Chuck Gould wrote:
JoeSpareBedroom wrote:


Did you catch the show on Discovery Channel about crab fishermen a while
back? Pretty harrowing work.


That's the nutsiest fishery ever imagined. Middle of winter, Gulf of
Alaska, sea state: u-g-l-y

(Makes a good case for the allocation style fishery rather than a
defined season. Instead of saying, "Everybody go out and fish like mad
for two weeks and keep everything you can bring aboard" the allocation
system says "Vessel X is entitled to catch 12,000 pounds of Alaskan
King crab within this 45-day window of time". Vessel X can stay in port
a day or two if the weather is going to be lot worse than usual without
missing out entirely on a big chunk of the season, and if Vessel X has
poor luck she can sell some of her unused allocation to other boats
that have hit the jackpot.)

It seems like we lose a Seattle-based boat and crew every year or two
up there.
Crabbers can have a high COG, especially with all the pots on deck.
Then there's the ice- a lot of times there's a crewman assigned to
constantly chip the ice off the boat, and he or she has to chip it off
faster than it's building up.

After watching that fishing series on Discovery Channel, nobody would
ever complain about the price of crab again. :-)


Back in the early 80's (83 me thinks) I worked as a waiter at a BBQ
place on Lake of the Ozarks for a summer. There was this gal who worked
on a crab boat out of Alaska that was just a couple years older them me.

She was the only persons to survive a crab boat sinking. She told us
about it and it was amazing she survived at all. She told us the boat
was getting rocked pretty hard when a crab pot crushed someone. A fellow
crew member at one point threw her overboard. She said she recalled
seeing the boat roll shortly after that and could still see the skipper
in the wheel hours trying to keep it from turning over.

After being in the water a short time she said she was stating to
blackout and could hear voices but could not longer see anything. The
next thing she knew she was on a helicopter and was being put in water
that felt like fire, but was apparently icewater that was much warmer
then the sea she can out of.

Her skin had a very pale tone to it, I have no idea if it was from that
or not. But I always suspected it was.

Capt Jack R..