Seaworthy (24 page)

I reluctantly tossed the bucketful of sour thoughts over the stern and turned back to again face the bow. Consciously refraining from taking one last look over my shoulder, I knew it was time to stop thinking like a scolded child and begin thinking like a fish. Much of the success of this trip, if there was to be any degree of triumph, would be due to some entry into the psyche of my lifelong adversary,
Xiphias gladius,
broadbill, or the almighty sword. With 260 miles to go to the fishing grounds, or roughly a day and a half, there wasn't an abundance of time to reintroduce myself to the thought process and the philosophies I'd spent so many years developing in the pursuit and capture of the target species.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's published description of me, which Archie had run across while surfing the Net, as the “Notorious Serial Swordfish Killer” echoed in the recesses of my short-term memory. The title wasn't actually haunting, but it was distracting in its unfairness. Is that what people who don't know me really think? I wondered. I had never thought of myself as a murderer, even on my best day of fishing. I'd never had a lust for watching the life be decanted from a carcass. Nor had I acquired a taste for blood. Whatever killer instinct had existed in me, I suspected, had been driven by hunger. It had always been a situation of catch fish or fail, catch fish or don't eat, catch fish or don't get another chance—lose the boat, lose the crew. In the past I
had
to kill fish. It was a matter of survival in the business that had become my life. Any loss of hunger would be compensated for by passion. I love the hunt, the battle, and the conquest. These passions had not dulled.

I was headed back offshore. I was headed to where I would struggle against entities larger than what hides behind a badge or legal jargon. I would face real, meaningful challenges in a world that—although unpredictable and unstable—makes sense to me. I was headed to a world I understand, where kidney stones are like hangnails. If it's not life-threatening, it's not worth mentioning. Sure, I would be back in beautiful Newfoundland to unload a trip of fish. But it would be on my own terms. Home is a feeling more than a residence. And I was headed there.

D
arkness waded in cautiously and headed west. Hesitating waist-deep, then plunging into the murky chill, the diving night splashed light onto the opposite horizon, which swam like spawning salmon up the riverlike sky. The sun hatched as if it were a baby chick, pecking from within the shell until fully risen, yellow and warm, and as unsure as I was. Quite a grand entrance, I thought enviously. After all, the sun starts anew every day. This could well be my last chance. This was it. And I would make the most of it. There would be no more practice runs or dress rehearsals. If I couldn't make a go of it this trip, starting today, swordfishing would become a dog-eared, stinking page torn from my life's binding. I'd crumple it up, toss it over my shoulder, and go on. Suddenly in my mind's eye, I dove and caught the paper ball before it hit the ground. Jesus! What was I thinking? I lovingly smoothed the page and tucked it close to my heart. It would be a hell of a lot easier to succeed.

I had my own recipe for success, tested and time-proven. The main ingredient was work, plain and simple. I had always believed that a successful operation aboard a commercial boat would be the perfect business model for any enterprise. Not that I had experience in any other—my résumé is short: I fish and I write about fishing. But I do have a sense of corporate America, large and small, that leads me to say that commercial fishing is exactly like any other moneymaking endeavor. Every fisherman is an entrepreneur of sorts in his risk taking and initiatives. And, in the same vein, I suppose the members of my crew are freelancers, hired on for the trip or season. Of course, the captain is much like a middle manager, juggling pins between owner and underlings. All the worn-out, clichéd crap about business management—like teamwork and leadership—top the priority list aboard a boat. But it would be all the subtleties of leading and working together that would make the difference in this business venture. This team I had assembled had a certain synergy I was confident could overcome any of the usual challenges and obstacles that would come our way. Yes, it was time to get down to the
business
of fishing.

A fitting symbol for my profession is the treble hook. Like Neptune's trident, commercial fishing is a three-pronged entity. The most obvious aspect of the three is in the physical realm. The physical part was the easiest for me. It's manual labor. It's the part I had always felt best suited for. With persistence and determination, I had been able to bull my way through any physicality. Fighting the elements of time, tide, weather, mechanical problems, fatigue due to sleep deprivation, and the basic moves involved in the daily operation of setting, hauling, and handling fish could be explained or taught in a book accompanied by a DVD, if such material existed.

Success on the physical level would not be possible without successfully meeting the second of the three elements—the psychological /emotional challenges. There are certain emotional facets inherent in going and staying offshore for extended periods, away from home and loved ones and the mainstream of life as the rest of the world sees it. I conquered those long ago but worried that my crew might struggle. The only cure for home-sickness is going home. And going home would not be on the agenda for some time. On the psychological side, the challenges are twofold: shipmates and competition. Although I can get along with just about anyone, I've worked with men who have tested that capacity. Occasionally there are two men aboard a boat who dislike each other with an intensity that leads to fistfights. My cure for that has always been to levy fines. The threat of losing pay has never failed to lengthen short tempers. I could foresee no problems among my present crew, leaving lots of room in my head for the contemplation of jousting with my counterparts captaining other vessels.

Jockeying for position with a real strategy, holding that position once gained, and balancing ethics with competition could only be learned from experience. I could jockey with the best of them. I believed that the strategy for successful fishing hadn't changed, as swordfish themselves hadn't evolved noticeably during my ten-year sabbatical. Fishermen certainly hadn't changed—everyone wants to catch the most, the fastest. There would be sandbagging and exaggerating. There would be out-and-out lies. I had heard and told my share. Finagling and manipulating were important in this business, as I assume they would be in any business, maritime or not. There is nothing malicious in this form of deceit. It's expected. There are rules of engagement to be followed. For example, the first captain to drive stakes (so to speak) from a certain latitude and longitude to another latitude and longitude claims that berth, or span of ocean, in which to set his gear. He owns that berth until he gives it up. Ethical fishermen follow the unwritten rules. Simply stated, it's first come, first served.

On the most rudimentary level, he with the most fish wins the competition. But he with the most fish does not always make the most money. There's real strategy involved in hitting the market with fish at the right time to receive the highest price, and that competition brings with it another layer of deceit. It serves the paycheck well to land fish when the rest of the fleet is still fishing or steaming, even if it means cutting your trip short to get the big price. Of course, we also compete for price with imports from Canada, Chile, Spain, and several other places whose fishermen are not held to the same standards of conservation that U.S. swordfishermen are. Nothing cuts deeper than the news that Canada has just dumped fish on your market after you've left the fishing grounds and lost your berth to another boat while trying to slink away and beat the fleet to the dock.

The third prong in this business of fishing is more obscure. It's difficult to articulate, but I think of it as conquering “the fishing ocean” as opposed to the physical ocean. The fishing ocean is never a level playing field but is at least consistent in its unpredictability. Sure, I can calculate drift and find thermoclines. I can place gear in water that birds seem to like and that color and temperature indicate fish will, too. But the fishing ocean is less explicit. It can be, in its most profound moments, esoteric to the point of being devious. All the physical signs can be heart-poundingly perfect, sirens luring me to set gear only to find nobody home. I suspect that success on this level, however vague, would be considered having “business sense” or some innate ability. There is no Fishing Made Easy course that can teach this part. Either you have it or you don't. I used to have it. But I did always wonder if I really had some gift or whether my success was more of an ability to compensate for the lack of it with sheer work ethic. Whichever the case, I understood my business of fishing and was ready to engage.

I knew from experience that success today aboard the
Seahawk
hinged on our ability to conduct business simultaneously and seamlessly in these three aspects. We would face skirmishes on all fronts, each of which would call for its own kind of intensity and expertise to overcome. If I think of myself as the CEO, my success will be facilitated by my ability to get the most from my employees. In my experience the way to do that was to lead by example. Commanding a crew is more about inspiring them to diligence and competence than it is about actual commanding. Merely barking orders doesn't achieve desired results for me. I work
with
my crew. They do not work
for
me. Respect is earned and cannot be demanded. Competition is fierce. Desire had been thwarted until now. When heart and soul went in, something would come out. Ethics would be tested.

As we neared the grounds, sparsely populated by the remainders of the dwindling fleet, I wondered if my nautical education would serve me as well now as earlier. Had I missed some lesson critical to success? I'd been a student of the business of being on the ocean all my life. My classroom had been tidal pools, clam flats, and the decks and bridges of boats. I had completed incidental courses in meteorology, oceanography, marine biology, navigation, mechanics, psychology, sociology, religion, and some very hard lessons in economics. Sure, my education was ongoing. I just hoped the Grand Banks curriculum hadn't changed.

Any apprehension I felt about competing on the water was displaced with the comfort of knowing that I had the ability to define my own standard for winning. Like the commercial fishing business itself, success within it was also threefold. The completion of a trip “from dock to dock,” as we say, regardless of fish caught and hence money made, is a successful trip. Simply getting off the dock and back to it in one piece is often not so simple. Seamanship, or a captain's seaworthiness, is a combination of equal parts experience and common sense. I had to believe that I possessed bigger portions of both at the age of forty-seven than I had at thirty-eight. A second dimension of success, and the yardstick held by most people, would be to measure the success of any given trip by how full the hold is and not so much by the bottom line, as we have no control over the price of fish. Third, there's my old standby, the one that never fails—the feeling of fulfillment that comes when life and livelihood join forces in work you love.

 

The wind was blowing out of the east, and the sea had built to a steep chop. The
Seahawk
pounded through, rather than riding up and over the waves, sending rivers of green water along either side of the deck that spread and poured out of the scuppers and off the stern like spilled milk from a tilted table. Our progress to the grounds had slowed accordingly, and it was now apparent that setting gear this evening was questionable.
Not
fishing was the epitome of the anticlimax. Just one more delay. Everything was all prepped and set up to go. The crew was waiting for the word to get some bait out of the freezer. The GPS now indicated that at our present speed we would arrive at the general area where the five swordboats currently working on trips were situated at 11:00 P.M. That was not too late to set if we were dialed in on a spot and had been fishing it. But I would need some time to do the usual scoping out and lining up with the other guys, so I could get into the best spot without actually encroaching on someone else's hard-earned turf. By the time we had pounded our way to within striking distance, it had become clear that none of the other boats were setting gear, due to the weather conditions and the forecast for the following morning. Paradoxically, this bit of news caused an instant and palpable rush of excitement in me.

“Hey, Arch!” I yelled down the stairs. “Get the guys up! Thaw enough bait for eight hundred hooks!” Archie responded quickly and enthusiastically. As long as nobody else was fishing, I wouldn't worry about where I set. I'd steam to the best berth and at least get a night's fishing in while the competition sat it out. I wouldn't tell anyone that we were setting until the gear was in the water. If I announced now that I intended to set, it would force everyone to fish. Nobody wanted to look like a wimp. And, more important, nobody wanted to put out the welcome mat at the front door of his piece of water. The weather wasn't
that
bad, I justified. Even though there were few boats in the area, they had narrowed down the zone to fish by trial and error and were somewhat jammed up around where the Gulf Stream makes a bend from north to east. This corner of the stream where the current changes direction ninety degrees was always my favorite spot to fish, as it was nearly always the most productive. The other captains would be sound asleep and resting up for tomorrow night by the time I began my set. No sense waking anyone up. I now had a golden opportunity to slip into the high-liners' berth. This was not a new trick by any means. In fact, I had learned about it from the receiving end.