Hey friends – if you’ve been fol­low­ing the sto­ry of Aman­da, our first-time fish­er­man guest writer, you may be as eager for her lat­est update as I’ve been. The fren­zied life of a ten­der deck­hand hasn’t allowed much land time (and even less inter­net access), so I was thrilled to find this post in my inbox. If you’re a new vis­i­tor, please do catch up on her pre-sea­son antic­i­pa­tion and her first check-in; she’s got a won­der­ful sto­ry. Be well — T

Thurs­day, August 2, 2012

I’m tak­ing it all in. We’ve been ten­der­ing for over a month now, run­ning out to the fish­ing grounds, buy­ing and unload­ing fish from both gill-net fish­er­men and seine-net fish­er­men. We are final­ly being sent to tend to the trollers.

For too many rea­sons to list, troll ten­der­ing is much pre­ferred by the Nichawak’s skip­per. I’ve gath­ered that the main dif­fer­ence between troll tend­ing and tend­ing to net fish­er­men is the way the fish are han­dled. Gill­net fish­er­men unload thou­sands of pounds from their boats at once, sein­ers unload tens of thou­sands. Too many fish to sort, these fish imme­di­ate­ly get dumped in the Nichawak “fish hold,” which can con­tain up to 160,000 pounds of fish when full.

Because they use line instead of net, the trollers don’t catch as many pounds of fish at one time. When buy­ing troll fish, we will touch every fish; first gut­ted and cleaned by the trollers, we sort them by weight and qual­i­ty and care­ful­ly place them in totes of “slush.” I am antic­i­pat­ing being more con­nect­ed with the work and feel excit­ed about that. Tonight we head South, down Fred­er­ick Sound, through Chatham Strait, and to the South­west coast of Bara­nof Island, the open ocean.

A troller anchored in south­ern Bara­nof Island bay.

This fish­ing world is like an observer’s play­ground.  It seems that every time I form an opin­ion about some­thing, it is soon chal­lenged with new infor­ma­tion and I am won­der­ing that per­haps it is only after expe­ri­ence that we become enti­tled to our opin­ions. Obser­va­tion is my ally.

I’ve strug­gled with all the antic­i­pat­ed obsta­cles, the unpre­dictable sched­ule, the end­less pounds of bloody fish, the close quar­ters I share with the crew, the occa­sion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion break­downs.  More than once I’ve stared at a crew mem­ber after reciev­ing an instruc­tion and thought to myself, “They just said Eng­lish words, why did­n’t I understand?!”

But I’ve come to learn what it means to “haul the anchor,” “hook up a Treko to the rig­ging,” “tie up to pil­ings,” “get the gal­ley sea-wor­thy,” and “ice up.” I’m in love with the nau­ti­cal lan­guage and the nov­el­ty of the VHF radio is still at large. I gig­gle at every oppor­tu­ni­ty to use it and my favorite things to say are “Roger that!” and “Stand­ing by on chan­nel 16 and chan­nel 11!”

I’ve also come to real­ize that I am not a very seri­ous per­son, most that know me would prob­a­bly agree, and there are many, many things about this job that make it very seri­ous work. This has been a strug­gle. I’m learn­ing to adapt my sense of humor to a fishing/boating/equipment con­text; I boast a spot-on impres­sion of a hydraulic crane.

Though we’ve had, will con­tin­ue to have, our grouchy moments and shared frus­tra­tions, the Nichawak crew laughs a lot. I trea­sure them for their unwa­ver­ing work eth­ic, their humil­i­ty, and their patience. They are “Ger­ald,” the deckhand/engineer, and the skipp­per, “Sal” (and I dis­close with affec­tion that they chose their own pseu­do­nyms.) In con­trast to myself, Ger­ald is a seri­ous soul and for­ev­er gra­cious, remark­ing “I feel nour­ished” upon fin­ish­ing a din­ner that I had labored over after a long work day.  Sal, who is well known and respect­ed among the South­east fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty, has integri­ty worth speak­ing of and is always good-natured.

They’ve been great com­pa­ny, but I often find myself wish­ing for the per­spec­tive and insights of oth­er women. This wish grew into des­per­a­tion after a par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult expe­ri­ence, which at first hor­ri­fied me. It has since left me con­fused and seek­ing some­one to relate (bless them, Ger­ald and Sal did­n’t have much to say to con­sole me). I’d like to share it now, if only because humans have hard feel­ings, and that’s what’s relatable.

Ratch­et straps are long, heavy straps that we use to immo­bi­lize thou­sands of pounds of equip­ment on deck while we are “under­way” (trav­el­ing). I am bare­ly lit­er­ate enough in equip­ment lan­guage to describe them. They work by crank­ing a han­dle up and down, this turns a wheel and coils the strap, cre­at­ing ten­sion and elim­i­nat­ing excess slack. Ratch­et straps are heavy, they are old and rusty, and they are too damn big for my lit­tle hands. At first, using them was fun­ny, I would refuse all help offered by the crew and stub­born­ly demand that they “let me fig­ure it out!”

One day, we were abrupt­ly informed by the pro­cess­ing plant that we need­ed to get under­way imme­di­ate­ly. Sal starts up the engines and Ger­ald and I rush out to begin our rou­tine deck chores. One of these chores is tight­en­ing the ratch­et straps over dozens of plas­tic totes full of ice, weigh­ing about 700 pounds apiece. I go to work on the straps, curs­ing and sweat­ing and plead­ing, tak­ing twice as long as I should be. Urgency is build­ing and I feel pathet­ic, Ger­ald is mov­ing swift­ly around me doing more than his share of the work and whether or not it is true, I am sure Sal is watch­ing me from the wheel house won­der­ing why I can’t man­age such a sim­ple task.  At this time of frus­tra­tion I think to myself these exact words, “Damn, this is so emasculating!”

Emas­cu­lat­ing. But, I’m a woman! A fem­i­nist even, by some def­i­n­i­tion. I final­ly fin­ished with the ratch­et straps (or at least just the one) but I was shocked with myself. I thought I was proud and empow­ered by my gen­der and I could­n’t believe I would so instinc­tive­ly let such a triv­ial frus­tra­tion affect how I per­ceive my gen­der.  Suf­fice it to say, this feel­ing led me to a series of oth­er dif­fi­cult emo­tions, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to shame, guilt, and embarrassment.

In fur­ther reflec­tion of this expe­ri­ence, all I can come up with is that I am a prod­uct of my cul­ture and our con­struct­ed gen­der roles. But in all sin­cer­i­ty, I feel jolt­ed and would like noth­ing more than to sit down with one of my friends, Anna, Eliz­a­beth, Lily, any strong, capa­ble, inde­pen­dent woman real­ly, and talk it out, gath­er what­ev­er wis­dom they have to shed.

So, I asked for chal­lenges and I am get­ting them in all forms. To con­clude, I will remind myself here of what I am remind­ed of every day: I’m grate­ful for this expe­ri­ence, grate­ful for oppor­tu­ni­ty, hum­bled by what I’ve learned and what I have yet to learn.

Thanks for reading!

Aman­da