My life has become “The Deadliest Catch”. This
thought was surprisingly poignant in the wordless blur of pure instinct
that took over my brain. I was staring out at a scene mirroring the
Discovery Channel television show that mesmerized me back before I truly
understood what it meant to be hauling lines in massive waves and
torrential rain that seemed quite intent on teaming up to sink our
research vessel. Of course, I was being dramatic – relatively speaking,
the open Alaskan seas experience far worse conditions than I could even
imagine. I almost chuckled to myself at the comparison, but was
immediately thrown into a seated position by an unexpected wave,
effectively ending any romanticized view of the present reality. Small
as they may be, two-meter swells are significant when your boat is only
twenty-feet long and your personnel expects to be operating in
relatively calm Bahamian waters. We don’t often endure fieldwork in such
poor weather, as the winds eliminate sufficient water visibility. Then
again, I’m not quite sure we anticipating what would happen this
morning.
My alarm went off at around 06:00, and after filling a quick mug with tea (the prospect of tea time, in retrospect, seems laughable), we left the dock at 06:30
sharp for a longline haul at the aptly-named Tiger Grounds. I’ve been
spoiled thus far in my time here. The last time we set the lines in this
area, we caught a total of 13 tiger sharks, one of which was a massive
pregnant female with a 3.7-meter total length. February wasn’t treating
us quite as well, unfortunately, as we had only found two small tigers
in twenty-four hours. We weren’t expecting much better during this final
check, and indeed ultimately found only one small juvenile, barely
one-meter long. We performed our standard work-up as the sun rose in a
sky that was an appalling shade of red, a fact I pointed out to fellow
volunteer Jo: “Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning!” I joked as
I put on my sunglasses to see through the glare into the water. All
humor aside, we couldn’t quite ignore the massive wall of grey behind
us, a series of very distinguishable rolling clouds. As we began to haul
in the first longline, the scene was threateningly beautiful – a
blood-orange sunrise splitting the sky with the contrasting storm, the
water glowing turquoise underneath. Perhaps due to our naïve faith in
the weather forecast, we weren’t quite as efficient as we probably
should have been as we leisurely pulled and coiled, chatting and joking,
ironically enough, about the weather; joking, that is, until it hit.
We felt the first raindrops as we began the second line haul. “Alright,
guys, let’s try to pick up the urgency a little bit,” instructed Chris,
our skipper. As the lab’s resident “longline guy”, Matt reached to take
the lead on the line. Then the first raindrops struck our faces. Rain
wasn’t an issue, and because we scientists like to picture ourselves the
very embodiment of toughness in the face of such adversity, we pressed
on. As if to mock our lack of respect, the wind escalated from two to
twenty knots in approximately thirty seconds, and the light rain became a
sheer force of sleet. The white caps began slamming into our hull,
washing over the bow and threatening to knock us off of our feet as we
simultaneously tried to re-establish the laws of gravity in the waves
that lifted our boat. Chatter transformed quickly to commands and urgent
calls as we painstakingly made our way through the second line. With
the last buoy pulled onboard, a call came through the static of the
radio: “Hey, longline crew. We are just taking a look at the forecast
here at the lab….” We didn’t even let it finish before we started
laughing. We didn’t need a forecast – we were living it. And we still
had three more longlines to go.
The next two hours were a hard lesson on the role of focus in
seafaring; focus on balance using all necessary parts of the body, focus
on coiling ever quicker, focus on bailing and bilging and balancing to
prevent our boat from sinking. By the time we hauled in our last line,
we were thoroughly soaked, battered, and bruised, and personally, I was
fairly certain I had pulled a hamstring. What’s more, we were also
vision-impaired - the clouds blocked our view of the island, and the
rain attacked our eyes with such vigor that I was convinced Chris would
go blind as he tried to search for the impossibly small channel markers
that lined our route home. It wasn’t until we arrived in the shelter of
our back bay that the characteristic humor of the Shark Lab began to
re-emerge as the chill of wind and rain sunk into our bodies. Teeth
chattering, Matt commented dryly: “This is one of those hauls that make
you happy to just get home…glad we didn’t die.” And as the rest of the
lab, considerably less haggard-looking, arrived on the dock to unload
our water-logged gear, we whooped in celebration of our survival.
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