Well, I've been home for almost a week now. The internship was good in all, but I think no matter who you're with, it's always going to be a little bit hard to live on a boat with 5 other people for a month straight.
The Stella is a lovely 58-foot trawler out of Kodiak. In general, the experience was nothing like roughing it. Instead of a galley table, she had a leather couch, loveseat and a flat screen TV. On this flat screen TV, we had the opportunity to watch many of Skipper's collection of 600 or so movies. There was even a shower, so we got to bathe regularly. I'd say we were pretty spoiled.
The Skipper, Peter, is a funny Irish man with his 7th child on the way. He runs a tight ship, but was also fairly personable. The best way to whip him into a verbal frenzy was to ask him about his racing pidgeons. Yes, pidgeons.
His son, Kalvin, was the cabin boy and general jack-of-all-trades. In some marvel of 18-year-old patience he commonly did dishes, swept the carpet, took wheel watches, helped us pick and stack the net and even managed to have a little time to hang out with us techs. Maybe more notably, he is a decent welder and loves being a big brother.
The Stella's other crew man is Rolf. His main jobs were cooking, running the hydraulics on the reel, helping Kalvin stack the net, and taking wheel watches. He's quite the character and I don't think any of us will ever forget such things as the 9-minute mile or his calling Reid "Reese."
The other techs both live in Alaska currently, one in Anchorage and one in Dillingham. Reid was on the test fishing boat last year, so we kind of looked to him to be a little bit of a leader on technique and protocol in the beginning.
Cody had a bit of a commanding peronality and ended up being good for keeping the team on task and keeping an order to the madness. He's done other kinds of fishing before, but gill-netting was a new experience for him.
I quickly became known as "the professional." Whenever a very tangled fish came over the side they would call for the professional. It made me feel good, but I was proud to watch their fish-picking skilly develop. They almost didn't need me at the end there.
As far as sampling, it ended up being a bit monotonous and frustrating at times. The computers that were supposed to take data didn't always run smoothly and there were days that we hardly got a break between 5 am and 6 pm because the sampling took so long. We were taking both scale samples and tissue samples from the reds that we caught and tissue samples from chum.
Our usual routine was to fish 6 sets on the way out from Port Moller one day and fish the same stations back in the next day. This was so we could turn our data and samples in every 2 days. Port Moller is a very small place, which consists mostly of Peter Pan cannery. There were lots of bears roaming in the area waiting for the dump truck's runs to the garbage dump.
There are probably so many more things that I could say about the whole experience, but I don't want to weary anyone with my prattling.
It's good to be back home again, but it's been a bit strange missing that chunk of summer. Everyone is getting ready to take off now (and some already have). Mom and I are still plugging along trying to catch a few more fish. There really haven't been many this season. It's been a bit of a disappointment for everyone here, but it's always difficult to predict how the season will be.
This weekend is Fishtival, but I don't know how much I'll be participating. I look forward to being at the parade with Gabriella tomorrow and going to the bazaar. That's about as far as my interest lies. For now I'm just ready to settle back into my room and give my dog some TLC!
