"Hope we find something here," I comment to Mike, shutting off the engines and letting the boat drift to a stop.
"I guess We'll know in a bit," he quips back. "At least we have enough on board to make our trip paid off."
Mike helps me back into all my dive gear and I once again plunge below the surface.
I drop into the inky depths and right into a bottom covered in sea cucumbers.
"Wow!" I shout into my regulator. It sounds like some space alien to my ears, gurgling and burgling. I have to laugh.
I find myself talking alot under water. During hour long dives I will talk, hum, and sing. The weird bubbling gurgle sounds tend to amuse me and break the long lonely time underwater.
For years we have talked about getting a dive system with com (communications). This would allow the tender on the boat to hear the diver and the diver to hear the tender. Sounds good in a perfect world... this is not that perfect world. I suffer major cramps in my legs while diving. When the "charlie horses" lock my legs up I crawl along the bottom with my arms but find myself screaming into my regulator. "Owe! You stupid cramp, let me go!" The screams are sent upwards in a swirl of bubbles never to be heard by anyone but me. I kind of like it that way.
If I were linked to the boat by com and did my charlie horse screaming I fear my tender would think the Loc Ness monster had ahold of me and would either jerk my up by my air hose, or... cut my air hose and get himself and the boat far from the danger below.
That settled I like the no com system.
I am picking cucumbers as quickly as I can move. They are all over the bottom, but most of them are in huge piles of kelp. With the kelp leaves is powdery silt. I can see a dozen or more cukes in one kelp but by the time I have grabbed five or six the silt has me blindly feeling for the rest of them, the braille method. I can usually get a fix on most of the ones I see, and finish them by blindly patting the kelp and silt, but every once in a while I grab a crab, a fish, or star fish.
Cucumbers have no movement at all when I touch them. When something starts moving, jerking, or squirming in my hand I always Jerk away and quickly move to the next batch of cucumbers, outside of the silt!
I am popping corks and Mike is hoisting bag after bag into the boat. I keep watching my dive computer as it counts the minutes of bottom time. I know I should have about three hours on the bottom before the dive day ends at 3:00 p.m.
I have swam quite a bit down the shore and have come to a creek area. Even though I am way below the surface I can tell when I get to fresh water coming into the ocean. Cucumbers do not like fresh water. They will stack in masses on each side of the creek flow. I have found that these areas are the best picking, but once you get through the big batch of product you must swim to the far side of the creek to begin the next big gathering of cucumbers.
I realize I am going to have to swim a long ways on already cramping legs. For almost an hour I have been battling cramps in my thighs and calves. I have screamed, whined, bitten the regulator till I'm surprised it does not leak water, and crawled with my hands and arms.
I decide I've had enough for this day and slowly head for the surface. I like to make my final accent of the day very slow to make sure I do not blow the dive tables. I trust my dive computer, but it does not hurt to go a bit extra.
My head breaks surface to rain. Mike helps me back on the boat and I inform him that I'm done.
"Good job, man," he says while shutting down the machines. "I'm guessing we have eight or nine hundred pounds."
I agree with him as I have kept track of the bags I have been sending up all day.
"Sure not as much as I had hoped for, but I guess not bad for a decrepit, one eyed, old guy," I comment, while wriggling out of all my dive gear.
I struggle out of all my wet dive gear and into some warm dry clothes. I turn the boat heater on high and pour steaming hot coffee.
Mike cleans up the deck and stows all the dive gear.
while he is still tiding the deck I start the engines and idle in the direction of the tender.
Glacier Bay Seafood's normal tender(A commercial boat usually a crabber or seiner) notified me last week that he would be out this week, installing a new transmission in his boat, but there would be a replacement tender, and gave me the boat name.
I call on the radio to find where the tender is anchored and arranged for off loading our day's catch.
"I'm anchored close to the beach near Appleton Bay," the packer's voice comes booming over my radio.
"Sounds good. I'll see you in just a few minutes," I reply, turning the boat towards his location.
Mike readies the deck, removes the tarp cover, and has the tie up lines ready by the time I pull up to the packer.
"Looks like a purse seiner," I say to Mike as we tie to the lines tossed to us.
"Hey guys, how's it going?" I shout over the deck to the crew on the packer waiting for us to off load. "Have you got a price for us?"
Fishing in Alaska is a lot like farming. You grow the crop, weed it, water it, then harvest it. As the load of crop harvest starts getting old in your trucks, the farmer finds out what price the buyers are willing to pay. Most of the time you are disappointed at the low price offered you. Your choices are dump the load for compost, or sell to the person so willing to cheat you out of your hard work.
Diving is the same way. All week before the first dive we are getting calls from the buyers.
"Earl, are you diving this year?" I hear over and over. "We sure hope you will sell your cucumbers to us."
"Yeah, I plan on diving, what price are we looking at this year?"
It's always the same... a long silence, followed by much throat clearing... stuttering a bit... "Ummm... Well... Ahhumm... Well, you know, cough-cough, the market is not all that strong this year. The Yen to dollar is not looking good..."
Oh come on guys. You are begging for our product. You need it, but you are trying to pay the lowest price known to man to the divers risking their lives to harvest it for you.
"We have not been told the price yet... we'll announce it on the grounds on Monday," is the response always given.
The price echoed over the radio just happens to be about a dollar a pound less then the year before. The divers start calling each of the buyers complaining about the low price... as the evening wears on the price will start crawling up to where it should have been at the start.
I can sure see why unions were established. If all the divers could work together and hold out selling until a fair price is offered, we could save all the games played each year.
A couple years ago, some divers flew to the orient and arranged to sell directly to the guys who want cucumbers. The price they came back with was more than double ever paid for cucumbers. As soon as we started committing to these diver friends the other big company buyers jacked the price above them to make sure and get our cucumbers. It made for some very lucrative years... until the little guys faded out and now it is back to the big company guys again. sigh...
Mike and I bucket cucumbers out of my fish holds and into brailers, which the packers raises up and weighs. As the girl calls out the weights I write it on my grease board. One can never be too careful. Once the product is dumped into the hold of the packer it is gone.
"689 pounds minus 39 pounds tare weight," the buyer calls out.
I write it down, then get back to my bucket and more unloading of cucumbers.
We have done fairly well on our first dive. If I had been able to spend about one more hour on the bottom we would have been about half way with our poundage... but, as usual, it seems I'm just a tad bit behind schedule.
We pull into Appleton cove and drop anchor. We wait for Scott and CJ to sell. They drop by for a quick visit. We make plans for the next day's dive. It is always good to be able to get together with another boat while working on the ocean. It is like the old days where drop by visitors were always welcome.
Scott heads back out into Peril Strait and we head back into Rodman Bay.
"Good luck, tomorrow!" We shout as they pull away, "Be safe!"
Day two finds us picking up where we left off yesterday. I swim hard and pick like crazy, knowing that I only have four hours to dive.
I have put on my newer dry suit for today's dive, but find it is leaking badly through the chest inflator valve. Each time I hit the inflator button to pressurize my dry suit, water gushes in with the air. I feel the bite of ice cold water flood my chest little by little, as the day progresses it fills the entire suit.
By eleven I'm freezing cold and swimming in water from the flooded suit. I can feel my arms slosh in water.
My teeth chattering on my regulator, I head for the surface, done for the day.
"I'm freezing!" I shout to Mike as my head breaks surface.
"Let's bag it," he replies. "Our deal is safety first. If you are wet and cold, the dive is over. We've done alright for this opening.
We pack up and head for the tender once again. We find that we are just a couple hundred pounds shy of our quota for the dive. Not bad for a couple of old guys.
We head back to town wore out but contented. We have made our first dive without too much trouble. And... lived to tell about it!
Scott and C.J. swing by to visit
No comments:
Post a Comment