THE GAMBLE
The season never seemed to start. Fishing for a week, then two, then three. Where are the fish? Feeling alienated from the product of my labor: the capture, detainment and sale of salmonid species. More than a handful pleases, more than three humpies and a log. More than a bag of radioactive terrorist jellies please. Where are the fish?
Experience dictates avoiding negative diatribes in June and early July (plenty of time for that still.
So instead, some musings of the last few fruitless days.
We generally drink two pots of coffee before 5 am. Three days ago we, in Allie's account we drank 12 pots of coffee by the end of the day.
Words encapsulate the crew. There are key phrases which return to me day after day, we all caught in their meaning. Mistakes, misfortune, early morning and the ocean’s neutral guiding way of ruining one’s set leads to grim.
Grimness like stone on the faces of the crew. Jaws clenched, few words exchanged, a leaden weight descends but also can dissipate suddenly when a good set appears or the infallible words of the skipper sing across the boats expanses: “make a skiff pile” or “that’s it for the day”.
Jubilation comes like spring in the ranks, and jokes and smiles and cigarettes hang on the mouths of the crew. Mutiny. It's too early to speak of mutiny. We’ll get there in August…
A few words on Jellyfish because they are important, more important than any onlooker would assume. Jellyfish come in two kinds: small, translucent, innocuous and sometimes with a blue cast or a white four leafed clover pattern on top. They fill the palm of your hand. They’re reminiscent of silicone breast implants.
Red jellyfish: a bit of a misnomer as they come in grapefruit pink, seductive purple and egg yolk yellow. They range from teacup size to Papa Franks medium pizza. They are equipped with a rubbery translucent cap with a lacy edge, a sort of petticoat of thick ruffled membranes and tentacles that can trail up to ten feet behind them. They are ombre white to deep purple or pink or yellow or whatever. They are beautiful. I like to watch them in the water.
They feel like hell. Red jellyfish inflict more pain, suffering and frustration on the humans who inadvertently strain them from the ocean than arguably any other thing in the fishing industry. No, seriously. Whether dropped, a wholesale jellyfish, down on top of your head from the block, kicked up by the tail of a fish right into your eye, or in a microscopic dose in a drop of water landing on your chin, literally any contact with the tentacles of the jelly will cause you a variety of discomforts. In the first seconds of contact ones skin will itch, as if your neurons are cringing or mustering themselves to deliver “OW. FUCK. FUCK.” signals to the brain, and then a gnawing, a stinging, a burning. Sometimes a razor sharp linear pain like someone tracing the human to jellyfish contact point with a scalpel. Other times a blunt long burn, and for those fair skinned ones among the fleet it leads to raised red welts, which sometimes last for hours. It looks and feels like someone snapped you in the face with a rubber band. The same feelings of irritation, rage and injustice follow. And yet the strange thing about jellyfish is their indifference. Anger, and disaffection does nothing to them, nothing does anything to them. You can rip them to shreds, stomp them through the deck boards, throw them as hard as you can and they continue to be. And be. And be. And sting.
And ruin your set. Both red and white jellies can gather in amazing tonnage. The water will be thick and off-grey, blue, undulating a lazy pumping action of hundreds of thousands of white jellies. As we strain the sea we gather the biomass into our nets. They clog and weigh the net down, their sheer volume makes them spill over the corks. There have been many curses uttered on seining boats and I’d wager a good majority of them have been directed at jellyfish.
Next: THE DESERT
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