June 28: Iced 'em, though not as many as we hoped

We are having grave problems with internet access. It looks like a window of connectivity. I hope. Here is the post from yesterday. I'll try to follow with more from today. Yesterday: We fished from 8:30 to 4:30 today - well, not quite that late because we ran out of water... or more accurately, the water ran out from under us. We got a little more than 500 lbs today, but most importantly, (a) everyone did great and the new crew members are learning how to fish and (b) we all learned a little bit about using ice and what the processor needs from us to increase our quality (which is already darned high - we just want to get paid for it).

I'm happy to report that the processor is being reasonable. They recognize that because we deliver our fish early and often - sometimes within minutes of catching them - they can't expect the fish to get to the low temperature required of the drifters. What's the difference? Drift fishermen go out for the opening and spend as much of it as they possibly can fishing. It makes no sense for them to deliver their catch in the middle of a fishing period because (a) they have the capacity to hold their entire tide's catch and (b) they would have to stop fishing to make a delivery. So the fish they catch at 8:30 am when the period opens are on the bottom of a pile of fish until they deliver them at 5 or so. They hold their fish for hours, plenty of time for the fish, if they are floating in refrigerated sea water (RSW) or in bags of slush ice to reach 39 degrees. In fact, that is the standard required to convince the buyer that those fish have been on ice since they were caught, and not just hastily put in ice as they were coming up to the tender. So 39 degrees is the standard for the drift fleet and it is achievable, except for their freshest fish - those caught at the end of the fishing period, (probably the highest quality fish they are delivering even though they haven't had time to chill).

We fish set nets. Our nets are anchored to the beach, no more than a quarter mile from the shore. Today, we set at 8:30 on the dot and then spent some time getting our "ice barge" floating and out to our quad. Then we all iced up, shoveling ice into the waterproof slush bags, putting the brailers on top of the ice inside the slush bag, and then pouring in 8 buckets of water - about 30 gallons. We picked the fish into those bags so they were immediately on ice. We kept adding ice when the ratio of ice to water seemed to be getting low. When we put the fish into the brailer, I think they had a substantially easier landing, and when they came out, they were much colder than they would have been otherwise. However, when the buyer is there, we prefer to deliver at least three times during an opening - right after our first pass through the nets, then in mid ebb as the tide is going out but before it is so far out that we can't deliver from the skiff. (The issue here is that the processor's giant forklift - brand name Gehl - that picks up our brailer bags of fish can drive out over the sand and to but not into the mud or it will be buried to its very high axles. Meanwhile, our boat can come in wherever there is water, but we have to stay floating so we can go back out to continue fishing and at the end of the tide, to get the nets out of the water. We want to deliver often because we don't have the capacity to hold fish like the drifter's do - our boats can safely carry only 3000-6000 lbs at a time, so we need to unload so we can go back out to get some more. Even if our boats are not full, we never want to go dry with even a partial boatload of salmon a quarter mile of sticky mud away from the market. And there is no penalty to us to delivering during the period because our nets continue to fish even if we aren't with them, a luxury the drifters don't have. This gives the buyer very fresh fish from their set netters. Today, some of the fish we delivered were still alive because they were in that slush ice, swimming around. But those fish will not be 39 degrees. They haven't had time to get that cold. So we are working with the buyer to figure out a fair indicator that will assure the buyer that we are treating the salmon well.

So far, we've agreed that if we use ice and enough water to float the salmon, we will get the iced price. That seems reasonable and fair to me. It's a bit of a pain to use the ice and the slush bags, but between the price boost and the knowledge that our salmon are even higher quality, it seems worth it.

We'll see how feasible it is as the season heats up.

We've been noticing that the Bathtub sure seems to have a lot of water in it when we get back out to it. First, we tried to believe that the plug was faulty. Still a lot of water. Hmmm. Today, we noticed a little geyser toward the stern, next to an air pocket. That might be the problem. So we pushed the Bathtub in so that Roger could get to it with his welder. We realized that we didn't have any pictures of his prodigious welding. And we missed a great photo opportunity during the tide today when he welded the brailer hooks needed on the New Kid while the New Kid was bucking around in the tide. That's Roger's Welding Rodeo. To make up for lost opportunities, I went down as the photo journalist on the Bathtub welding project. Roger took the boom truck to the edge of the sand, the aforementioned Gehl limit where it met the Bathtub, but that crack was dirty and seeping. He tried to wire-brush it and blow on compressed air, but still, it seeped. Finally, we decided to cut a hole in the "air" pocket and disturbed the habitat of a new species of sea monkey, draining it away. To facilitate this, David used the crane on the boom truck to lift and tilt the skiff. If I can find a way to a better Internet connection, I will post the photos, as well as other photos provided by other crew members.

In case I can't get another connection, I want to mention that tomorrow, June 30, is a hard day around here. We were here when we got the news that day three years ago that Alex, David's brother, my younger son, was killed in an accident jumping in the waves of a tropical island. He was 20 years old. He was full of joy, exercising his remarkable ability to jump when he jumped up into a wave that had built up too much, robbing water from the already shallow coral reef he was jumping from. The wave got control of him and broke on the unyielding reef with him in it, killing him. It wasn't anyone's fault, not even his, even though he had been a reckless young fellow. I have found this year that approaching this day, I sometimes find it hard to get a breath, even though I believe that my sadness does not honor him. He believed in feeling all his feelings - good, bad, and ugly. But under all his struggles was joy - joy and the dogged determination that a person can learn nowhere better than setnetting through our commanding mud. Joy, integrity, compassion, courage, excellence, and self acceptance were his signature values and practices. Practicing those are what I think honor him... and anyway, it's hard to argue with them as states or practices. So I try, but June 30 (now, today) is harder than most.

As I have every year, I will light a candle for Alex in the morning as we go out to fish and I'll leave it burning all day. I love the idea of other people doing this for him, too, so if you are so moved, please do. Sometimes I do better at accepting his death than other times, and I hope to get better at it in the future, but I never want to stop missing him.