Shark Drunk
Page 6
“There!” says Hugo, pointing north with one hand as he turns the ignition key with the other. A spout of water breaks the surface far away, and Hugo gives the boat full throttle. Several minutes later we’re close to the whale. It’s hardly moving at all, just breathing. Each time it exhales, it roars, and a spout, like water from a fire hydrant, leaps from its blowhole, which is at the front of its head, on the left. We can hear the air sucked into its lungs, like the whoosh from the open window of a speeding car. In between, there are loud booms. It’s what Rimbaud called the “moaning of the Behemoths in heat.”
The whale rolls back and forth a bit, showing us its strange knotty surface. It’s as big as a bus. The part of the whale that’s visible is almost double the size of our boat. Underwater we can glimpse the top of the whale’s head, which has the same shape as the Kola Peninsula. Its eyes are so far down in the water that we can’t see them, but they undoubtedly see us.
After traveling in Africa, India, and Indonesia, I’ve become rather blasé when it comes to experiencing nature and wildlife. But right now I’m simply sitting here and staring, dumbstruck by the size and power of this creature. Then I finally come to my senses and grab my camera.
Hugo steers the boat even closer, and I start to feel anxious. What if the whale gets annoyed and decides to give us a swat with its tail? We’d be launched high into the air, with the heavy outboard motor and propeller still going. It’s a long way to shore, but Hugo thinks we’re safe as long as we stay alongside the front of the whale.
Almost everyone has heard the story of Jonah and the whale. George Orwell, in his essay entitled “Inside the Whale,” has also written about this same experience, although in a figurative sense:
The historical Jonah, if he can be so called, was glad enough to escape, but in imagination, in day-dream, countless people have envied him. It is, of course, quite obvious why. The whale’s belly is simply a womb big enough for an adult. There you are, in the dark, cushioned space that exactly fits you, with yards of blubber between you and reality, able to keep up an attitude of the completest indifference, no matter what happens. A storm that would sink all the battleships in the world would hardly reach you as an echo. Even the whale’s own movements would probably be imperceptible to you. He might be wallowing among the surface waves or shooting down into the blackness of the middle seas (a mile deep, according to Herman Melville), but you would never notice the difference. Short of being dead, it is the final, unsurpassable stage of irresponsibility.30
After what must be about three minutes, although it feels like fifteen, the sperm whale gets ready to dive. It arches the enormous front part of its body in several preparatory maneuvers. We’re ten or twelve feet away when the whale points its snout downward and its body slowly follows until its crescent-shaped fluke is sticking out of the water in front of us. It vanishes without a sound.
Then something odd happens. In front of our boat, maybe sixty feet from the spot where the sperm whale dived, the water starts quivering with tiny ripples and currents, as if it’s a high-voltage electrical field. The whale is heading our way. I look at Hugo, no doubt with panic in my eyes. He has noticed the same thing. He sets his hand on the throttle lever and gently veers away from the mass of pure power that is coming toward us.
Suddenly everything goes calm, and the entire sea is once again as shiny and smooth as blue chrome. The sperm whale is on its way down to the deep.
Hunting for a Greenland shark? After our encounter with the sperm whale, it now feels like we’re setting off on a perfectly ordinary fishing trip.
8
Now our search for the Greenland shark begins in earnest. Studying our sea charts, we triangulate our position using landmarks on shore: the Skrova lighthouse; an old, cone-shaped stone marker on the outermost islet; and Steigberget, at the top of the glacier Helldalsisen on the other side of the fjord. We’ve reached the approximate spot where we planned to try our luck. I stick a hole in the trash bags that are filled with intestines, kidneys, liver, gristle, bone fragments and joints, fat, sinews, fly larva and maggots. I throw up nonstop. As I mentioned, Hugo is incapable of vomiting, but he looks like he wished he could, positioned as he is at the far end of the boat, leaning over the side. Then I dump four of the five sacks over the gunwale. There are rocks in the bottom of the bags, and they sink toward the seafloor. The fifth sack contains some meaty tidbits that we’re going to use as bait on the hook.
The sea is at least a thousand feet deep in this spot. I’ve read in books of local history that the fishermen used to wait twenty-four hours before coming back to try and get the Greenland shark to bite. We’re going to do the same thing, even though it really shouldn’t be necessary. If there’s a Greenland shark within a radius of five miles, it’s only a matter of time before the shark catches a whiff of the goodies way down there in the deep. Like other sharks, the Greenland shark can smell “in stereo” and pinpoint the source with great precision. And even though there are no waves in the sea, the currents off Skrova are always strong. In this particular spot, the current will spread the smell of the offal as if it were blowing in the wind. That’s our theory at any rate. Tomorrow we’ll see if there’s any truth to it.
—
Fishing for Greenland shark resumed during World War I. Poor folks ate the meat, and the livers could be used for lamp oil, medicinal oils, and many other things. Hugo’s great-grandfather Norman Johan and his sons Svein, Hagbart, and Sverre were among the first in the district to process oil from Greenland sharks. In other words, it’s in Hugo’s blood. If anyone should take up the tradition fifty years after the fishing for Greenland sharks ended, he’s the most likely candidate.
We steer the RIB close to the Skrova lighthouse, which stands on a small rock of an island. We roar through more schools of herring. They leap around the boat in glints of shiny silver. Here the sea is never totally still, but on this day it’s as close to calm as it gets. Near to shore, I can see nearly imperceptible waves race toward the bare rocks, soundlessly, and without breaking. The water moves lazily, as viscous as floating aspic.
Just off the islet that the locals call Kvalhøgda (Whale Heights), we let out a normal fishing line to catch something for dinner. I can actually feel fish stop the swaying descent of the lead weights toward the bottom. Herring at the very top, grazing on zooplankton. Under the herring swim pollock, also going after zooplankton. Below the herring, zooplankton, and pollock there are bigger fish. A halibut snaps at one of the pollock we have on the hook, ripping off its skin, though, unfortunately, without getting snagged itself.
—
After entering the small sound between the islets of Saltværøya and Skarvsundøya, we head for Skrova, which isn’t really a single island but a small cluster of islands and islets. For a hundred years the fishing village of Skrova has been a hub for the area’s fishing and whaling. The reason for this is both geographic and topographic, since the island group is situated out in the ocean, almost in the middle of the fishing banks and whale hunting grounds in Vestfjorden. And Skrova has a good, safe harbor.
Today well over two hundred people live on Skrova. The fish landing stations have been shut down, except in the Lofoten season, but there is a processing plant for farmed salmon on the island. And almost all minke whales caught in Vestfjorden in the springtime are still taken to Skrova, to the modern plant operated by Ellingsen Seafood.
Skrova has a natural harbor, with a snug entrance into a bay that’s the perfect size in length and width. In Heimskrova, the buildings are set close together, giving the community a more intimate and country-village feeling than is usual this far north. Traditionally, wherever there was more space—for instance along a fjord—the northerners in Norway would build their homes far apart, especially since each dwelling had to have space for a small farm, with fields, cowsheds, and maybe a pasture for grazing, as well as a boat berth on the foreshore. On Skrova there is very little pastureland, and most of the buildings stand close together
in the fishing village and on the surrounding islets. In this raw landscape, there’s comfort in company.
The island is always bathed in light from the sea, and when we come racing into the bay in our RIB, Aasjord Station is the first thing we see. Standing on posts on the small islet of Risholmen, and with the sea on three sides, it’s naturally what catches the eye of everyone who arrives. At this time of year, the sun shines on Aasjord Station 24/7. It feels as if the fishing station turns with the sun.
The last time I was here, the place looked as though it were about to fall into the sea. The dock and posts were rotting. Decades of neglect had brought the structure close to collapse.
Now it smells of fresh lumber and linseed oil. The whole wharf is brand-new. The posts holding up both the wharf and the buildings are made of aspen, which won’t rot in seawater. The buildings have been given new board siding, painted white, which makes them visible from many miles away. In the background the black peaks of Lillemolla stick up from the sea. It’s no wonder that Christian Krohg hesitated to set up his easel under such conditions. When another Norwegian painter, Lars Hertervig (1830–1902), was asked by his doctor what had caused him to lose his mind, Hertervig said that he had “stared too much at landscapes in strong sunlight” and he “lacked good paints” to depict the landscapes in an accurate manner.31
—
Hugo and Mette live on the second floor of one of the buildings, in a small, two-room apartment that was created in the 1970s for workers at the fishing station. Except for a few such units serving as living quarters, most of the building consists of large open spaces. There are tons of fishing lines, nets, seines, and all sorts of other things needed to operate large fishing boats, a fish landing center, and a cod-liver-oil mill. Along two sides of both buildings, dormers jut out from the attic, with big double doors so that everything can be hoisted up or lowered down directly from or into the boats.
The roof, wharf, and outer walls have now been secured. In a few years the interior will be completely refurbished. The plan is to turn the station into a restaurant, overnight accommodations, and a retreat for artists. Hugo also wants to start up a small private fish landing center, to show visitors how the raw material was handled in the old days. It’s a bold and expensive venture that will require support from many sources, including the goodwill of the banks, if it has any chance of succeeding. Mette and Hugo have already mortgaged their house in Steigen. They’re facing many years of hard work ahead, and there’s always a risk of failure.
—
Skrova isn’t just close to the sea. It’s in the sea. Even Aasjord Station stands on posts and belongs to both the land and the water. On shore the only access to the station is via the neighbor’s dock. During spring tides, with low pressure systems and wind from the west, the sea can rise so high that it looks like the whole station is floating.
“The house is like a conch shell, surging with the roar of the sea. Ceaselessly the ocean treads toward land, today as it did yesterday.”32
9
In the evening Hugo, Mette, and I decide to pay a visit to Arvid Olsen, the oldest fisherman in Skrova. Like everyone else in Skrova, Olsen lives in a detached house. His is on the outskirts of the village, and he’s been living there since the 1950s. It’s a small, cozy-looking place, with a nice little garden sheltered by a boulder. And in Skrova wherever there is shelter—at the foot of mountains and cliffs—you’ll find a surprising variety of trees, decorative shrubs, and plants. Many have been brought here from the south. Others, like the maple trees and Persian hogweed, arrived from the east via the Pomor trade—carried out between the Pomors of northwest Russia and the Norwegians along their northern coast as far south as Bodø. The plants were imported by the village’s wealthy skippers and fish buyers. In the 1930s, a sailor brought a lily all the way from Australia, and the lilies still grow in some people’s gardens. You wouldn’t think such plants could survive this far north, but out here in the sea, freezing temperatures seldom last long.
One strange thing I’d noticed when passing Olsen’s house was that the curtains always seemed to be drawn, which is unusual for a place like Skrova. But I hadn’t asked Hugo about it. No one answers when we knock on the door. Finally we step inside and try knocking on the kitchen door. Olsen comes out of the living room and says he heard someone knocking, but only folks from the south ever do that. And since he knows we’re not from the south, he figured it couldn’t be us.
On the table we see a cake that his son and daughter-in-law brought over earlier in the evening because today is Olsen’s birthday. He’s getting close to ninety, but that doesn’t seem possible when I look at him. As if to underscore his youthfulness, Olsen jabs out his hand in an attempt to catch a fly in midair.
Olsen was a fisherman from his teen years until he turned sixty-five. He caught cod, rosefish, pollock, and halibut, using a hand line, a long fishing line with dozens of hooks, and a net. But the most fun he ever had fishing was going after tuna. A big Atlantic bluefin tuna could bring thirty Norwegian kroner for everyone on board the boat. In comparison, he was sometimes paid twenty-seven øre for two pounds of the best Norwegian arctic cod. Olsen says that they ate only the meat located along the jaws of bluefin tunas.
Illness forced Olsen to stop fishing twenty years ago. After a heart operation, he developed a rare allergy to sunlight. That explains why his windows are covered with a black film that keeps out ultraviolet light. In the summer he can hardly leave the house without burning his sensitive skin.
We’ve come to hear about the Greenland shark. For Olsen, the shark has been mostly a nuisance. It often bit big pieces out of the halibut that landed in the net or took the bait.
“It eats everything it comes across. If you’re fishing for Greenland shark, you have to pump the carcass full of air after you cut out the liver. If the carcass sinks, other Greenland sharks will attack the cadaver on the seafloor. They’ll stuff themselves so full they won’t be interested in the bait on the hook.”
I accept his advice with a nod, without telling him that we’ll be satisfied with just one Greenland shark.
“How much line do you have?”
“Thirteen hundred feet.”
“Chain?”
“Twenty feet, attached to the end of the line.”
“What are you using for bait?”
“A rotting Scottish Highland bull.”
Olsen nods approvingly.
The way he talks reminds me of some of my elderly male relatives from Vesterålen who I used to meet as a child. Many of the terms he uses are special expressions used only by fishermen to describe the sea. For example, the word høgginga refers to when the currents begin to slow seventy-two hours after a full moon or a new moon. That’s when the weather and winds often change. The word skytinga refers to when the currents start to increase after småsjøtt, meaning a low tidal range. In both instances, it’s important to be out at sea when that happens, because that’s when the fishing is good.
Over the next few days I make feeble attempts to master some of the old words. But they don’t sound right in my mouth; it’s like they don’t belong to me. Nor do I fully understand all the nuances. So I decide to quit before I start getting on Hugo’s nerves.
—
On our way home, Hugo and Mette tell me that the people living on Skrova have developed special ways to get extra protein. They eat the pickled, canned thigh of the great cormorant. And if they catch sea otters in their fish pots or nets, they cut fillets from them. This is not some long-dead custom. Mette heard about it from one of the kids at the grade school. In surprise, she asked, “Do you guys eat otter?” Four of the children nodded eagerly and told her it tastes delicious.
—
Back at Aasjord Station, Hugo gets out a small box. It contains photographs taken right after World War II by his uncle, Sigmund Aasjord, who’d been an amateur photographer ever since he was a boy. Hugo found the box in the warehouse of the old family fishing station in Helne
ssund. Many of the pictures were taken while fishing for Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus). For several years after the war, there were huge quantities of this fish in Vestfjorden. The photos show seines filled with tuna. They can get to be eleven feet long and weigh as much as 650 pounds when gutted. As Arvid Olsen had told us, the prices paid for these fish in the Italian and Japanese markets were sky-high compared to what was paid for other types of fish caught in Norwegian waters. But this was also an entirely different sort of fish than Norwegian fishermen were used to. The tuna would die if they couldn’t move in the seine. Then fifty or a hundred tons of dead weight would sink right to the bottom, causing a tremendous loss of revenue.
The bluefin tuna is one of the sea’s most marvelous fish. Its whole body is like a single solid, powerful muscle, and the sleek, sickle-shaped tail can propel the fish at speeds reaching almost thirty-five miles per hour. Only a few other species, such as the swordfish, sailfish, orca, dolphin, and some types of shark, are faster. Most fish are cold-blooded, which means their body temperature changes according to the temperature of the ocean. But, like human beings, the tuna is warm-blooded and has a constant body temperature.
The tuna is capable of swimming from tropical waters to the Arctic and back—though there’s a good chance it will be caught and killed along the way. Everything from helicopters to floating surveillance buoys and sensors are used to catch tuna. Fishing boats drift in the oceans with lines that are thirty to fifty miles long and have thousands of hooks. Turtles, seabirds, sharks, and other types of fish end up biting more often than tuna.
Apparently there’s an odd explanation for why large shoals of bluefin tuna found their way to Vestfjorden. From time immemorial, all the way back to the age of the Phoenicians, there have been huge numbers of tuna in the Mediterranean. In Italy the fish is called tonnara; in Spain it’s almadraba. Bluefin tuna spawn in the Mediterranean, and throughout history, tens of thousands were caught every year. Dense shoals of tuna were guided through a labyrinth of nets to shallow waters, where they were clubbed to death. As long as enough fish escaped and managed to make their way back to the Atlantic Ocean, the fishing was somewhat sustainable.