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It's heartwarming that you thought of me. 

 

I never got to play on a seiner. It would be a big change from gillnetting. Sein fishing would be interesting, but I would be nothing special. To be honest, the gear requires less specialized skill in handling, but I am sure there are tricks for being in the right place and so forth which separate the average from the superior. My ability to pick fish and teach others to do so extremely efficiently would be worthless to them.

 

It does look almost as competitive as a boundary line fight. I miss herring, and every year am glad that I don't have to go weeks covered in blood and fish snot without a proper shower. It is amazing to be sitting with empty nets and then have 10,000 lbs on deck 10 minutes later. Nothing else quite like herring.

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So the violent maneuvering was orchestrated in a fashion to maximize the net catch?  They were specifically trying to capture the entire school of herring?  Also what is a herring?  I do not know.  sad.png

 

Edit:  Looks very confrontational.  Was there intentional ramming?  Lucky somebody didn't have the gun. 

Edited by HB of CJ
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Sein nets like shown above get brief openings. The ADF&G declares an hour or two of legal fishing in a particular zone when they see the fish are about to enter that area. 

 

The fishermen listen to spotter pilots, and try to encircle pools of fish with their nets. The fish are blocked by the net rather than entangled in it. The net is like a wall in the water. Corks on the cork line hold the top up, and the bottom line has a lead core. Thus it is like a flexible fence. That type of seining is called purse seining, because the nets have an additional feature: the bottom of the net also has a series of rings with a loose line running though them. Pulling that line in acts like a drawstring bag on the bottom of the net.

 

The rules vary per fishery, but for most of the purse seiners, the law requires them to have the net in a closed circle by the end of the period, or perhaps closed and pursed. Then they can take their time to pull the net into a smaller and smaller ball, and either pull the ball on board with boom hoists, or use a giant wet vac to suck the fish out of the net into their holds.

 

What you see there is the fishermen trying to encircle schools of fish. The skiff is used to tow the net around in a loop, and also often to chase fish into the net before the circle is closed. 

 

With herring, the primary market is Japan, and the desired stuff is the eggs. The rest of the fish is often worth less than the fuel it cost to catch. You can't waste the fish. therefore, it is vital to catch a school of females that have not spawned yet. Herring are a fish that spawn and go out to see several times rather than spawn and die. They are in very dense schools, and segregate by gender. When they are fat with roe or sperm, the light from above hits their scales on their backs, closer to perpendicular. They look silvery grey from above. The females are a slightly different color en masse than the males. It's subtle. When they spawn, they get skinnier so the light hits them edge on, and the scales reflect a rusty red color. Plus the roe or sperm in the water where they are spawning is very stark. It looks like a multi color jigsaw puzzle from above. as in each piece is a solid color.  Really something everyone should see at least once. 

 

What the guys above are doing is watching the clock and trying to get around a school of the right fish that is as big as they can get, before the clock runs out. It kinda also has to be far enough from the rocks and kelp beds that the school isn't pumping the eggs out before they get the fish on board. 

 

The whole thing is high stakes gambling and very competitive. Being 20' the wrong way is the difference between an empty haul with no time to fix it and $50K.  Also if you get stuck with males or spawned fish too many times, your market will buy them, because it has to, but you won't have a market the next year. Herring season is generally 2-3 weeks long depending on the fishery. Many fisheries in AK also have rules designed to protect locals, that the boat is not eligible to fish in multiple fisheries. Thus the real high liners tend to have several cheap boats for different fisheries. They finish one fishery, fly into the next, and jump onto the boat where one of the crew is the legal permit holder. If both fisheries happen too close together, you might miss out on one, or try to split the crews.

 

Ramming happens, guns happen. Guns don't live long in that environment. This is part of why I am such a snob about stainless guns being really made of stainless, not aluminum, SS, steel, blued internals, chromed aluminum, or other nonsense. Most "Police Marine" shotguns don't actually survive a marine environment. Bristol Bay gillnetting is a lot faster, rougher and more confrontational when fish are happening and you are on a line. 

 

Look up "North Line Egigik" on youtube, and I am sure you will see some stuff. However, if the fishing is worth it, no one has time to shoot video, so you kinda only see the tamer days when things are slow.


*Seine. Forgive the multiple spelling errors above. There are a lot of variations on seining. "Horse seining" in the Columbia river is worth looking up. Fascinating way of killing fish.

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Been to Alaska 3 times, don't plan to ever go back.  Of course, this was courtesy of Club Fed....USMC.  Not the best places to go 'camping', or sightseeing.....:)  OMG the freak'n mosquitoes...OMG.   24 hours of dark....24 hours of light, the dust.....yeah, MAYBE if I was a cruise ship looking at those 'pretty' icebergs....maybe. 

 

I am sure that there are beautiful places there...but I lived in swamps and the like, humped the hell out of the terrain, was chased (my entire platoon) by moose (have a pic somewhere of my entire platoon on the pipeline...waiting for Range Control to chase the damn mother moose away), was chased by a bear.....never saw it, but i damn well knew it was stalking me while I was taking a shit, and when i ran, it chased.....didn't have any more shit to shit out.  All I had was my A2 with BFA and K-Bar...right.  Several Marines with hypothermia (first time I ever had to strip down bodies and put them into mummy bags together), and had 2 Marines actually have to get evac'd from the field...they were mentally and physically overwhelmed with mosquito bites.  Unreal. 

 

Yeah, wonderful place.  

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Thank you GunFun; ...

 

The herring eggs are a luxury market item in Japan?  Wow.

 

Yep. Also herring eggs stuck to kelp. Dad has the licensing for roe on kelp, but hasn't used them in years. It's kalled Kazunoko, and my native friends love it with a light dip in seal oil. Way too salty and kelpy for my tastes. It is interesting to me how much overlap there is between Japanese and Upik, etc. tastes in food. Upiks love the same flavors, but with more fat, and simpler presentation.

Been to Alaska 3 times, don't plan to ever go back.  Of course, this was courtesy of Club Fed....USMC.  Not the best places to go 'camping', or sightseeing.....smile.png  OMG the freak'n mosquitoes...OMG.   24 hours of dark....24 hours of light, the dust.....yeah, MAYBE if I was a cruise ship looking at those 'pretty' icebergs....maybe. 

 

I am sure that there are beautiful places there...but I lived in swamps and the like, humped the hell out of the terrain, was chased (my entire platoon) by moose (have a pic somewhere of my entire platoon on the pipeline...waiting for Range Control to chase the damn mother moose away), was chased by a bear.....never saw it, but i damn well knew it was stalking me while I was taking a shit, and when i ran, it chased.....didn't have any more shit to shit out.  All I had was my A2 with BFA and K-Bar...right.  Several Marines with hypothermia (first time I ever had to strip down bodies and put them into mummy bags together), and had 2 Marines actually have to get evac'd from the field...they were mentally and physically overwhelmed with mosquito bites.  Unreal. 

 

Yeah, wonderful place.  

 

It's a running joke in bristol bay how many marines decide not to re:up and then take deckhand jobs. They pretty much all say "bootcamp had nothing on this" or something along those lines. But then, maybe they would say that about waiting in the returns line at target after christmas... Not knocking on marines, I just think it is standard hyperbole. That and they tend to come with an inflated perception of their own toughness. Some are, some aren't. There are a lot of tuna fishers who come the same way. Proud to make things hard on themselves. 

 

 

Oh, there was this guy I kinda knew of named Lester. He was famous for basically being unstable, and getting into fights, screwing business partners, etc. One year, he hired a couple of marines as crew. Paid them $100/ day in the 1980s or something like that. Made them live on deck and never let them in out of the weather, while he never left the wheelhouse. Fed them nothing but cold food, or warmed up spaghetti Os. He also made them live in these obnoious mustang suits. (A lubber's bit of gear. Those would be a danger working with nets, and would get unspeakably nasty with fish gurry.) They thought they were getting super high pay. He never went to shore, and would keep them busy during deliveries so they couldn't talk to other people, and generally treated them like crap. For reference, this would be late 80s, when they were getting ~$2.60/lb times ~150,000lbs and normal crew pay would be ~12% of gross before bonuses. The crew thought they were getting lots of pay. Then Lester had some kind of emergency, and had to go into town. He tied up to the fuel docs, and the crew talked to the guys on the fuel docs bragging about how much they were getting. By the time Lester got back, his boat was almost underwater, and the engines and his electronics were scrap, and his crew were gone. That kind of behavior was par for for the coarse with Lester. My father's name is Les, and Lester had a boat distinctively built by my family. We periodically got random attacks or abuse earned by Lester that people mistakenly applied to dad.

 

I'm with you on the biting insects though. I could tell you stories. Alaska is to be experienced with a healthy dose of airplanes, boats and things that go fast over land with gasoline. Dirt bikes, quads, sno mobiles, etc. Holding still is just asking to get drained.

Edited by GunFun
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Yep. Also herring eggs stuck to kelp. Dad has the licensing for roe on kelp, but hasn't used them in years. It's kalled Kazunoko, and my native friends love it with a light dip in seal oil. Way too salty and kelpy for my tastes. It is interesting to me how much overlap there is between Japanese and Upik, etc. tastes in food. Upiks love the same flavors, but with more fat, and simpler presentation.

 

Pretty much anything nasty that comes out of the water, the Japanese will eat it and probably pay big money for the privilege.

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You could say the same for most of Europe, but substitute scrurrying, oozing or crawling in the garden.

 

I like to learn the taste sensibilities from a lot of different cultures. They are looking for different things. Tastes that I don't normally enjoy become enjoyable when I am looking for them. i.e. Chinese tend to value the unusual, and high contrast. Vietnamese like subtlety and sharp and fresh vs something that otherwise would be greasy.

 

I like a bit of Japanese food, but their most distinctive appreciations don't work for me. i.e. strongly "fishy" flavors like mackerel skin, seaweed, every version of miso I have tried. IMO their idea of potstickers and heavy fried noodles are near perfection, and I love me some ramen, whether authentic or instant.

 

I've yet to have some classic french or russian cuisine in the form of horse, but I am looking forward to the chance. I liked the frog's legs I had, prepared in the 5 star fancy cuisine style.

 

I really like a lot of the traditional Native foods from Alaska, excepting stinkmeat, things like eyeballs, seagull eggs, kelps and the hard fats. Igutuq is pretty good depending on who makes it. 

 

Actually my rule for food goes something like this: "I will try anything so long as my friend Steve hasn't described it as 'the best part'". Two Steves are considered. One is a Native friend from Dillingham (I think he has a japanese grandparent, and his cooking shows it), the other is a redneck. Both are good cooks, but I know better than to eat the best part. Both would have a good ol' time with Chile.

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Respectfully ...

 

So the whole thing is about getting the herring thus getting the eggs to sell to rich Japs to eat?  Do I have this mostly correct?  Wow!  I still don't understand it at all.  It seems to a complete outsider like me that there is a whole bunch to do about nothing.  Very expensive very dangerous highly State and Fed regulated much to do about nothing?

 

Only it is something to do about everything for a lot of Americans dangerously fishing.  There must be a better way?  What happens if the Japanese economy tanks like it has before?  What then?  Do these fisherman have back up plans to keep their jobs and boats working?  Are they outfitted to catch other fish for sale?  All of it very dangerous.

 

Respectfully.

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HB- We live in a voluntary economy, mostly.

 

There are a lot of people who suck at fishing who think there should be a better way too. Their way involves having a government or quasi government company operate a fish trap, and push the fishermen out. Locals get welfare proceeds just like indian casinos.

 

The other way is CDQ quotas: Get rid of most of the fishermen, and transfer their rights to the best and the worst fishermen, cutting out most of the middle. Eliminate competition. The state tells you how much to catch, and you can take your sweet time about it. When you hit your poundage, you pack it in. Your poundage is set based on your quota shares, which are determined roughly speaking by fraud theft, and avarice. Past fisheries that go from competetive to quota goes like this: State buys out the very most profitable fishermen (those with most incentive to fight govt theft.) They are paid high dollar, and basically bribed out of the way. They have to agree to never use any of their gear or participate in the fishery again. It's wasteful. Then the rest of the losers fight over the scraps.  The professionals in the middle of the pack are probably out of town when most of the votes happen, so only the least hard working are left to rig the system. Those guys arrange some kind of deal that allocates the slices of the much smaller pie according to factors such as living locally, having a good year during a particular time period, etc. The factors are gerrymandered around to favor the buddies of the guys who are in town to vote, rather than the guys who are out fishing because it is their job and they are professionals.

 

This is what screwed my uncle with halibut CDQ, it's what happened to the Dutch harbor crab industry a few years back. It is as dirty as things get.

 

The better way IMO is to let people pay what they are willing to pay for fish, and for people who want to fish to fish, and people who don't to not fish. You know, freedom of contract. Fishermen in AK in 1952 lobbied to ensure that state fisheries be managed by biological data, and it is the core of state law. It's been corrupted and had elements of corruption from the start, but on the whole, it's always been fishermen working to ensure the health of the biomass, and the lazy and the fanatical conservationists who want to restrict in spite of the data who screw the rest over. Competitive fishing is one of the few industries left in America, where risk and ambition and hard work very directly pay off. Where hard men who function under stress thrive, and where men who would probably end up getting arrested in an office environment end up contributing to society. Put nerf padding on that, and I think you guarantee that a lot of dangerous men are out of legitimate dangerous work. Just typing about this makes me want to scream. It is our last frontier, and there are a lot of frontiersmen who need it for more than just financial reasons.

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Preach on, bro.  The town where I grew up, a guy could basically arrive in town with all of his belongings in a backpack, and through hard work make something of himself in the fishing industry.  Have known several guys like that, one of whom basically spent his first night in town sleeping under one of my dad's trucks (we were in the transport end of the business).  You could start out as a deckhand, and retire a fairly well off boat/permit owner, and have a worthwhile business to leave to your kids.  Or, if you weren't as ambitious, but still willing to work hard, there was more or less year round employment for deckhands. 

 

Not so much anymore, on both counts.  If you can scrape together the funds for a boat and permit and know what you are doing, you can still do okay, but the days when you could get there on deckhand's wages are gone, at least in the local fisheries.  If you are willing to go winter crabbing out west or a few years, and are decent with your money I suppose it could still be done.

Edited by Netpackrat
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Gunfun:  It's a running joke in bristol bay how many marines decide not to re:up and then take deckhand jobs. They pretty much all say "bootcamp had nothing on this" or something along those lines. But then, maybe they would say that about waiting in the returns line at target after christmas... Not knocking on marines, I just think it is standard hyperbole. That and they tend to come with an inflated perception of their own toughness. Some are, some aren't. There are a lot of tuna fishers who come the same way. Proud to make things hard on themselves.

 

No knocking taken. Toughness comes in varying levels.  Some are made for it, some are not.  I have no doubt about the inflated perceptions....seen many of those while I was in.  Hat's off to ya. 

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  • 4 months later...

All of that sounds normal. Even fairly low key. Those seiners are bigger and have a lot of mass for being fragile plastic egg shells... 

 

I gotta say the most normal part about that was skippers being aggressive jackasses while the crew are somewhere between excited and afraid their boss will do something stupid which gets people hurt or ruins a day of fishing. That's the real essence of line fishing.

 

The way seine openings work is this:

 

They give a narrow period of time to set your nets, on fairly short notice. Then you have a short period before closure. If you have a little lead time, you can scout for fish and try to herd them into a ball. Then you race to get your net around the ball of fish and closed. If your ball looks weak, you gotta let go and get pursed around another one before the closure. Different fisheries have different rules for whether you just have to connect the net into a circle or whether you have to have it fully pursed before the closure, whether you can anchor the net, whether the skiff is active or passive in dragging the net around.... These guys all saw a good ball of fish, and were trying to be ready to set when the clock struck opening time, - or at least that's what it looked like to me from a quick watch. 

 

I did gillnetting, and the gear works very differently, but being revved up and ready to launch the second it is legal is a very familiar thing. There is so much cash on the line, that people are amped up. People will be ready to attack eachother over a set, that they may well abandon before the net is all the way in the water, whip it on board as fast as possible and race off to a random spot. It can be like  houscat's tendency to wig out and pinball off the walls at 3 in the morning. Drag racers waiting at the light don't really get the same sense of tension built up.

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Another video showing how it is supposed to work.  The owner/captain of this vessel is a good friend of mine:

 

 

Asked him once about knowing where to find fish...  He said, "You can follow the crowd, but the crowd is wrong.  And even if the crowd is right, then you have to share with the crowd."  Seemed to have applicability beyond fishing.

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That quote is dead on.

 

Every season or two my dad would pick up a couple of stalkers who don't know how to find their own fish, so they would just follow him everywhere and cork him, even when that is a bad set for themselves. So usually we would do something like fish somewhere very shallow, in a bowl as tide is running out. Then we would fast pick and run out and leave them stuck in the bowl. They miss a full tide of fishing, and sometimes going dry makes them unable to sell the fish they have to their market.

 

It usually only takes once. If they don't get the hint, we'll just start lacing them cork for cork a few sets in a row to make it blatantly obvious that we know what they are doing. When they complain, he calls them on their nonsense, and they usually move on.

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