Homage to the Herring

6/7/09

The herring is a beautiful fish. With all the stained glass in the world, man could not duplicate the brilliant colors with which this remarkable creature is endowed. No oil sheen, rock crystal, rainbow, not even a peacock tail feather comes close to the dazzling luster of the herring. Shining a glittering iridescent, the hues are constantly changing as light refracts off the surface of its scales. This fish shines magnificent even on the cloudiest of days! I have seen millions of these fish by now, but I never cease to be amazed by their splendor, especially when I take the time to examine one closely. As I hold a gasping creature in my hands, a sense of guilt overcomes me. I apologize for taking its life and that of its many brethren, and thank it for providing me my means of living. I rotate it about, and the different angles of sunlight reveal the countless shades of color.  Streaks of midnight, royal, and sky blue intermingle with tints of purple, glimmerings of green, and flecks of yellow. Shimmering scales of silver and grey merge into a pure white underbelly.  Depending on area of habitation, herring have a lifespan of about 15 years. They are born in kelp beds and reefy shorelines. They swim to deep seas, feeding on planktonic creatures and small krill, and they reach sexual maturity somewhere around 3 years. They return to their spawning grounds every year, and just like most fish, females first lay their eggs and the males then fertilize them. They do this in such great numbers that they turn entire bays a milky white with their spawning juices. It is a miraculous sight to see hundreds of thousands of fish wriggling and writhing about in the shallows, procreating together in one gigantic orgy. The herring we were fishing in Togiak journey all the way out to the Aleutian islands, hundreds of miles away. They swim together in massive schools,  often millions in number. It is truly fascinating how they move together. Jamie calls it a “collective mind”. It is as if they make their decisions on direction, depth, and destination simultaneously. Once they decide to dive, there are no nets capable of holding them. There were countless times they pulled our corks deep down under the surface allowing hundreds of tons to escape.  The herring industry is by no means simple. There are many things that have to come together in order to make the entire operation work. Such factors include ecology, economy, coordination of Fish and Game and fishermen, the politics of finding a market with the few competing corporate buyers, and coordinating the convention of fuel barges, tenders, processors and trampers. Not to mention the difficulties of actually catching the fish, having a reliable vessel and equipment, and finding a competent crew and spotter pilot. The course of these fish from when they are first caught in Alaskan waters to when they end up on a dinner plate thousands of miles away is a long and complicated one, and they pass through many hands.

The first step in the process is finding the fish. Herring often swim close to the surface in schools of great number and appear from an aerial viewpoint as swathes of dark ribbon contrasted against the blue-green hue of the ocean. Usually most boats hire a spotter pilot, who is generally paid a percentage of the catch. The pilots find the fish, direct the fishermen to the location, and through precise radio communication tell them where and when to let their nets out. Often there will be seven or eight planes in the air circling above schools of fish, guiding the boats far below.  The proximity of so many airplanes together seems like a recipe for disaster, and I asked Jamie if he had ever seen any collisions. He had seen one in 92, and has known two other pilots who have crashed in previous years. There hasn’t been an accident in a long time though, as there are fewer pilots and fewer boats then there used to be.  Often weather conditions won’t permit the pilots to fly.  It becomes much harder for the fisherman then, as he has to rely on his sonar to be able to locate and then accurately set his net around schools of fish. Jamie has one of the most high-tech sonars in Alaska. It cost him $50,000 and there are only two in the state. The other one belongs to Fish and Game Management. Although having the best equipment is a huge advantage, it is by no means a guarantee, and the fish can be very difficult to catch in this manner. We fish using a seign, a length of net with a cork line on top to keep it afloat, and a lead line on bottom to sink and spread out the web. There are restrictions on the size of a seign depending on the area being fished. Jamie has four different seigns- one for Sitka, one for Kodiak, one for Togiak, and one for Prince William Sound.  Our Togiak seign is 100 fathoms long and 15 fathoms deep. One fathom is approximately 6 feet. One end of the seign is connected to the boat, while the other end is connected to a skiff(small boat). When a school is located, the objective is to release the skiff, circle around the school of fish with the big boat, and reconnect the ends of the seign upon meeting back up with the skiff. There are many factors to consider, including depth of water, direction of fish, currents and tides, the quality of bottom(whether it will snag the seign and shred it)and many more such concerns.  There is a line threaded through the bottom of the seign called the “purse line”. By means of hydraulics this is then pulled tight, scrunching the bottom of the net together, allowing the fish no means of escape.  The net then is slowly hauled back on board, once again by means of hydraulics. It is my job to ensure the seign is neatly stacked on the back of the boat , corks on one side, leads on the other, so it will go out smoothly the next time without entangling itself. The Shadowfax is 58 feet long and 16 feet wide. I have about 15 feet of room on the back deck and I must stack the seign accordingly, usually stomach to chest high. Most of the time I just stack the corks, and the lead-line falls by itself into a pile alongside. During the entire process of stacking gear, the skiff man has disconnected himself from the seign and connected himself to the big boat with a “tow-line”. It is his job to ensure that the boat does not drift on top of the net, as well as to keep the net billowed out in a orderly circle so it comes in right. Once we have shrunk the net size considerably, there is a “bag” of fish alongside the boat. We can catch up to several hundred tons a set.  We take 3 to 5 samples of the fish to determine if they are mature and ready to be taken. Herring are utilized primarily for their roe. In order for our catch to be suitable, there must be a certain percentage of females, a certain percent of roe content by weight, and an overall percentage of ripe roe. One can determine that roe is ripe when it is a bright yellow color. We have to break the fish open to establish this, an act which in itself is quite brutal. After killing hundreds of fish in this manner, I still haven’t become desensitized, and I feel terrible doing it. But it is necessary because the processors don’t want to buy immature and spawned out fish that are unmarketable. We radio in our sample results and it is the buyer’s decision whether the fish are suitable. If they aren’t, we let them go. If they are, we call in a tender, which is basically a big delivery boat. Many of them are off-season crabbing vessels hired out by the companies who buy our fish. A company called “Icicle” was our buyer in Togiak. There are other competing companies with amusing names such as “Peter-pan”, “Western Fisheries”, “Ocean Beauty”, “Trident”, “Leader Creek Fisheries”, “Yardarm Knot”,  “Norquest”, “Alaska Pacific Seafood”, “Sno-Pac”, as well as others whose names I have not yet heard. The tenders pull alongside our bag of fish, and proceed to pump them out of our net with a machine designed for such a purpose.  This can be exceedingly difficult as well as dangerous in poor weather conditions, an occurrence which happened to us several times. Upon completion of the offload the company gives us a receipt of however many tons are pumped, for which we are later paid.  Our part of the entire process is now complete.

The tenders generally have capacity of up to 250 tons a load. They take the fish to processors, gigantic floating factories where the fish are frozen and packaged into crates. These vessels usually have about 300 employees taking shifts so they can run as a 24 hour operation. These crates are in turn loaded onto even bigger Japanese ships, called “trampers”. They used to take the fish to China where the roe was stripped and sent to Japan. The Chinese utilized the carcasses, primarily canning or drying them for food. Due to all the recent health scares and absence of regulations in China, the Japanese have begun to process their own fish. They separate the roe by boiling the frozen fish in giant 50 ton vats.  The ensuing slurry comes out on conveyor belts and workers commence picking out the skeins, the individual sacs of roe, which have hardened into a rubbery substance. These are then immersed in vats of salt and categorized by quality. Quality is determined by color of the roe and whether the skeins are intact. What is considered to be the finest roe is that where skeins are unbroken, exhibit a rich tone of golden amber, and have maintained their perfect original shape. The roe, called “Kazinoko”, is considered a delicacy in Japan and is most commonly dried onto rice crackers. It is tradition to give the high quality roe away during the New Year holiday in extravagant gift packs elaborately packaged in cedar boxes.  The worth of such a gift in US currency is two to three hundred dollars. Such packs contain only 4 or 5 skeins. As there are 2 skeins per fish, it is hard to imagine the monetary value of the herring with all the millions that pass through our hands! 

Yet when I look at these magnificent animals, the last thing that comes to my mind are dollar bills. I see a creature, a living thing; an entity very similar to myself with whom I share this same world. I wonder how different that spark of life within this fish, that will to live, to swim, to reproduce, is from the spark of life within myself-my own will to live, to seek adventure, and my basic human need for love. We both have the same fundamental desire to survive, to thrive, and put simply, to exist.  Is this not the most universal urge that moves life forward on this planet, and does it not equivalently encompass the full spectrum of all life on earth? Though such speculation can only ever be left to conjecture, philosophy, and ideology, my experiences out here have compelled me to believe that I am not far removed from this living being whose life I take with utmost respect and gratitude .