IT'S NOT FOR EVERYONE...
By Cristy Fry

Some people climb Mount Everest. Some people day-trade on Wall Street. Some people go crab fishing in the Bering Sea. The common denominator is adrenaline.

When I used to routinely cross oceans in sailboats, we would always wish for an "uneventful crossing." It's a wish that rarely came true.
Fishing trips are much the same. Whether it's putting out of the Kasilof River to gillnet salmon inside the 3-mile corridor, or picking your way through the "jaws" at False Pass to pull crab pots 100 miles offshore in the Bering Sea, the potential for disaster is always present. Keep the safety gear up to date, do your safety drills, practice getting into a survival suit. Keep your equipment running well, and don't take unnecessary chances. Live to fish another day, that's always been our motto. But the unexpected always happens when, well..., when you least expect it.

Every good sea story starts out, "There we were..." Well, there we were, jogging into the waves about thirty miles north of Amak Island, aboard the Western Star, an 80-foot fiberglass dragger/crabber/longliner based out of King Cove, Alaska.

My husband David and I, plus crew, were fishing for bairdi tanner crab in November of 1990, and it had been a harrowing season. Four days previous there had been one of the worst storms in crab fishing history. Known throughout the fleet as "Black Sunday," a huge southwest storm had torn through the area wreaking havoc, blowing out windows and sinking boats. A small boat by Bering Sea standards, we had barely made it to shelter behind Amak Island, a small hunk of rock a few miles from the Bering Sea entrance to False Pass, as the wind began to scream and the seas built to the size of houses.

Once behind Amak, we were forced to jog in a small circle with several other boats because our anchor wouldn't hold in the hurricane-force winds. As each person took a watch, we started a log of mayday calls on the single-sideband radio. As the night dragged on, with icy blasts of wind laying the boat over even in relative shelter, we sat entranced by the drama on the radio.

Boats that had decided to ride it out on the fishing grounds found themselves in hell on earth. Hundred-knot-plus winds and 60-70 foot seas made survival the only concern. Boats that were jogging into the waves blew out the windows in the front of the wheelhouse. Boats running downwind blew out windows on the stern. Boats trying to turn around because they'd blown out one set of windows or the other were thrown sideways down the face of the waves and rolled over by the following wave before they could come around. We logged 28 maydays in 9 hours. The most amazing part was that not a single life was lost.

After the storm, we ventured back onto the crab grounds. The wind had come up and we had been jogging for several hours because it was too rough to risk sending the crew out on deck. David and I sat in the wheelhouse, our stocking feet on the dash, relaxed and feeling lucky that we had bolted for Amak when we did during the previous storm. We were idling into the waves, contemplating whether it had come down enough to start pulling pots, when the boat came up on a large wave, prompting a comment from David.

"Thats a big one," he said.

The next wave was bigger. We had come through the top of the first wave, down the back side, and met the second wave about half-way up its face, taking on a fair amount of water, which slowed us to a near stand-still. The boat struggled out the back side of the wave, and landed at the bottom of the third, and largest, wave.

When the wave struck, the wheelhouse went black. There was a sound like a 12-guage shotgun going off in our ears, and we crashed to a halt as the wave broke over the entire boat, smashing in the windows and covering us with seawater and glass.
How quickly things can go very wrong.

What followed was chaos. We were so rattled that David did three circles before getting the boat pointed downwind. Electronics were shorting out and smoking, the crew came rushing up the wheelhouse steps to find out what the hell had happened, the galley was full of water and glass.
As we got our brains back in gear, we took stock. We still had steering, which was extremely fortunate, and we had one loran still working. We got the breakers shut off to the smoking electronics, took floorboards out of the engine room to cover the windows, and headed for Amak.
Lacking radar, and perhaps courage, we called for help. The next night, our friend Ted on the Sea Spray came through False Pass, met up with us, and led us back through the Pass in huge, breaking seas at near low tide, in the dark. We had to stay right on his stern to keep from inadvertently cutting a corner and going aground. If he had hit bottom, we would have smashed into his stern. But we both made it through safely, and he turned around and went back through the breakers to head to the fishing grounds. A true friend.

A week later we had new electronics, new windows, and new underwear. We hired another boat to bring our pots back to King Cove, turned the boat over to its owner, Davids brother, for the cod season, and went about our life onshore until the halibut season came around in the spring.
So why do it? What kind of crazy person would do this sort of thing for a living? How did I get here?

Everyone who fishes for a living has a different story to tell about how they got into it. Not too long ago, it was frequently because it was a family business, and that's just what you did. Followed in Dad's footsteps. As our culture changes, though, many people chose to fish with no family history.

Commercial fishing is a tough life in many ways. It's dangerous, hard work, inclement weather, and smelly. But it's also a life that is hard to give up. There are few occupations where your skills, knowledge, savvy, and hard work can make such a difference.

And then there's the "office." Shishaldin volcano on a clear day, rising above the rugged Aleutian coast. Sunsets that blow your mind. Northern lights like you've never seen onshore. Alaska is an amazing place, and when seen from the water, it takes your breath away.
Whales, porpoises, albatross, gulls, eagles. We made a halibut set off of Sixty Foot Rock, just off the Homer Spit, and counted the number of species caught in a single set. Fourteen! Halibut, two kinds of shark, black cod, gray cod, two kinds of eel, greenling, snails, octopus, Irish lords, starfish, flounder, sole, And I probably missed a few.

For those of us raised with a certain work ethic, it's the most satisfying job there is. The harder you work, the better you are rewarded. And for those of us from a hunter/gatherer tribe, it just feels right to pull fish over the rail, filling the hold with protein for the world.
Commercial fishing is not for everyone. But then again, neither is working at a newspaper. Or a hospital. Or jumping out of airplanes on a forest fire. The good news is, there's someone for every job. My job is fishing, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Cristy Fry has commercial fished in Homer, Alaska since 1978, and has also designed and built gear for the industry. She currently longlines for halibut and sablefish, and gillnets salmon in upper Cook Inlet aboard the F/V Realist with her husband David.