face death every day just by going to work. Your jobs are more death-defying than anyone else's. The love may be stronger too.

There’s a love of the life. Fishermen will tell you they can't imagine any other type of life. I've been on fishing boats and I can't imagine doing what you do. It's not an easy life. It's a lot of hard work with many uncertainties. Anything and everything can go wrong on the ocean: the weather, the boat, the crew.  Anyone out there for the love of money isn't going to last too long.

I also sense a love of competition. So many times we see conflict in the industry with rules that favor one group over another or make it hard for fishermen to do their jobs. But when you get a group of skippers on a level-playing field, that’s when we find out who can really catch fish. One day you might be a champion and not so much the next, but the competition can be thrilling (and I don't mean that in a dangerous way, but just who fishes smartest).

Lastly, there's a love of family and community. The love is shown by the husbands and wives who fish side by side, spouses who endure long stretches at home alone with kids so their significant others can do what they love to do, and the communities who rally in times of adversity, putting up monuments to those lost at sea so that they may never be forgotten.

Fishermen can be a stoic lot. The word love may not get a lot of play out on the water (and that's probably a good thing), but there is no doubt in my mind that love is part of the motivation for doing what you do. Happy Valentine's Day.

*The story was depicted in the movie "Alive," but even better is Parrado's book "Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home," from which come the above quotes.