Smokin' volcanoes

It was a beautiful sunrise today looking towards some volcanoes.  We’re fishing a site tucked into a semi-circle of volcanoes.

We hooked some corals (hard and soft) on the line, mostly in the morning.  It was a slow morning so I spent some playing with and poking at the critters on the corals (bristleworms, starfish, sand lice mostly).  

We caught another big octopus (two, actually) and the crew threw one in the holding tank.  It hunkered down in a corner for a couple of hours, then within 10 seconds of throwing a fish in there, BAM, it was all over the fish!  Since we need to tag and release the fish alive, we had to pry the fish out of the tentacles and throw the octo back overboard.  It took both Dana and I to wrestle it back overboard.  

A second later, this one was also back overboard.

This afternoon the wind kicked up and it got really cold and wavy.  We hung up the gear twice – once right as we began to haul in (a big, tangly mess) and then the line broke early on in the first set and we had to go to the far end of the line to start hauling from that end.  The second hang up wasn’t a huge tangle, it was just line caught on something on the bottom and it took a couple of tries to shake it free.

Me, holding a big sablefish.

Today we caught several really big sablefish – the biggest was 105 cm!  That one went back to the processors right away.  Another one came up a few fish later – 99 cm long and 12.7 kg (about ~27 lbs)!  She was a beast!  For that one we got to weigh, measure, grab the otoliths, and confirm that she was female.  All the sablefish that size are females.  Actually, anything over 70 cm is probably female.  Anyways, it was pretty cool.  The biggest fish in the database history is 117 cm.  

More big sablefish coming in.

Hmmm…what else?  I’ve taken 1300 pictures so far.  And we’re not even halfway through the survey (halfway is tomorrow).  As we were finishing up paperwork this evening in the wheelhouse, a sperm whale was hanging out near the boat. Oh, and we passed a (gently) smoking volcano!!  We’re near Garalai Island.

This year’s vessel is 150 ft long, 33 ft wide, and has a 9 ft draft when empty (holds and fuel) or 15 ft when full.  It can hold 67000 gal of diesel.  This vessel is much more stable (less ‘rolly’) than last year’s boat, especially now that we’re full of fuel (it took 4-5 hours to fill up in Dutch Harbor).  There’s also less water sloshing all over, which helps me stay drier and cleaner while we work.