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| Nice view while fishing, but cold wind! |
Cold today. The wind
is blowing 25 knots and we’re positioned so it’s blowing right into our work
areas. I’m wearing long underwear on top
and bottom and a winter hat, and am still cold because we do a lot of sitting
around between samples. Last night it
was rougher and harder to sleep since the boat was rolling about. I didn’t sleep well since it seemed like
there were a million different squeaks and bangs and creaks in our room. Maybe I should put in earplugs tonight.
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| A marine leech |
We were getting more fish in the past couple of days, it’s
slowed down now. We saw two lone whales
at a distance this morning – probably fin or sei whales. No sign of the killer whales since the first
day. I think we left them behind on the
day with the 13 hour steam to the new site and they didn’t follow. Today we noticed some of the sablefish had
small (=< 1 cm) round scars on their sides and bellies. Finally we caught a
sablefish with a marine leech stuck to it (leech was ~4 inches long), and could
then see what was making the marks. We did catch and satellite tag a couple of big
female sablefish.
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| Putting a satellite tag on a sablefish |
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| Checking out a small octopus |
Yesterday we caught
an octopus and looked at it a bit before releasing it alive. So cool.
It took a while to find the buoys (the crew calls them
‘bags’) marking start of the second set today.
One of the crew went up into the crows nest for a better view. They were eventually spotted.
There was a HUGE hangup on the line today. The anchor and about 400 m -1200 feet!- of
line and 180 hooks were in one giant tangle from the currents. I didn’t take a picture of the mess – it would
have been rude to do that while the crew was busy dealing with it. And it’s stressful for them when that happens
because the boat is still attached to the line and the currents and waves are
pushing us around, they are trying to sort it out enough to move on, and would
be like kicking them while they’re down.
It took a long time to sort it all out.
A note about food on the boat. It’s usually pretty good, with the standard
three meals a day, but meals come every four hours which seems too soon for
most days. Breakfast at 8, lunch at
noon, dinner at 4 pm or when the last of the set is brought in. Yep, 4 pm, unless we set gear earlier in the
morning, in which case dinner was as early at 2:45 pm (and breakfast and lunch
were also much earlier). I can’t eat
dinner that early, and if I do, I’m STARVING by 8 am the next morning.
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| T-bones for dinner. |
Food – breakfast is the same (more or less) each day. There is always make your own toast options, and
a small selection of cereal or pop-tarts.
Today on the hot bar there was bacon, sausage, shredded beef, eggs
benedicts, French toast, hashbrowns, scrambled eggs, biscuits and gravy and
fruit (melon, watermelon, pineapple, grapes).
Lunch was French dip sandwiches, onion rings, taquitos, tortellini with
sauce, curly fries, soup of the day (mushroom cream soup) with rolls, and
fruit, pasta salad. Dinner – salad
(lettuce, carrots, radishes, parmesan cheese, cheddar, feta, dried cranberries,
sunflower seeds, carrots, bacon, hardboiled eggs, croutons, pepperoncini, bell
peppers, tomato, cottage cheese, and probably even more stuff), teriyaki chicken,
scalloped potatoes, fresh pacific cod, rice, green beans, soup from lunch,
rolls. There’s a lot of meat. I vegetarian wouldn’t fare well out here, and
a vegan would be really sunk. There’s
always cookies or brownies, pastries, water, lemon and orange drink,
coffee. There’s an espresso machine in
the wheelhouse. We’re not exactly
roughin’ it out here…
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| Aiden and Dana checking out the scenery. |
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