What I actually do

I've been thinking that I should detail the exact process that I undergo while at sea. Because a lot of people have no idea what is is that I do and prior to today I wasn't completely sure ;)

So, conveniently, I'm asleep when most tows come in. I am to be alerted 15 minutes before every retrieval. I should back up though and explain the fishing process, complete with jargon and lingo.


Let's start with the codend. Previously I would have refered to this item as a large net, but like so many other fields fishing has its own vernacular. The codend is released from the aft or rear of the vessel. The codendt that we have can hold up to 100 metric tons of fish. This is released along with the doors which are these large 15 foot long pieces of metal that spread the net out horizontally. The codend is lowered further until it reaches fishing depth which is somewhere around 55 fathoms.


After the gear or trawl or codend, all of these terms being interchangeable, is set thehy drive the boat around following or attempting to find schools of fish. This process is still somewhat of a mystery to me and is akin to a magic trick. Net go down empty, net come up full. Ta da!


The part I do know about is how they know when the net is full. There are little devices that are located around the net known as eggs. These "eggs" are located within for layers of the codend. They're a pressure sensitive device that emit a radio signal that the boat receives when the pressure on the eggs has reached a certain maximum. Once the section of the net is full of fish the egg trips and changes frequencies alerting the boat that that section of the codend is now full. Once all 4 eggs have been tripped the codend is now full.


After the 4 eggs have been tripped is when I enter the picture. They wake me up and I rub my eyes, stumble around, visit the head(bathroom), and start putting on my rain gear. Rain gear consists of a bright orange bib, jacket and brown galoshes called xtra tuffs. This last item is so essential that they are the only brand allowed on boats. Insurance companies will not insure boats unless everyone uses them. Anyhow, I then mosey outside and watch Gordon (The Dutchmen), Chris (the Everyman), and Tiffany (the woman and deckboss- who I might add is tough as nails) bring the codend up which looks like a large wet sock full of marbles. I have to then come up with a sample frame. If the bag is full I know that they will unzip it 4 times in order to dump the fish into the refrigerated salt water tanks (RSW tanks) under the deck. So I choose 3# between 1 and 4 using a random number table. When they unzip, I lift a little door on the side of the trawl alley (the area where the codend resides) and let roughly 150 kg of fish spill out. I then shovel these into a large tote and repeat the process twice. Next, I weigh and count my samples, sorting the fish as well. The point of this is to determine what species other than the target species are being caught. Using this data, the National Marine Fisheries service (NiMFS) can determine when to open and close fisheries. Since we are fishing for pollock there is very little bycatch (bycatch- any species that is not the target species).