If I had had the travel channel when I was a kid, I would have been a bit more prepared for what I wanted to do when I travel. I have visited many corners of the earth. Nine out of ten times it has been a good and positive experience. One of the first was a truly unforgettable adventure. Here is a brief account of that event.
Alaskan Crab Boat- Bering Sea.
I have always enjoyed driving the super highways: Massachusetts – Florida, Massachusetts – Washington State. I looked forward to the adventure and any unexpected events that might occur, such as the opportunity I grasped, at age 20 while in Washington. I got myself hired to work on an Alaskan Crab boat. Yes this is the same as that current TV show “The Deadliest Catch”. And that is a good title. It is said that this job is the most dangerous in the world. I don’t know if that is true, but from my experience, it was nothing short of death defying.
As you can well imagine, I learned many things on this boat. Some of these things pertained only to that job, but others were lessons that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I learned how to splice two ropes together without making a knot. . Splicing is kind of like making a braid but making it much thicker and less pliable. Sometimes a crab pot comes up from the bottom of the ocean, and the rope gets cut a bit. So, before sending it back down to the ocean floor, it must be repaired. Also, and importantly, I learned how to tie a clove hitch in less than 5 seconds
The work day was not your typical 8-hour average. Actually it might range something like 20 hours on, and 5 hours off. It might be described as working more, and sleeping less. I had many different jobs and one of them was to clean the head (bathroom to you landlubbers) every Sunday. So that was the day I would take a shower too. Yes once a week. I felt sleep was more important. And I didn’t care if the other guys said that I smelled like a fish.
I also learned about hierarchy. The captain, (Dirty, was his name) was the king, and me, (Jonah was my nickname, which means curse of the boat). I was at the very bottom of the chain in importance. There were many others like the deck boss whose importance varied but basically the guys who knew what to do, were the important people. And there I was, totally unexperienced., a “greenhorn”. But I learned quickly.
First, the marker buoy must be found, and then hooked with a grapple type hook. The buoy is brought in and all the thinner rope, then the thick rope is put into “the block”. This block is a hoist that pulls the crab pots from nearly 100 fathom feet deep. 1 fathom is 6 feet. Anyway, the first pot comes up to the side of the boat and this is our first idea of how much crab will be in the other pots. We always hope for full pots, because we are all getting a percentage of the catch. After the pot is put on a big steel hydraulic table, two men open the bottom of the pot and empty out all the crabs. Small crabs and females with eggs must be thrown back in.
The crabs are swept into a hole that leads to a lower level tank. I will get to that lower level in a minute. So, after all the crabs are out, the pot must be baited and any holes repaired. Next is to close the bottom door on the pot and put it on the other side of the boat. This process will happen nearly 40 times more. You see, crab pots are stringed together. It is like a bracelet with many charms on it. The clasps on the bracelet would be the buoys at each end that float at the surface. This process is going very fast, because time is money. If we are not pulling pots, we are just on a “boat ride”.
The boat I was on, was a catcher-processor. This means we would catch them and send them below to cook, package and weigh. Often, after the crabs were in the big tank, some crew would go below to chop the legs from the body. I did this for many, many hours. I wish I had a picture of this. Basically, I put on a bib made of a piece of rubber buoy that covered my belly. It kinda looked like a big orange piece of eggshell. I would then grab the crab from left to right, rest it on my belly and lean into a huge dull knife type blade. It looked like a huge meat cleaver but was dull. I then let the body shell drop into a barrel. I now had to clean the legs with a high powered spray to make them ready for the cooker. I didn’t cook them, but I did pack them into average 50 pound boxes.
Finally, we had to pack them in the freezer. This freezer is about the size of my house. I remember loading the boxes into the freezer with the deck boss, and we were talking about the possibility of falling into the water or getting hurt. He said, “if you die on this boat, we won’t go to shore but we will put you over there (in the freezer) like we did with Paul on the last trip. I imagined a boy like me wrapped up in a blanket with his boots still on, while the crew had to walk past him everyday, waiting for the trip to be over so he could be transported back to where he came from.
It is reported that on average, one person will die each trip. I learned how true this was after I got back to Seattle. All the guys from the various boats met at the same place to get their checks, and I learned that my friend Alex,who had gotten on a different boat, did not come home. I was told that he had fallen into the sea. The story was that while the pots were being put back into the Bering Sea, one of the pots hooked onto his jacket and he was swept overboard. They pulled desperately on all the pots to at least bring his body back up, but he was never found. He had probably died within that first minute of his fall for most people die of shock almost immediately as the water in that region is so incredibly cold.
I received a letter from Alex’ mother, asking me to tell her what had happened to her son. It was while reading this letter that I really came to appreciate, not only what I had just accomplished, but also how fortunate I was, with my total ignorance and inexperience, to have survived and been able to walk away a changed person. I made it home; Alex did not. I did not know Alex well, but it was obvious that he was a well brought-up young man, friendly and out-going. It was truly heart-breaking to think of the shock and sadness his mother had to endure.
No job will ever be as physically demanding or as dangerous as this one was. An awful lot happened and there is so much more to talk about., like the animals and fish I saw, or the time a man got hit on the head with a crab pot and passed out, and then jumped up to keep on working with blood all over his face. I find that men my age or older really enjoy these stories. Oh ya, by the way, I don’t recommend this kind of dangerous work to anyone. Just remember what MR. T says “Don’t be a fool, stay in school”.