by Christina Sporrong
(this page "Under Construction" -photos to be added later)
Beyond viewing a glorifying American Seafoods Co. video and passing a pee test, I had no clue what to expect as I boarded the American Dynasty factory trawler one day in April, heading for parts unknown off the Oregon/California coast, looking for a fish called hake.
To my surprise, the boat's crew was well-dressed, clean-cut and very young, averaging about 21. No burly, tattooed Popeye-esque fishermen here. But with 75 men and seven women on board, being a part of a minority meant working that much harder to earn respect and a sexual untouchablility. The women on board were strong, adding bite to their lingo to neutralize young male hormones.
Despite tales promising huge fish fortunes, hake season is the least profitable time to work a factory trawler. The lowest earnings on this 21-day voyage were a relatively meager $1,200. If you happened to be Norwegian or hold glorious positions like deckhand, combi's, gallery or housekeeper, however, your take was considerably higher.
Every day for three weeks, we had six hours on and six hours off, plus an additional three hours of work - a "kickshift" - every third shift. Rare off-time was spent sleeping, smoking, helping seasick sea gulls marooned on the ship's deck back to flight, drinking coffee and eating absurdly gourmet food, like oysters and chocolate-covered strawberries. Drugs - speed, pot and alcohol - were prohibited, though a necessary and available diversion for some on board.
Of the two main factories on board the Dynasty, the largest one "drives" the fish to their filleted destiny. Processors stand facing a conveyor belt with metal slots. Hake, shark, salmon and mackerel pour down from another belt above you. Water sprays out of pressure holes, conveniently misting your face. Though you wear heavy-duty rain gear and double-thick facsimiles of dishwashing gloves, you become encrusted with fish guts and gills.
As a "driver," your job is to fill the slots with hake - head down and belly right. Staring hypnotically as 148 fish move through your hands every minute - about 40,000 by shift's end - you dream about little else but fish eyes. Being a stressed-out driver - trying to separate out the fish who have swallowed each other, the live ones, the slippery-stinky mutilated fish - you may wonder how you got yourself into this. Deciphering worm-infested fish from the healthy ones was not instructed and is only slightly supervised, leaving quality control to luck and available common sense. The lucky guy next to you is "spotting" your mistakes and filling empty fish slots. The decapitating blades are loud and have an underlying beat. Dancing amid the machinery, though, is not appropriate.
Inside the factory, slimy fish guts sloshing around your ankles either wash back into the ocean through the sideholes or are funnelled into yet another mince-and-dry machine to make lethally stinky fishmeal, a yellowish grain used as feed at mainland fish farms. The physically bigger men on the boat had the honor of packing fishmeal into 75-pound bags and stacking them inside a hot, smelly, humid storage space. Our last duty was to unload these bags from the boat, which took 18 hours and made the factory work seem like an island paradise vacation.
Surimi is the final edible product produced on this vessel. Keeping watch over this procedure are a few well-paid Japanese supervisers. Purified, mashed and minced hake with spray-dried beef plasma and some sorbitol equal "fake crab," which is bought and resold by the seafood-crazy people of Japan (and, of late, by health-crazy Americans who may be enlightened by surimi's true content). The product runs through overhead pipelines and into metal dispensers. Once crammed into colored bags and placed onto trays, the surimi is slammed onto another conveyor belt and sent to the freezer area. Two hours later, the frozen blocks are packaged into brown cartons.
All work was physically hazardous, with crew members suffering concussions, broken limbs, lots of stitches. The young captain acted as doctor; many minor injuries went unreported. Seasickness was yours to contend with; yacking while working was socially acceptable.
Anticipating the trip, I expected gristled fishermen with stories about penitentiaries and pregnant ex-girlfriends. What I found was a community of young, eclectic drifters all the way from Tacoma to Ireland. For them, the work was exciting, dangerous and unusual. But far beyond a means to make quick money, it was an opportunity to avoid mainland responsibilities, to escape, to disappear, and to make future dreams come true.
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Contents on this page were published in the June, 1993 edition of the Washington Free Press.
WFP, 1463 E. Republican #178, Seattle, WA -USA, 98112. -- WAfreepress@gmail.com
Copyright © 1993 WFP Collective, Inc.