So this is how an average day day unfolds i.e., the ones without very high seas, storms, accidents and other horrors.
Mature Salmon migrate with uncanny precision back from the oceans where they grew to adulthood to the upper reaches of the river where they were born, and even to the very gravel beds of the spawning grounds of their birth - to spawn again. After spawning, all Pacific Salmon die, and the cycle of life starts over again.
Managed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to prevent over fishing, commercial fisherman harvest the five species of wild Pacific Salmon - King (Chinook), Red (Sockeye), Silver (Coho), Pink(Humpy) and Dog (Chum) during the Salmon run each year.
If you are lucky you have the fishing grounds to yourself but usually a number of other boats jockey and compete to set their nets again, during the short open times that are allotted. With the Skipper's voice roaring in our ears, we had to be sharp in our turn-arounds so as not to miss our chance.
Wake up is at about 4 am or thereabouts. It's still dark out there. Maybe raining. Cold. I exit my warm sleeping bag and quickly get into gear. I start a pot of coffee or grab one if somebody thankfully, has already made one. Weighing anchor from the the sheltered bay or cove that we spent the night, we head out to the open ocean joining other boats also headed to the area that's been opened for fishing. You have no clue to what the day would bring - a good catch, high winds, large swells, accidents - you send a prayer up to the good Lord, to keep an eye on us.
At the fishing ground, we quickly offload the skiff with Lenny or John on board into the water. They pull the thousand odd feet of the seine off the back-deck into the water and stretch it out into a curve between the ship and the skiff using the tide.
The cork line floats, while the lead line sinks with the web in between, forming a large underwater curtain.
One of us uses a long plunger to hit the surface of the water near the junction of the boat and the net to turn the fish back into the net. On a rough day, it's hard scary work to stand at the edge of the deck, lifting and dropping the plunger because of the rising and falling swells under the boat. Especially for a non-swimmer like me.
At the end of about 20 minutes, the net is pulled around by the skiff creating a huge corral with the the fish inside. To prevent fish from escaping, the purse line is winched in and the bottom of the net is quickly drawn closed.
The net is then hauled aboard the boat with the hydraulic power block overhead. The three of us, deckhands lay out the incoming net into separate cork line, lead line and webbing piles ensuring that it goes out again without snagging during the next set.
The wet, heavy web, which was my responsibility, still managed to fly around quite a bit depending on the wind, making the job much harder. Some escaping salmon trapped at the gills need to be flipped out (8% of each fish was my share, so none escaped) and the white to purple-red jellyfish were a painful part of the process, itching and stinging any skin that it touched. Before your body gets used to the poison, its really painful, especially if the tiny little strands get into your eyes.
At the end of the seine, is the final purse where whatever you've caught aggregates and this is then winched up and unloaded into the chilled hold.
At the end of the opener, we head back to port or usually to the factory ship where we transfer our catch. The factory ship sends down a large suction tube that we direct into the hold. Most all of the salmon are sucked up.
We muck out the few remaining salmon, throwing them into a large wire basket which also goes up. We get into a similar basket and are winched up to the factory ship, where we sort the fish that appear on a conveyer into the various species.
Entering this into the log, we get get winched back down to the Katharine-S and head back to port. Tying up, we gather around Skipper to get a fix of the total catch in dollar terms and therefore our share. A few minutes calculations later, we have our numbers, get a bit of money called a draw, to blow up that evening and call it a day.
