2,278 fish later...
finally listening to maggie rogers in situ and my brief, wondrous time as a deckhand in sitka
hello lil chums,
in case you’re just getting this little newsletter for the first time, welcome to phuuds. this is a place for me to wax poetic about, venture into the absurdity of, and romanticize the culture of food as i taste it.
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a (not so) brief interlude on alaska
filipinx snax are coming up next week, i promise. but first, we gotta talk fish, because this is what i was doing last week:
as y’all know, i quit my job at the beginning of june and when people asked me what i was planning to do, i’d say:
“training as a deckhand on a commercial salmon trolling boat”
many asked “why” given that I’m not someone people expect to become a career fisherman, but to my close friends, this made a lot of sense. i love eating fish (see below for a typical breakfast), i care about food systems, and i like adventures.
how did this opportunity come about? well, during my time at curative, i was lucky enough to work with the fiercely enthusiastic and incredibly capable alex simon. she told me about her apprenticeship on the I Gotta with eric a few years ago, and i was immediately hooked (pun intended). she told me to send eric my resume and cover letter and off i went.
the I Gotta and the legendary Eric Jordan
when i finally met eric in person on july 30th, he told me, “i consider myself an ecofeminist. how do you identify?” eric knows how to ask questions. i should have remembered from my phone interview in april, where i said hello and he said,
“can you deal with blood and killing? i often forget to tell people there’s going to be a lot of it.”
“do you get seasick? you can’t take dramamine on my boat. i need my deckhands alert.”
“what are your politics? i am a bernie man.”
over the course of six days, he would interview me about my best friend, what makes for a good manager, whether we can get people to care about climate change, and so on.
many deckhands before me have written (much more eloquently) about their formative time on the I Gotta and so much of the experience is eric. he’s been fishing since he was a toddler, started local hatcheries, fought for policies that benefit environment and industry, and all of that while being at the top of his game for several decades. but he’ll rarely talk about his accolades — rather he’ll spin up life lessons in the form of continuously unfolding stories about an unbelievable day of fishing. [his wife sarah jokes that the reason he loves running this trainee program is so he can always have a fresh audience.]
for example, on our very short morning commute to the harbor at 6am, we were talking about the trade off of being present versus being a futurist. “i’m almost always leaving the current bite to find the next,” but we both agreed you have to know where you are to know where you’re going. presence creates future.
these are the types of conversations and interactions that feel like a luxury in day-to-day life but were in abundance with eric. whether it was over a breakfast of venison fried rice or in the boat cabin waiting for fish to bite, he always managed to squeeze in an epic tale or philosophical line of inquiry.
this deckhand program is just as much about cultural exchange as it is about learning the trade — and you can bet that eric designed it that way.
the life of a deckhand
my first day had gotten off to a slow start when we found out the bilge pump was broken. eric was down in the engine room, furiously liprolling——always a sure sign that something’s wrong. by 3pm, he called off fishing and went to the hardware store.
i was a bit bummed as i hung up my waterproof gear and put one of the many venison casseroles sarah had prepared for us back in the icebox. i was just getting ready to leave when eric came sprinting down the dock, bad hip be damned. “let’s get going! there’s fish!” when there’s news of fish, the warm, poetic storyteller disappears and a steely, single-minded hunter emerges to command the crew with brutally direct clarity.
chris, who had a few more days of experience on me was told to ready the gear. “the gear” refers to the equipment used to bait and hook the fish. it’s a savvy combination of pieces that eric himself designed and evolved over the decades. there’s a clasp that attached on to the metal cable, a flasher to mimic the iridescent purple (very gen z) of the chum, and a purple “bug” covering a black bear hook to bait them in.
after getting the boat ready and driving the boat out to the destination, the next step is: spotting. this means scanning the ocean in all directions looking for fish jumps or finners. spotting would come to be my favorite part of this whole experience.
on this first day, i immediately spotted three separate jumps. they were graceful, long gliding flops — a sure marker of chum salmon. without pointing (taboo in case another boat sees you), i shouted, “jumps at 11 o’clock!” wait. i saw more. “jumps at all 7 o’clock! jumps again at 11 o’clock!” (i would later earn the nickname 7-eleven because that’s where i always spotted jumps).
i was starting to feel very chuffed about my spotting abilities when eric informed me that this amount of activity was insane, very exciting, and not typical. there must be a lot of chum.
and indeed there were. in just three and a half hours, we caught almost 230 fish. for reference, during the previous week, the best day yielded 350 fish in a sixteen hour day.
i didn’t get to touch the gear that day because the catch was so good and i just wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near up to speed. so my job was to bleed the fish.
i’ll never forget the first time they pulled a fish on board. it was so big and it was so alive. i was supposed to seize this slippery, conscious mass of muscle by the mouth and run a gill knife (aptly named) swiftly through the middle of its four layers of bright red, fanned gills. it’s akin to slicing a human’s carotid artery. then you toss it in the slush tank.
i did as i was told. this was what i came to do after all, but i was pretty shell-shocked the entire time. it never got any less brutal, but something did felt right for the first time in awhile. i was actually killing my meat instead of just thinking about the process but buying a sanitized, parchment-wrapped fillet in a supermarket. these fish had blood and breath and it felt more congruous that i was taking their lives for my own directly rather than having someone else do it for me.
the next five days had similar schedules, but the chum frenzy calmed gradually, which was a slight blessing for me because i could actually learn how to run gear.
eric and his sons came up with an much safer, ergonomic system for managing gear that is a truly a work of art. from the picture above, you can see that the gear has plenty of small strings just waiting to tangle with each other. in addition to having a set up to prevent that, they used their expertise and experience to come up with a system that uses the fish’s movement and weight to dehook, conserving the deckhand’s energy and minimizing the risk of getting a hook to the face.
during the next five days, eric and jacob (an experienced deckhand who has been fishing with the jordans for five years) trained me up to put gear out, pull fish in, mooch ice for the slush tanks, unload to processors efficiently, clean the boat, and most importantly, heat up sarah’s venison moussaka.
the numbers
we hauled in about 2300 fish last week at ~$1.10 per pound (an average chum is 6 lbs). you can do the math if you’d like, but it turns out the fish money is pretty good when you’re a crew of three.
a reflection
i’m really glad and quite lucky that this whole adventure fits well with my career story, but that’s not why i did it. i’m not someone who does things alone very often, but earlier this year, i knew i needed a particular kind of growth and i needed to do it on my own.
here’s my tried and true recipe for growth:
combine going it alone with two parts physical intensity, sprinkle with a steep learning curve, and cook as long as needed in an oven of medium to high discomfort.
like many millennials in this pandemic time period, i am cripplingly self-conscious and have a tendency to scenario plan everything from accommodating all the dietary restrictions for tonight’s dinner to making sure i’m being inclusive with the friendsgiving party i want to throw in a few months. here is an actual photo of my mind at any given moment:
after one day on the boat, all i could think about was: the rope burn on my palm, the fish bite on my left index finger, a sore lower back from squatting and slicing gills, an achy right shoulder from pulling fish. this was a perfect sensory inauguration to a week of being here and now.
the reason that recipe above works so well is because i know that when my body is plunged into a state of physical distress and learning, i’m forced to look after me before anyone else. not something that comes very easily. i promise that that is not an attempt at a humble brag, but an almost fatal flaw i’ve been battling for a long time.
i talked a little bit above about how spotting fish was my favorite task. each morning, we’d set out the poles as eric drove the boat out and he’d say, “okay, lara, go spot jumps.” i’d sit right on the bow, rain or shine, and scan the horizon with soft eyes (this is a reference to The Wire for all you Bunk fans out there).
spotting fish is just complex enough of a task that you can’t let your mind wander too much, but it does allow some room for observation. i’m pretty rubbish at meditating, but the few times i’ve felt serene concentration, it’s felt like this.
an internal state of this moment being enough. floating down this current, both physically in the ocean on figuratively through time and seeing it all unfold around me. and at the same time being connected to the tangible here and now — seeing and finding the wonderment of a wave that looks like molten metal, a far away glimpse of a whale tail, two eagles battling over their own catch of the day, a floating jelly, rafted otters.
i knew this mindset would evaporate quickly after i left. and while i know it’s an achievable state through discipline, i’m so grateful for how frictionless it was to access each day spotting chum.
shout outs
i never would have done this if not for the serendipity of knowing alex. thank you for recommending me to eric, for offloading all your knowledge to me during our brief overlap, and for picking me up at the airport!
shout out to chris for training me during the epic catch and being so nice to me as we muddled through the chum chaos together.
so much gratitude for jacob for being so patient with me, always being down to listen to music while we pulled gear, educating me on the politics of water boundaries, and always having my back.
and of course, i am forever indebted to eric and sarah for not only taking a bet on me to be a deckhand, but for generously hosting me in their home, feeding me deer they hunted and butchered themselves, and helping me cultivate a love of sitka and fishing.
a smol pitch
if you’re interested in these wonderful wild, troll-caught alaskan salmon, check out sitka salmon shares. it’s a fisherman-owned co-op and you might even get fish straight from eric!
and if you’re interested in crewing with eric, check out the alaska longline fisherman’s association crew training program.
meme time
SPOT FISH KILL !!!! Inquiring minds want to know: will fish continue to be an important part of your diet post-fishing boat?????