PAGE 14
We had forgotten to take the big crab box down from the
topside bridge before starting out that morning. The box was
lashed to the mast and to a cleat on the upper starboard rail, out
of the way when we were fishing for albacore, and stuffed with
extra lines, buoys and feathered albacore hooks. Without the box
the Skipper was forced to throw the keeper crabs onto the deck.
It soon became my job to keep them in a more or less solid
mass, which was virtually impossible as they had a penchant
for scuttling around the deck in search of anything to clamp with
their pincers. The lurching of the boat contributed, sliding crabs
everywhere.
CHARLOTTE BRUHN
SCHOONERS
FROM PAGE 13
pick up crab pots the next morning. The crab season, which had
been extended, was ending. He thought we could take it easy
and pick up 50 pots or so a day. Get our guts back, was how he
expressed it. - . f.
;,m- A man who was staying at the house — my friends
were generous with sleeping space — asked if he could go
with us. He was a blubbery man with a pumpkin face. His eyes,
surrounded by dark rings of loose skin, seemed to watch our
faces from the bottoms of holes. He called himself Ben, said
he was raised in Utah and had never seen the ocean. He also
swore he had never been aboard a boat. The Skipper looked
at Kamiju and me We shrugged and looked out the window.
The Skipper not too happily assented.
"If you get sick, you're going to have to stick it out,"
the Skipper warned Ben the next morning. It was an hour before
dawn and the West Boat Basin was ghostly with wet fog. The
four of us were aboard Falling Star swallowing a last cup of
coffee before starting the motor and throwing off the lines. I
shivered in a wet pair of slicks, my chilled hands clasped around
a hot cup A gull landed on the stern We watched each other.
Nothing else was visible in the dark shrouds of mist. The Skipper
put down his cup and pulled the hatch cover off the motor. The
sputtering and coughing of the diesel frightened the gull and it
took off, shrieking at me from overhead when I walked out on
the deck and waited for the Skipper's call to throw off lines.
We backed out of the slip, tooting the foghorn, then
chugged into the stream past fishboats that nuzzled each other
like sleeping lovers and through a gate in a high fence made of
logs that surrounded the boat farm like a palisade. The fog was
lifting as we went out into the river and the sun rose up over the
mountains. We crossed the bar Ben got sick. He did not vomit.
He just did not feel well. The surge was not mean that morning
but it was playful just beyond the breakers and yawed us around
enough for Ben to get queasy in his stomach. At my advice he
stayed outside on deck — I told him that the cramped house
with its rancid odors of fish and diesel would cause him to fill
a bucket. I was having my own difficulties with my entombed
arm. I had learned to coordinate pulling tuna but crabbing beat
me. Kamiju and I rotated, working 10 pots each while the Skipper
handled the hydraulic block and emptied the pots. Instead of
dropping them back into the ocean we stacked the pots on deck.
Ben just watched, a sodden pasty lump of nausea. Halfway
through my second 10 pots, after a painful breathcatching break
inbetween, my arm throbbed and it was apparent I could not
work fast enough. Instead of getting mad the Skipper had a
suggestion "Sit back and enjoy the ride,” he said. 'When we get
these pots to the shed you can scrape the lines and buoys and
wash all the shit out of the pots.”
SEALKILL
CANNON BEACH (503) 436-0549
There has recently been a move to destroy seals and
sealions because they are eating salmon that fishermen wish
to catch Appeals to the government to sanction such a genocide
have been met with a response that proof is essential that seals
are eating the fish. An expensive study is unnecessary. Seals
and sealions eat fish. They have filled their plates with salmon
for hundreds of thousands of years.
Underlying the desire to legally obliterate seals and
sealions is our refusal as a species to consider sharing anything
on this earth, which we claim in its totality as our own global
manifest destiny. There are few salmon left, not because of
the appetites of seals and sealions but because we humans
have wiped out the large runs of wild salmon with our dams,
our nuclear power plants, our papermills, clearcutting, irrigation
and overfishing Now we wish to obliterate the seal and sealion
whose food supply we have virtually eliminated. But then we
cannot even abide competition among ourselves. Commercial
fishermen haggle with sports anglers and Indians for the right
to kill the last fish.
Not so long ago a Washington governor admitted that
the decision to build upriver dams for hydroelectric power was
made with awareness the fishing industry in the lower Columbia
River would be crippled, might vanish altogether, which meant
of course that the great migrations of salmon from the Pacific
Ocean to spawn in Northwest rivers and streams were sacrificed
for cheap electricity. If the fishermen wish for the salmon to
return they should tear down the dams, dismantle the nuclear
plants and replant the forests instead of vexing their helpless
fury on seals and sealions which eat only a fraction of the few
remaining salmon.
If anyone remembers, our predecessors came here
to kill seals and sealions for their pelts and nearly made them
extinct The renewed slaughter of seals and sealions as a ritual
sacrifice will not bring back the salmon
- michael M c C usker
We stacked the first dozen pots on the stem, wrestling
them atop each other in two piles. The wire mesh inevitably
snagged on practically everything, which included other pots,
and forced us to push, grunt and curse while attempting to
maintain some sort of balance on the rolling deck. Kamiju and
I sometimes tumbled into the stacks of pots, and I fell on the
deck once with a pot on top of me. We coiled the wet sloppy
lines and piled them with the red buoys on each pot. At least
it was something I could do with my crippled arm besides herd
crabs with the boathook, which a few managed to crawl onto.
The deck was soon covered with pots and crabs, which left little
room for the four of us. Two stacks of pots were up against the
house, with a narrow hole for us to get in and out. Two more
stacks were on top of the hatch that covered the hold, and the
stern was jammed with them. We had to quit with about 60 pots
aboard and some 200 freewheeling crabs. "Tomorrow we're just
going to have to stack a bunch down in the hold," the Skipper
said. He looked around the deck and told me to keep the crabs
from taking over the boat. He disengaged the hydraulic block
and outside steering gear and squeezed into the house. Within
moments we were bubbling toward home.
Ben pointed across the starboard beam toward the
beach as we stood on deck amidst the stacks of pots and
wandering crabs. His seasickness was distracted a moment
by curiosity. He wanted to know about a steel skeleton that
was being whipped by surf. I told him the old cowbone was the
remnant of Peter Iredale which had run up the beach looking for
the Columbia River bar and remained stuck like an extinct beast
in a tarpit. "People've told me stories about the bar," Ben said.
We lay outside the bar an hour later. A wind sprang up
from the northwest and pushed huge ocean waves into the river.
Some of the swells ricocheted off the rocks below Cape Disap
pointment on the north shore and rolled across the river to the
south jetty where they bounced back on each other in great
leaping crashes of spray. The four of us were in the wheelhouse,
peering intently out the front and side windows. "What do you
think?" the Skipper asked.
I shrugged. "Doesn't look as bad as it did the other
night," I said.
"We might as well give it a try," Kamiju said.
The Skipper nodded and said he thought the main
channel was too crowded and that we ought to try crossing by
the south jetty. Our eyes shifted. Rush hour on the river, Kamiju
said. Big ships, little party boats, fish boats, sailing boats and
tugboats hauling barges (including a big tug that had in tow a
stripped-down Navy hull that was going upriver to be torn apart
at a Portland shipwrecking yard) packed the channel, which
was marked with red and black buoys. Neither course seemed
appreciably better than the other and I would have preferred to
lay outside the bar until slack tide and a softer wind. But Kamiju
and the Skipper were impatient to go in Both looked at me. I
shrugged again and decided my reluctance might only be the
prospect of scraping lines and washing pots. "Sure, why not?
Might as well try it," I muttered.
Ben was not asked for an opinion.
Passage along the south jetty was turbulent. We lost a
stack of pots when a large wave shoved us heavily to starboard.
I noticed a few crabs escaping as Falling Star shuddered and
hung hard over to the water before ponderously rolling back on
its keel. A few crabs that had almost made it over the gunwale
were dumped back on deck. I grabbed the boathook and
muttered to myself that the crabs might get another chance to
escape as the Skipper brought the boat around, sluggishly abroil
in splashing swells. It took us more than a half hour to get all the
pots back on board. Falling Star fought the Skipper's control the
entire time and threatened to either roll over or smash against
the jetty. This time I lashed the pots down, tying one stack to
the mast, others to cleats along the rails and stem. I looked at
the crawling and sliding mass of crabs. You'll get your chance,
I said.
The Skipper ran for the main channel, realizing it had
been a mistake to attempt the south jetty. Ben finally got sick
enough to vomit on deck, and though his stomach might have
eased somewhat the fear in his eyes remained. Kamiju and I
exchanged glances and simultaneously shrugged. It was out of
our hands and we knew it. He went back into the house with the
VAN DUSEN BEVERAGES
ASTORIA, OREGON
325-2362
storia Real Estate
Thinking of moving to the coast?
Come in and check out the local market!
www.astoriarealestate.net
Peter & J anet Weidman
503-325-3304
342 Industry, Astona, OR 97103 (at the Mooring Basin
next to the Red Lion Inn)