Waiting on Fish to Spawn

I left Homer at 11 Saturday morning. I flew to Anchorage, and then to Cordova, and then to Yakutat, and then to Juneau, and finally on to Sitka, 12 hours later. The total time in the air was less than 3 hours.

A Subaru, Alaska’s state vehicle, pulled up outside the airport and a tall man jumped out. Dan Beischline, the man I came to work for in herring spotting. He approached me and started apologizing. Apparently the blue truck he said he would pick me up in wouldn’t start. So he found Randy to drive him to the airport. I threw my pack in the back of the Subaru and slammed the hatch three times before I realized that the latch was broken. This must be an official Alaska Subaru. I climbed into the front next to Randy, who held his Corona between his knees to shake my hand. We bumped through the Sitka dark to the hotel where Dan and I were staying. Dan and Randy discussed the politics of the fishery, and I tried to piece together the drama of a foreign business in an unknown town.

It seems that my official title is Dan’s “Observer.” So far, I’ve done nothing but observe, so it seems a fitting title. Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know then:

Dan has been flying his Cessna 180 on floats for the herring fishery for years. He has worked with different observers over the years, and was clearly hesitant when I spoke with him on the phone about switching to someone new. I am the last resort. It’s not the first time I’ve been picked last for a team. Hopefully it won’t be the last either… some of the best opportunities fall in the laps of the bottom stringers. He has already expressed surprise that he can talk so fluently with me--a girl--about airplanes.

In the last 24 hours, he has explained a lot about herring. The purpose of the fishery is to collect the herring eggs, which are a delicacy in Japan. They are fished right before they spawn, hoping for the best egg-to-body weight ratio (at least 50% of the fish females with at least 10% eggs). The boats, purse seiners, go out to test fish before the fishery opens to measure exactly how much of the fish are skein of eggs. When the fishery is opened by the State of Alaska, the boats go out to catch as many as possible as quickly as possible. This year, the quota the fishermen are allowed by the State to catch is a record high at 18,000 tons. The boats often hire their own pilots to fly above the water, spotting where the fish are and directing the boats to those spots by radio, thus guaranteeing a better portion of the quota to their boat if the pilot does a good job. The boats pay their pilots a percentage of their catch. Because each boat hires their own plane, there are a lot of planes flying in the same air over the same schools of fish around and around in circles. The pilots hire their own co-pilots, or ‘observers,’ to look for planes while they are looking for the fish. They pilots pay the observers a percentage of their percentage. If the fish are there, and the pilots spot them, and the boats catch them, and the observers don’t let them crash, everybody makes money.

The fish are processed whole and frozen, then shipped to Japan where the eggs are harvested and enjoyed on Japanese New Year.

This year, the Japanese are holding the price low on herring roe. They started at $300 per ton of herring. The fishermen have all got together and are refusing to fish until the Japanese offer more money. The fishery has a definite end, when the herring spawn out. The delicate balance is reaching an agreed price before the herring are too close to spawn so that the fleet has time to catch the record quota.

The Alaska State Fish and Game representative is out flying and boating, monitoring the herring, ready to open the fishery at any minute. He has put the opener on what they call a “two hour notice,” meaning he can open the fishery any time later than 2 hours after the notice was announced. It was announced Friday.

The fishermen are refusing to even go test fishing. No one knows what the egg to body ratio is. The fishermen will not test fish until the Japanese move on price. With this limited information, the Fish and Game guy just flies around to see where the most sea lions are eating the most herring. On his daily radio update, he reports on where mom and pop sea lion are having breakfast.

Finally, last night, the fishermen agreed with the Japanese on a price of $550 per ton. First thing this morning, all the fleet was back out test fishing. Fish and Game is still counting sea lions, but now they can test the number of females, egg weights, and fish size of the test sets the boats bring in. We spent an hour and a half in the air directing our boat around to where the schools of fish were.

Now that the price is set, everyone is chomping to GO FISH!

I have gotten two fitting comments from friends on my current choice to observe for herring spotting:

“That’s the most dangerous job in the world after crab fishing.”—from someone who has obviously not considered the dangers of taxi driving in Mumbai; and “You have a really fun job!”—I agree… in what other office do you get to wear a life jacket AND a parachute?