Two weeks on a boat

The Ocean Prowler

The Ocean Prowler is a 150 foot long longliner vessel.  She usually fishes for Pacific cod in the Bering Sea, but we were on her fishing for sablefish (aka black cod) in the Gulf of Alaska.  There are four levels ('decks') - the top is the wheelhouse, next down are the staterooms and bathrooms and some dry storage, then the next level down is the factory and food freezer, then the bottom level has the fish hold and engine room.

Our room on the boat.

So each year a survey is done to help estimate how many sablefish there are in the North Pacific.  The survey doesn't give an absolute number, but rather a relative number of fish (that you can track over time).  Specific ocean locations are sampled each year, using a commercial fishing vessel that has essentially been rented out for the summer.  The vessel provides the crew, the scientists provide the fishing gear that is standardized so that the same gear and bait type is used every year. 

Serge, Mark, and Mike, three of the deckhands

There were 18 total people on the boat this year - a Captain, First Mate, cook, engineer, four deckhands, four processors, a 'factory supervisor', a fish specialist, two scientists, and two fishery observers (biologists).  This is a 'fisher-processor' vessel, which means fish come on board alive and leave frozen in boxes...so the deckhands are the ones setting out the fishing gear (a longline, which I'll explain later) and the processors are removing the heads and guts of the fish.  The 'factory' is the physical place where all this happens - it's a messy, loud place on second deck of the boat (if you start counting at the bottom).  The factory foreman is in charge down there, helps with sorting the catch by size (or 'grade') and the fish specialist also helps with this and then also acts as the liason when trying to sell the fish (usually to fish markets in Japan).  Our fish specialist was an older Japanese man who spoke little English but was very nice and has been doing this for probably 20-30 years.

Observer Johanna, measuring fish.

The scientists (me and Katy for this two-week leg of the survey) pull samples of fish as they come on board - recording the length and sex for some of the fish and pulling out the otolith which will be used to tell how old the fish are.  We were also putting small tags on some of the fish and then releasing them.  Finally, the two observers are also taking length measurements of EVERY sablefish we caught, was well as some of the other species. 

So that's what we were doing for two weeks!  And it was SO MUCH FUN!!! 
Next I'll write about what a longline is...