The River Killers (9 page)

We zigzagged up the middle, all eyes on the sounder. Every blob of red indicated a school of herring, and we estimated the size and noted it. The two test boats were performing the same exercise along both shorelines. By noon, we'd formed a rough estimate of the amount of herring in the area. The central coast seine quota that year was thirty-five hundred tons. Between us and the test boats, we'd identified six to eight thousand tons.

We'd sent the plane up and the spotter had seen thin streaks of white in the green water along the Spiller Channel shore. Light spawning had started.

The other key factor in the equation, the roe content, had risen to twelve percent in the northern part of the channel, although it remained at about ten percent in the south. This probably meant there were still fish moving into the spawning area from the open ocean. But D-day was getting closer. There would probably be a run on Rolaids and Tums at the Bella Bella store.

About four o'clock, we headed back to Shearwater for the evening conference. George was somehow handling the boat without my assistance, so with nothing better to do, I plugged my computer into the sat-phone network and went to the
DFO
website. I'd meant to check some of the stats from the Gulf opening but was waylaid by an icon for the Strategic Policy Working Group. Guided by some masochistic impulse, I clicked on the icon and it opened the report of the Special Policy for Licensing Abalone Group (
SPLAG
). After reading for a couple of minutes, I burst out laughing. “Listen to this. The policy guys have come up with a solution to the abalone problem. They're going to introduce area licensing.”

Area licensing was a method by which
DFO
attempted to correct their screwups. It could be they'd issued too many licenses for a fishery, or mismanaged a fishery to the point where there weren't enough fish to support the same number of boats that had once made a good living. What they did was divide the coast up into little boxes and tell everyone that, whereas before they could fish the whole coast, now they could fish only in one little box. And if someone wanted to break out of the box, he could do so only by buying another license from a fellow fisherman. Result: one less fisherman and more expense for those remaining.

But this was ludicrous. Abalone was a dead fishery and the licenses were worthless. Pete and George rolled their eyes. They'd spotted the obvious flaw. Why would an abalone fisherman with a worthless license want to buy another one? “Stay tuned,” I said. “It's a work in progress. I just know they'll come up with a brilliant solution. These are, after all, Policy Guys.”

Silence. Sort of like when your dim-witted uncle acts up at the town picnic and embarrasses the whole family. Maybe this should be number two on my list of “Reasons Our Bureaucracy Keeps Screwing Things Up.” The people who are affected by a policy should have some input into it.

We cruised along in silence for a while. I wrestled with my thoughts but we were booed out of the ring. I stared out at the shoreline fading in the dusk. Eagles festooned the trees like large fierce flowers. Seine boats weren't the only predators gathering to feast on the herring.

And so my thoughts returned, laudably but late, to work. “Pete, when do you think it'll happen?”

He rubbed his jaw. “Well, I don't know if George will agree, but things look pretty much on schedule to me.” George nodded without taking his eyes off the water. “Tomorrow's Sunday,” Pete continued, “I think we can afford to take the day off. But we'll send the plane up and I think we'll see more spot spawn, maybe fifteen, twenty miles of it. There's bigger tides starting on Monday and they'll push those southern fish farther up into the channel. I'm thinking maybe Wednesday we should let 'er go.”

“Okay,” I said, “maybe tonight we should put the fleet on forty-eight-hour notice.” George and Pete both nodded. “Congratulations gentlemen, we have formulated a plan.”

Dinner that night was an impromptu experience that only fishermen and us parasitic bureaucrats could ever experience. We started with the crabs I'd caught, then got into a bucket of clams that someone had dropped off. George brought out some sockeye that he'd smoked last summer, and we finished with grilled halibut donated by one of the company scout boats, obviously trying to curry favor.

After genuflecting before Alex, the cook, I headed to my stateroom with the intention of perusing Alistair's computer. I realized I'd need a monitor and turned toward the wheelhouse. George was there, picking his teeth. “How much you figure that meal would have cost downtown?”

“You couldn't have got it downtown,” I said. “Not that good. I need to borrow a computer monitor. Do you mind?”

“Take the one off the
GPS
. It's the best one.”

“Thanks. I'll have it back in a couple of hours.” I performed a quick lobotomy and lugged the monitor into my stateroom. In no time, I had it hooked up to its new brain, and powered up Alistair's computer. As I'd feared, though, the computer asked for a password. I tried to bypass it but Alistair had been much too canny for that. Prawns? No. Hmmm. Shrimp? Crustacean? Wait a minute. Latin. What the hell was the Latin for prawn? That didn't work either. Shit! A flash of memory: Chimera. Bingo! I was in.

The password allowed me access to the desktop. I looked at the array of program icons and clicked on Excel, and then “open.” The drop-down menu showed a list of files and I opened the first one. I was now looking at a database like the ones pasted in the journal. I opened more files. More of the same and I still couldn't make heads nor tails out of it. I closed Excel and considered the other program icons. There was Word, Access, Adobe, Eudora, Internet Explorer, Photoshop, and all the assorted junk stuff that no one ever uses. I opened Eudora, knowing there wouldn't be much because he didn't have a phone line. His inbox, surprisingly, ran to seven hundred and thirty-eight messages, courtesy presumably of landlines in Bella Bella. Most were of the “Cheaper prescription drugs from your best friendly guys in Nigeria” or “Drive your women crazy in bed” variety. There were a few messages from colleagues, invitations to conferences, and family updates from a daughter in Ontario, but nothing to interest me.

I opened Word. There were three files and every one of them was gobbledegook. Alistair had encrypted them. Ergo, they were really important. Ergo, I had to read them. Ergo, I'd have to enlist someone more computer literate than me. Maybe this was a problem for Super Bette, girl computer whiz.

There was a rap on the door. “The conference starts in five minutes.”

“Okay, be right there.”

I shut everything down, disconnected the monitor, and took it back to the bridge. Alex handed me up a coffee and I took a sip as I looked around. The usual suspects were gathered and all five radios were crackling away. I turned all of them off except for the
VHF
tuned to channel 78A, and picked up the mike.

“Attention, the roe herring fleet. This is the
James Sinclair
. Stand by for an announcement.” I released the mike key and looked at Pete and George.

Pete shrugged. “Go ahead and put them on forty-eight hours' standby. Then we'll get down to the details.”

George raised a finger. “Forty-eight hours takes us to Monday night, which is a bad time to open a fishery. Make it thirty-six hours and they'll be ready to go Monday morning if necessary.”

I nodded and keyed the mike button again. “Attention, the roe herring fleet. We are giving notice that the fleet is now on thirty-six hours' notice with the earliest possible fishery on Monday morning at eight, but with an anticipated fishery on Wednesday at 0800 hours. Here are the results of today's test fishery.”

I then read off two pages of numbers: tonnages, percentages, male/female ratios, number of slinks, amount of spot spawn, and all the other arcane data that, taken together with a healthy amount of pure intuition, would allow us to pinpoint the optimum time for the fishery. I finished with, “Please come back to the
James Sinclair
with any questions.”

“
James Sinclair, Dawn Dancer
.”

One of my favorite boat names. “Go ahead,
Dawn Dancer
.”

“Yeah, well, so how come if you're thinking about opening on Wednesday, you're putting us on standby for Monday?”

George rolled his eyes. “Jesus, who's running that boat this year? Must be a goddamn rookie.”

I made sure George was finished expostulating before I transmitted a reply. In a carefully neutral voice, “Skipper, all our information points to a probable Wednesday fishery, but the fish have fooled us before. We don't want to see a panic on Monday morning if a major spawn does start then.”

There were more questions but everyone seemed fairly comfortable with the idea. Fortunately, weather was not a major part of the equation for this particular fishery. Spiller Channel was a fairly sheltered area and these were the seine boats, the big boys. Thank God I wasn't running a gillnet fishery somewhere off the west coast. That could be a real high-wire act. One slipup and you'd lose more than the Flying Wallendas.

When the last query had been queried, and the last reply replied, I bade goodnight to my fellow inmates and returned to my stateroom. I hadn't learned much from Alistair's computer but thought I might be able to glean a clue from his logbook. Many fishermen keep a ship's log and a separate fishing log. Alistair combined the two. A typical entry would look like this:

April 3

0500: left base

0630: set one string, Blarney Rock

0715: set one string, Mulcher's reef

0820: set two strings, 80 fm hole.

1230: picked 1st string—63 lbs large

1345: picked 2nd string—52 lbs large, 15 jumbo

1430: picked strings 3 & 4—115 lbs large, 42 jumbo, bycatch—two China rockfish

1435: left for Shearwater

1730: arrived Shearwater, delivered

1900: fueled up—84 gal.

1930: tied up

The log covered the last four years. A quick skim-through showed that almost all entries followed the same format. Sometimes entries referred to a simple cruise without all the set data, but other than that, there was nothing even remotely unusual. For lack of anything intelligent to do, I took the logbook to the copier and spent fifteen minutes copying every page. Then I placed the book in the inside pocket of my floater jacket so I could give it to Louise and get back to first base, or at least line up to get tickets to the ballpark.

The next morning, the main
engines remained silent. There was only the comforting hum of the auxiliary engine as it powered the generator. But I was up early anyway and greeted George at the galley table. Sitting across from him, I sipped my coffee. Rain pattered on the roof. We could hear the weather station on one of the wheelhouse radios. Southeast winds, strong to storm force, two-meter swells at Idol Point, barometer falling; outlook—winds rising to gale force and continuing overnight.

I looked at George and grimaced slightly. He nodded. Definitely a harbor day.

“I think I'll go visiting, George. Okay if I take the Zodiac?” He shrugged and got up to pour us both another coffee. We sat for awhile. Finally, tired of the constant chatter, I got up, donned rain gear and life jacket, and jumped into the Zodiac.

I revved up to full speed but the rain stung my eyes. Not wanting to proceed at full throttle with my eyes shut, I slowed down and idled over to the
Coastal Provider
. As I tied up, my salivary glands leapt into action at the smell of frying bacon. Feeling like Pavlov's dog, I opened the galley door and stepped inside.

Mark and his crew were sitting at the table, just about to tuck into copious amounts of bacon, eggs, and real hash browns. “Hey Danny, grab a plate and help yourself.” Graciously acquiescent, I filled my plate and joined them at the table. “Gentlemen, this is an old friend of mine, Danny Swanson. Danny, that's Randy, Johnny Jr., Sid, and Jarrod.” As he went around the table, I nodded hello and hoped I'd remember their names.

We concentrated on the food for awhile, and then, because I had the only seat not blocked by the table, I got up and poured a round of coffee. As the piles of food dwindled, conversation swelled. Many comments on the weather and how it boded for the fishery, much speculation about the timing of the fishery and speculating about the myriad ways that
DFO
could screw it up. Mark hurriedly interjected that I was in fact a
DFO
employee, but because of my past was not a “real
DFO
guy.” I tried to look reassuring and the talk continued. At the first lull, I told the story of
SPLAG
, the Special Policy for Licensing Abalone Group, and their stellar work on matters of complete irrelevance. There were a few chuckles at that, and then the devil took control of my mind. “You know,” I said, “their website is interactive and anyone can post policy ideas. We should post something completely off the wall and see how they react to it.”

“Couldn't they trace it and you'll get into trouble?”

“We could sign a false name, or”—I felt a surge of evil glee—“we could sign a real person's name, like, say, Fleming Griffith.” Appreciative chuckles all around the table. “Okay, they're talking about area licensing for worthless licenses. What can we add to that to make it even stupider?”

Mark chimed in, “
DFO
says to the license holders, buy out two other licenses and we'll give you an experimental license, sort of like send in two box tops and we'll give you a free coupon.”

Johnny Jr. enthusiastically joined in. “But the experimental license has to use different gear.” Abalone were harvested by divers and I couldn't imagine any other way to do it, but Johnny Jr. could. “We'll say they have to experiment with traps.”