Terry Haines is a Kodiak deckhand and representative for Fish Heads, an advocacy group dedicated to preserving the vitality of Alaska's fishing communities. Contact Terry Haines
May 16th
Kodiak Island is a sharp slab of black slate slicing its way out of the northern Gulf of AlaskaPeople have been here, following the fish, for seventy five centuries. It's a big island. In the United States only Hawaii has more square miles. Kodiak is not Hawaii, though. It is not a Sumo, pushing its round belly up against a warm sea. Kodiak's deep fiords cut into either side of the island, nearly meeting at its high rocky spine. It is a hard black hand that runs its fingers through the frothy locks of the cold Pacific like a lover.
It is one of the world's perfect places, both savage and kind, far away and yet at the center of its own galaxy. Eagles cruise overhead, watching, always watching. The grizzlies are close, but mostly unseen. The introduced species- deer, goats, elk and humans- have all established thriving populations. I live here.Alaska commercial fishermen. Half animal, half machine. Creatures of their obsessions. Hands like knobby clamps.
My knife is my life. My knuckles grind and pop and get stuck in the claw position. My body is a diesel engine: only happy when it's running. I don't comb my hair or wear slick shiny shoes. I don't own a watch. I am humanus non-urbanus, a throwback to the days before the bulk of the species crawled away behind cardboard apartment partitions, trapped in the larval stage.
As a lifestyle commercial fishing offers little in the way of security, or comfort, or recognition. But it offers one rare and precious reward. Freedom. I walk in freedom. I feel it against my skin. America is overrun by the living dead: zombie slaves who lurch along together in a softened, diminished reality. Nobody wants to feel anymore. No one wants to feel hate or cold or longing or terrible thirst or crushing fatigue. Everyone wants to buy their lives second hand as seen through big screened TVs in plush La-Z-boy furniture. Bring along the DVDs in living room sized SUVs while your cell phone assures ever connectedness.
Sometimes it feels like there are only a few of us left, real human beings, drowning in a sea of you doomed and damned fake ones, you howling ghosts of soulless humanity xeroxed into infinity. Metrosexual urban electrofingered wraiths with your smooth skin and delicate colognes drifting down dark sharp cornered rivers of steely air, wondering why you can't feel anything and life has no taste.
Even so, I never had reason to curse you before. But now you have reached me, here, in Kodiak. Florescent skinned pod people are coming to enslave us. But I will fight. I'll fight for my freedom.
I have become political, as a person will when the grinder catches him up. I may burn myself in effigy this December in Anchorage. Self immolation has great media appeal, but I'm just not quite that dedicated. Plus, I would really like to see the picture in the paper, and that's tough through the burn bandages. I'm shamelessly self-promoting. I have to be. I have to make the Council listen.
I am a kind of idiot savant, with the distinct emphasis on the first part. Even though I sometimes can't remember what I'm holding in my hand, even though I often forget which way is right or left, even though I often honestly don't know what year it is or what I'm wearing right now, I've always liked building sand castles out on that wide beach of words. Amazing things, words. You can shine them and shave them and fit them together and make something that was never thought of before. They are made of air and ink, and yet, empires have been founded on them. And they allow you to do something very special: to creep inside another person's mind. This I must learn to do. It's the only weapon I have.
On the boat, of course, I have my knife. I have two knives, really, a big one and a little one. Both are Forschners, with scallop sided stainless steel blades. The big one has a wide ten inch blade that curves gracefully into the weighted tip. It could bisect the Devil's pitchfork. It makes black cod heads fly off like magic. But it's the little one that's really deadly. It's like a Ferrari of death. It is six inches of sharp tip and strong back. But what really sets it apart is its desire to cut. They add evil to the steel at the Victorinox factory. Victorinox makes the Forschner knives. Yes, the same company that makes those cute little Swiss army knives. Those things are just a cover. Deep in the dungeons of that ancient Swiss factory they make serious knives, and the secret ingredient is evil. They make an innocent looking steak knife with a cheap red plastic handle that is so bloodthirsty that it will sometimes twist in your hand in an attempt to taste the rich flesh of your finger. But it is so relentlessly sharp that it is a favorite of the fishing industry. We call them "vickies" and no crabber would be caught on deck without one. But the Forschner with the six inch blade, number four zero eight one two, is a knife so full of the lust to cut that it quivers and chafes in the sheath. Mine is called "Notch Two" and is a fine knife, but nothing to compare to the original Notch, whose long career was lamented by halibut all over the Gulf of Alaska.
I think I was sharpening Notch One when Branson and I had that fateful conversation three years ago. Notch had shrunk considerably, even then. Constant sharpening had made a stiletto of him. Hard as he was, he was being scraped away and someday wouldn't be able to cut halibut anymore. Before he disappeared last year I sharpened the steel completely away and all that was left was a thin lingering edge of evil, which sparkled blackly in the sun. That will probably be all that's left of me someday.
A deckhand is an island. He is an independent contractor, skipping from season to season like a hiker in winter jumping icy rocks in a stream. He pays for his own food, fuel, bait, transportation, and equipment. He has no insurance, or unemployment benefits. No promises are made, no wages paid. He puts his cash and his ass on the line every season for a chance to catch fish. At the end of the trip, after all expenses are paid and the fish sold, he collects his share of the profits, if any. Many a deckhand has wound up owing money at the end of a trip. For tax purposes, we are small businesses. My business is T. Haines Fishing, which I like to say describes both what we do and our only asset.
Three years ago. That was the day I learned that my country was fixin' to betray me.
We were on the boat we both work on, a beautiful 59 foot steel longliner. Fishing boats can be beautiful. There's a reason they name them after women. The best ones have graceful curves and are good in a storm. On this day, though, the boat was sitting in harbor while we did gearwork on a day that was clear and cold, with crunchy ice on the dock.
Branson said, sighing, "Ah. We suck."
Branson is a roguish character who sort of resembles a taller, dangerouser Errol Flynn. In the movie he will be played by Alec Baldwin. He knows everyone, or rather, everyone knows Branson. His brain is soaked in a hilariously, sardonically bleak sense of humor, like a dumpling in a bowl of hot and sour soup. And he's not afraid to ladle that sense of humor, hot and steaming, into your lap.
"What?" I said. I had been wondering what life would be like as a bumblebee.
"That story on the radio. Those bastards are going to give all the king crab to a few boat owners and processors. Nothing for the guys on deck." He explained to me that the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council (An offshoot of our U.S. Department of Commerce) was about to give every sweet juicy king crab in America to a few boat owners, and then make them sell the crab to a few Japanese companies. They are doing this because the Council is heavily weighted with representatives of the owners and companies who would be getting them. Sort of like Exxon deciding what to do with the nation's oil.
"The North when what who Council?" I said "You know I have this theory that any entity whose acronym has more than four letters is evil, and bent on world domination."
"Well, in this case you're right. Having a monopoly on king crab is like cornering the market on beaver."
"The rodent?"
"Either way you got it made."
June 6th
Fishstock – Kodiak
Tips on how to address the Council
The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council will be hearing public testimony on June 6th in the Kodiak High School Commons. This will be an unprecedented opportunity for Alaskans to tell the Council what they think about a process that has produced Crab Rationalization and Processor Quotas. To facilitate full public participation the Crewmen's Association will sponsor Fishstock, a day of food, fun and fish.
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