Ebbing

Hello all, this is Jake with the final blog of the season.

I woke up this morning to Chris saying, “Jake! There is a bear outside if you want to see it.” There aren’t very many places in the world where one can wake up to those words. The bear was out in the tundra by Debby’s cabin. It was, we’re guessing, close to 900 pounds. At first glance it looked smaller, until it stood up and was around 8 or 9 feet tall. Not something to mess with.

We are almost finished with the winterizing of the cabins and finalizing everything with AGS. We did it under the careful hand of Josh’s guidance. By splitting into pairs of twos and threes we went about net stripping (clearing the mesh off the nets) and bagging them up to go south. All the boats are in. The power rollers came off and are on pallets, also going southbound. We also spent some quality time in the walk-in freezer boxing fish. It’s made the rain and wind outside feel quite nice. We are now in our final night at the cabin, and tomorrow Josh flies out and we leave the cabins until next year’s adventure.

Last night the crew received good news: the price of fish for this year is 95 cents per pound. This is the highest price in fifteen years. We were sad not to have our fearless captain with us to celebrate. Our total fish count is 215625 pounds: second best season of all time.

These past two months have been quite the whirlwind of ups and downs. We pulled through though (literally!) and have come out with something pretty incredible. As Chris put it “We are a fishing machine!” But it goes a little beyond that. Last year Sarah said that we became a family. This is, perhaps, a better way to describe what happened here this summer. The crew came together and overcame substantial difficulties: Josh’s hand, tough conditions, and every type of set known to set-netting. Every member of this crew will walk away proud to be part of this familial machine. Each of us worked together as the pistons and pumps move in a finely tuned engine. Sometimes our motors coughed and sputtered, but we kept moving forward over all of the bumps in the road. And now we fly away until next year’s summer sun and Southwest winds bring the promise of fish. Until then, in the words of Liz, “Good luck and good fishing.”