No. 18 - Bottom Trawling
Thirty days of bottom trawling. If this sounds boring, consider that
commercial trawl ships are often called draggers. However, it's
anything but a drag. We've sampled 8 sites so far and processed about
5000 fish; some go into the galley, many are viable and go back over
the side, and some are sacrificed to determine their sexual maturity,
their food habits and their parasite load. Although there are 40-50
species of fish in the area, only a handful constitute the bulk of the
biomass. One group, the ice fishes, have no hemoglobin and a sort of
antifreeze in their blood - which is a pale-white sticky fluid. Their
gills are creamy white instead of blood red.
We caught an opah, a very rare fish for here, a sleek deep-bodied
cruiser with a green/blue body and red fins, that was over 3-feet long
and weighed 75 pounds. We ate him. We try to keep the catches small,
but on one station we ran the net through a spawning aggregation and
came up with 3 tons -- most went back into the sea to continue with
their love-making. We try to get 3-4 sets in each day (at night the
fish rise of the bottom and are difficult to catch) but the weather
has had a mind of its own.
We're currently sitting behind a small island called Cornwallis as the
wind and sleet hurtle past Elephant Island extending his trunk toward
us. The sea is a churning washing machine as the ocean flows around
the big island; standing waves rise over the banks and amplify a big
ground swell rolling in from the west. Although Cornwallis looks like
the Rock of Gilbratar, rising straight up out of the sea and down
again, it's not providing much protection. But we've no where else to
go so we'll sit here with our nose into the weather until it changes.
The ship is stout and up to the task, and she's relatively comfortable
in spite of the rage outside. If the wind backs to the south, we'll
go north of Elephant; if the wind veers to the north, we'll go to a
couple of sites on the south side of the island.
-Roger