In the halibut fishing process, called longlining, hooks are baited and set in three-hundred-fathom units called “skates.” The roller mechanism that brings in the fish-weighted line is still called the gurdy after the hand-cranked version aboard the dories, which worked like the hurdy-gurdies of the time. Now that the gurdy is mechanically driven, ten or more skates are usually tied together into a multimile string.
All northern fisheries are tough, but halibut is conceded to be the toughest: a classic fisherman’s fishery, one that requires a high level of strength and individual skill within a team framework. Halibut banks are located in the turbulent open seas of the continental shelves, and the huge belligerent fish must be directly manhandled. Not surprisingly, the schooners have always been sailed principally by Norwegians, those traditional fishermen of the heaviest northern waters. Many of the remaining schooners have been handed down through families to a third generation of Larsens and Hansens, and many of the fishermen themselves are in their fifties and even sixties.
A captured halibut can thrash angrily for hours. The biggest of them can bang a hole in the boat or break a fishermans leg if not watched, and, like Rasputin, can be murdered by all reasonable means yet still refuse to die. But as one longtime halibut skipper with a Norwegian name once told me, “It’s a satisfying way of life because you go right to your very limits. The halibut’s a mighty animal. You get an inborn respect for him, and it gets to be a form of combat.”
Most Pacific halibut are found and caught in Alaska, with the greatest volume fished from waters around Kodiak. There are also grounds off British Columbia. American and Canadian boats have traditionally shared the fishery. Prince Rupert (Canada) and Kodiak are the principal halibut-landing ports, with Seward and Petersburg next. Until the 1960s, when bulk frozen shipments from Alaska became practical, Seattle held Kodiak’s place as the principal American halibut port.
In 1923, the U.S. and Canada formed what is now called the International Pacific Halibut Commission to conserve the stocks and to avoid gear conflicts. At this time the halibut had begun to dwindle alarmingly through overfishing. The joint effort regulated the stocks back to heavy commercial strength and maintained an equilibrium that was shattered only by the advent of the foreign factory fleets.
No question that the halibut stocks have diminished again. In the 1950s the combined catch of U.S. and Canadian boats fluctuated each year in the vicinity of fifty and sixty millions of pounds dressed, and the catch in 1962 exceeded seventy million. By 1974 the catch had plummeted into the twenty-million-pound levels, where it remains. There are reasons and reasons, but the major one is the incidental catches of immature halibut taken by Japanese and Soviet trawlers dragging through halibut-rearing grounds for other bottom-dwelling species. The mortality of young halibut in these trawls has been nearly total, since the pressure within the huge bags crushes them to death. The foreign ships have actually taken more halibut in some seasons than have the licensed halibut boats. (It might be said that American shrimp trawlers and crabbers have also taken their share of incidental halibut. However, an estimated 50 percent of fish in these smaller trawls survives when thrown back, as do many halibut taken in crab pots if they are not butchered illegally for bait.) The extent of all this incidental catch was not immediately realized by authorities of the Halibut Commission, who continued to allow high quotas to U.S. and Canadian fishermen without taking into account the new drain on the resource. Although with the 1976 Fishery Conservation & Management Act the young halibut are now better protected, halibut take years to mature. The damage will be felt for decades to come.
The Pacific halibut, a flatfish with the grand and appropriate biological name Hippoglossus stenolepis, is one of the largest fishes in the world. The females of the species grow fastest and biggest, with a few attaining 500 pounds and one hitting 680, according to the literature. The average-sized halibut caught on Alaskan longlines these days weighs thirty to forty pounds, but some still come up which weigh 200 pounds and more. The male takes eight years to mature and the female about four years longer. The oldest age recorded for a male is twenty-seven years and for a female forty-two years. They start as minute eggs, released after spawning in late fall or early winter. The eggs, and the larvae which hatch from them in about two weeks, are buoyant enough to float suspended in midwater, and therefore are transported by currents. As the larvae pass through several development stages over seven to ten months, they rise closer to the surface and are carried into more shallow coastal waters, where they eventually settle to the ground. In these nearshore waters, a biological metamorphosis occurs—the left eye gradually migrates over the snout to the right side of the head. When the eye has completed the move, the halibut have become juveniles. They remain inshore for one to three years, then start moving out onto the continental shelves. Since larvae may be transported hundreds of miles, and juveniles also migrate, the halibut-spawning grounds may be far removed from the main fishing banks. Adults inhabit continental shelf waters thirty to two hundred fathoms deep. They feed voraciously on a variety of midwater fish, including herring, and on such bottom creatures as crab, shrimp, pollock, and even smaller halibut. Happily for fishermen, this appetite extends to dead herring and octopus chunks speared onto hooks.
The extraordinary movement of the left eye to the right side of the head is common to all flatfishes, including also flounder, turbot, and sole. These fish, of the species Heterosomaia, are assymetrical both in their eye placement and in the color difference of their two sides. The bottom side is white, while the top side—the one with the eyes—is dark with a pigmentation that can change with the type of seafloor. At rest they lie dark-side-up, with the eyes, which protrude, moving freely. Camouflaged, they can watch for their passing food, then pounce to grab it.
Nature has accustomed the halibut to having its way within the kingdom of sea creatures as it grows older and bigger. Perhaps this is why it thrashes so murderously when brought to deck. The little shrimps and smaller fish, on which it feeds, merely twitch and die.
CHAPTER 17
Swede Scorden
THE experience with Nels Hanson appeared more unique to Hank than to others. Jones Henry listened sympathetically the next time he was in port, but the closest he came to echoing Hank’s indignation was a wry chuckle. “Nels might be second generation, but he’s still a Squarehead clear to his frozen balls. Them fellows have a special pact with God and the sea, and there’s no use stepping between.”
And Jody, with her deep-throated laugh: “We laid odds on how long you two would last under Nels. You’d have needed a Norwegian accent and an iron rod up your ass. Remember his old crew, Mike? Made of leather, didn’t sleep once in a four-day opening.”
“What happened to them?”
Jody turned to the others at the bar table. “Anybody know?” She shrugged. “Died, went home to old country, broke their backs ... every year, faces you take for part of the scene just disappear. Fishermen don’t have a secretary to keep records.”
“Only God,” said Hank.
She studied him. Finally she said, not harshly, “That’s what Kodiak needs, a poet.”
Hank made excuses to Jones and Adele and moved with Seth into the deserted cannery. They brought a reading light, heat lamp, and hotplate. The dreary Spartan life suited his glum mood for independence better than the luxuries Adele provided. At twenty-five, he had graduated from college and had served as a naval officer, and here he was little better than a bum without work. Seth, five years younger, might have some justification. It bothered him most when the contrast between expectation and reality rubbed him in the face, as when, wearing slept-in clothes and looking for a boat, he slogged past some self-confident young Navy officer from the base. Or, when he wrote his parents.
He landed a single trip when a man injured his hand. At least, Nels had tuned him to the point where no one questioned his ability to keep up with the work or endure the weather.
But the money slipped awa
y. He and Seth resisted as long as they could, then found work at Seaflower Seafood, one of several shrimp canneries in town. The manager of Seaflower turned out to be Swede Scorden, and his supervisor was Joe Cutch. Hank noted it without alarm when the two passed while he was filling an employment form. Neither would ever recognize him from a month of work so long before. Right back where he’d started.
They reported to Joe Cutch on the cannery floor, after choosing rain gear from a rack of odd sizes. Cutch had not changed from the quick-motion foreman of the old salmon cannery. He glanced at their time cards, then looked them over with his small darting eyes. “Henry, is it? Seen you around before, haven’t I, Henry?”
Hank grinned. “Everybody up here’s been around before. Name’s Hank, if you don’t mind.”
“Fine, fine, Hank.” Cutch studied the banks of machinery around the wet concrete floor, then grabbed Seth’s arm and scurried over to deposit him in the candlefish-picking line with several women. Seth looked back as if he were being led to his execution. Hank remained in place, hoping that Cutch would not signal him to follow.
“I’m good with a fork,” he ventured when Cutch returned. “Experienced unloading holds.”
“No, that’s not where we . . . Oh!” Cutch propelled him by the arm, up a metal stairway around the cook tanks, to a platform of troughs close to the ceiling. Steam gathered like fog around the other workmen. Cutch clapped a Filipino on the shoulder, and shouted above the noise, “Here’s Hank, your new man.”
He had drawn the peeler machines. After the masses of shrimp were hoisted in buckets from the boat holds and had traveled on belts past the pickers who removed candlefish, seaweed, and other trash, a conveyor carried them into big cookers and then out through troughs of water to these machines that peeled their shells. The essential part of the peeler machines were banks of long rollers that rotated in opposite directions against each other. The little shrimp washed down the crevices between the rollers, and their shells were gently ripped free of the meat. The mission of the peeler crew was to adjust baffles in the troughs so that the bunches of cooked shrimp would wash evenly down the dozen sets of rollers. The long rubber gloves Hank wore were always wet inside, but they kept the shrimp feelers from spiking his hands. Would his callouses turn to mush?
They worked a shift of eight to twelve hours, depending on the availability of boats. The loaders reported at five each morning, followed at half-hour intervals by pickers and peelers, then canners, to accommodate the passage of the product. Washdown followed the last of the shrimp through each line. It took his own peeler crew more than two hours to hose their machines free of shrimp lint and fragments, then to scrub all parts with disinfectant. He had never seen such a constant need for fresh water.
Below on the main cannery floor Hank sometimes saw Swede Sorden passing back and forth. He still wore his yellow tractor cap, and, despite graying hair, he still carried himself with the thrust and assurance of the man in charge of everything.
Hank and Seth ate with the others in a smoky little room off the cannery floor, where the management maintained a coffeepot. The dreary odors of steamed seafood and ammonia penetrated even here. Their lunch bags contained never-ending cheese and baloney, which they could keep unrefrigerated beside their sleeping bags so long as they sealed it in a can against the rats.
“This is the real world,” muttered Seth one day. “This is the world where people get trapped, that makes them booze too much and beat their kids. I m going nuts.”
Hank rubbed his softening palms against the bench to try to restore some callous. “I’m beginning to think you can have a hundred real worlds.”
Swede Scorden and Joe Cutch strode in and drew themselves coffee. There being no other bench vacant, they sat opposite Hank and Seth. Swede cocked back his head and looked Hank over. “Seen you before. You were younger.”
Hank grinned. “Most people were, six years ago.” He identified himself as having quit once to work on the Rondelay and recalled the Billy II disaster. Under the pressure of Swede’s surprising interest, he even admitted that he had completed college and had served as a naval officer.
Later that afternoon, Cutch without comment moved Hank to another line. In his new job Hank stacked freshly filled cans into racks and wheeled them to the retort, then removed them for cooling when the final sterilization was finished. At least it required some motion and a bit of muscle to pull the heavy carts. Any cans damaged in the process were his for disposal, so at night he and Seth ate quantities of warm fresh-canned shrimp.
Every day or so thereafter, Cutch appeared, grabbed him by the arm, and propelled him to a new job. By the time he went to the loading gang he had worked on part of every line, even the one picking fragments of shell from the cooked and mechanically peeled shrimp. The shifts in jobs separated his starting and eating times from those of Seth. After work they discussed it while walking the floats in the never-ending search for a berth.
“You’re either no good at anything,” said Seth, “or that guy Swede’s sizing you up.”
“Goddam, I want to find a boat!” Hank exclaimed, sensing the latter. Nevertheless, he worked hard at each new job, enjoying at least the variety.
Sure enough, one morning at five when he reported to shovel shrimp from a boat hold, Cutch motioned him over, gave him a pep talk about the responsibility, and made him loading foreman.
It paid him more to stand around tabulating weights and making sure others did the work. He missed bending into the heavy forkloads of shrimp. But, when decisions were required, he enjoyed the scrap of authority as admittedly he had in the Navy. He rescued Seth at once from the pick line to work in his gang.
The job as foreman eased Hank into a different world. He was summoned by Cutch to councils with other foremen. As he voiced opinions, he began to move through the office area as if he belonged there. Swede’s secretary, Sandy, smiled whenever he passed. Seth sensed the change. They continued to bunk together in the deserted cannery, but there was more and more cause for disagreement between them. Seth soon recovered from his gratitude at leaving the candlefish to call him “Mr. Foreman,” and Hank regretted having placed himself in the position of bossing a friend.
The problem with Seth, which had never become more than an irritation, resolved itself quickly one day. The Dolores R, en route to the grounds, backtracked and returned to dock. One of the crewmen had learned by radio of a family death and needed to hurry back to Oregon. Suddenly a pierhead jump became available to the first taker. Hank knew of it before anyone else. He debated, biting his lip as he weighed his new obligations and future, then called Seth up from a boat hold and gave him the berth. Soon after, he watched Seth’s busy, bouncing form on deck as the boat left the breakwater. He himself had been a month ashore. “Oh shit,” he repeated to himself sickly. Seth had not even thanked him.
Without a companion, a sleeping bag in a cold and deserted cannery seemed intolerable. To return to Adele’s house, where he longed for the hot shower and tiled bathroom, would be backtracking and hypocrisy. His own cannery had dormitories, but the thought of advancing one step more toward being a cannery creature depressed him further. He ended by checking into a new lodge in town, at a price that made him angry. He ate a steak at Solly’s, and then spent three hours soaked deep in the tub with successive renewals of hot water, as he drank a Heineken’s six-pack and watched TV. Next day he found himself a small apartment.
It did not help his restlessness when, two days later as Nels Hanson’s Delta came to unload, Cutch eased from his hands the clipboard where he tabulated each hopperweight, saying, “You want to learn something new here, now.” When the first bucketload of shrimp came up from the hold and Hank at the controls paused it in midair to read the scales, Cutch wrote a figure on the sheet thirty pounds greater than the actual register of the dial. “You see how she goes?” said Cutch quietly. “We call the Delta a thirty-plus. Only two other thirty-plus boats, but we’ve got a couple twenty-plussers. And,”
he winked, “one forty-plus. I handled her the other day while Swede had you off to a meeting.”
Hank was both shocked and interested. He had wondered at the frequency with which Cutch relieved him when certain boats came in. “What number does the Adele H get?” he asked casually.
“Jones Henry? No number, regular weight, like all the others. He’s nothing special. Swede decided you were ready to break in with the Delta. You got it now?”
“Any boats get minus weight?”
Cutch’s small eyes looked at him blankly. “You kidding? That would be illegal.”
The next hopperload came up. Cutch handed him the clipboard. Nels, who had been watching from below, called harshly, “You ain’t leaving him to write my weights?”
“This is bullshit,” declared Hank. “I don’t like it.”
Cutch was honestly surprised. He took back the clipboard. “You’d better go talk to Swede.”
Swede’s office looked over the loading dock, so that Hank could watch through the window, as Swede had, the action below. Without him, the buckets of shrimp rose from the Delta as routinely as ever, and with Cutch writing the weights, nothing appeared in the least bit amiss. Swede sat at his desk, the ubiquitous yellow tractor cap low on his forehead. “You have a gripe? Close the door and sit down.”
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