6/23/2010-6/27/2010 Early mornings, lingo and Pirates
I woke up on Saturday morning as usual around 6:30 and very sleepily stumbled out of the dormitory towards the chicken coup to let out the hens. Typically by the time I get myself out to unlock the hutch the hens have been feverishly pecking and scratching at the door for some time. I know this because even on a Monday when I get up extra early for work (sometime around 5:30) they are already well awake and clucking disapprovingly at me as I unlatch the door (I’m not sure what gives them the right to judge me like a badly behaved child considering I feed them every day but oh well). Anyway, this was a Saturday so they were going to have to wait the extra hour. I walked out of the gate beginning my typical rant of “Alright, alright, I’m coming. Don’t get your feathers all ruffled,” when I realized that there was no agitated chicken sounds coming from the hutch. I looked down and saw that the door was open and secured with the latch as I would normally do. As I was scratching my head and trying to remember if I had shut the door the night before or if I had somehow woken in a stupor earlier that morning and let them out (I also briefly considered the possibility that the reason I hadn’t seen any mink yet this year was because they had been in a top secret training facility learning how to unlatch chicken coups) I heard a very deliberate cluck from behind me. I turned and found myself face to face with a very unimpressed trio of hens who had been expecting the next person who opened the gate to be bringing them their breakfast. Now I was thoroughly confused. I made my way toward the kitchen door rubbing my eyes only to have it flung open by a very smiling and overly awake Jamie. What the hell?

This is very fussy chicken ruffling its feathers at me

It turned out that Jamie had woken exceptionally early that morning and gotten a text message from the shellfish buyer to say that we already had more crab for the week than he could handle. On top of that the intense winds that had battered the islands all night hadn’t abated as expected so Jamie made the call not to fish that day. Instead of the standard courtesy phone call to let me know we had the day off he had decided to drive down and walk across the bay (it was low tide) to tell me in person…at 6:30 am. There was no way I was awake enough to host guests at this time. When you wake up for work that early six days a week the random few days that you get off (mostly due to bad weather) are like Christmas morning, only the only present you want is to not get out of bed all day. Not only was I now out of bed but the person I worked for was casually hanging out in my house. If it had been any other employer I would have been pretty pissed off and maybe even a little frightened but Jamie is no typical employer and a genuinely nice person so it wasn’t nearly as awkward as I would have imagined. In an attempt to become a functioning human, not to mention host, I quickly splashed some water on my face and made my way back to the kitchen. I was there greeted by the sight of a very alert and jovial Skipper sat at my table clearly hankering for a cup of tea. I considered not offering and trying to slink off back to bed but there was no way I could do that, in Scotland it just wouldn’t be acceptable. I asked if he’d like a cup to which I received the exact response I was expecting, “Ach aye, I’d luv one!”…Good morning me! Several cups of tea later I was making eggs, bacon & toast for both of us. I was, by this time, wide awake and had accepted the fact that my day off had actually gotten going earlier than many of my days on. I took Jamie back across in my boat at high tide around noon and arrived back to the Croft at just about the time I would have envisioned myself getting up had I planned on not working that day.

The Mist
Last week Jamie was just dropping me off at the woodpile across from the island where the cars are parked after a really nice day on the boat working under gloriously blue skies when I witnessed firsthand how dangerous the ocean can be. There was no threat to me as I was safely standing on land but I watched as a “sea mist” swept down the Sound of Iona and completely enveloped Erraid in a matter of minutes. I could see the mist swirling past me and it was moving incredibly fast. It started as what looked like a very low cloud of smoke from a chimney over the water, which I noticed as we were driving along the road. By the time we had reached the end of the dirt track at the woodpile it was already reaching its grey fingers over Easter Island (a tiny heather-covered rock outcropping just off the northwest coast of Erraid. Before long I couldn’t make out any of Erraid at all despite the fact that I was no more than a few hundred yards from its shores. I watched bemused for a few minutes until the mist lifted and I jumped in my kayak and quickly paddled across the bay. It was not a minute too soon as just when I started pulling up the kayak on the other side the mist fell back down like a curtain all around me and only my confident familiarly with the beach guided me back to the house. It was really amazing to see how the visibility had dropped from miles to a matter of a few feet in only a few short minutes and I was glad that I had not been out in my little dingy fishing in the sound or kayaking around the island when it happened.

The mist had already started to dissipate slightly by the time I took this photo but it’s still pretty heavy, you should be seeing a village. The next picture was taken from almost the exact same location on another day but it could have easily been taken half an hour before the sea mist rolled in, note the village.
I’m not sure if a lot of you have seen a picture of the village yet but as you can see I use that term in the loosest possible sense. I believe that most villages include qualifying establishments such as post offices, banks, shops, and streets. This village does have a mailbox (not sure if it’s still used), there is a street (no car has ever been on it), people have money (nowhere to put it) and there is now a shop (really just a table inside one of the houses that sells a few bars of chocolate), so I guess the argument for village status isn’t totally ridiculous.

Terminology
There are several bits of lobster fishing terminology I feel are necessary to mention as they play a major role in my daily speech on the boat.

Cocks and Hens: Crabs and lobsters are known as “cocks” and “hens” just like chickens (which makes my life much easier). They are anatomically fairly different although to the untrained eye they all just look like crabs and lobsters. I was not very discerning as to the differences in my first week or so and as a result found myself constantly corrected by Jamie. As another big crab came up in a pot I would say something like “wow he’s a monster” only to hear Jamie quietly correct “actually it’s a her.” I felt like I was offending Jamie as well as the crab. Slowly I began to pick up on the subtle differences. Hen crabs have fatter bodies with wide tails (tucked under the body beneath which the eggs would be kept) than the Cocks, who are narrow, with very thin tails and much larger claws. Like crabs Hen lobsters have bigger tails and smaller claws than the cocks. With lobsters we don’t care too much weather it’s a hen or a cock as long as it meets the minimum size requirement but with crabs we can take smaller hens than cocks because of their fatter bodies containing more meat.

This is a big Cock!

Having this terminology leads to some dialog on the boat that I wish other people were around to hear because I think Jamie has been fishing too long to still notice the humor in the comments. As you can probably guess the majority of them deal with the cocks, for obvious reasons (primarily being that I still have the dirty mind of a 13 year-old). For example I hear the following comments on a daily basis: “That’s a monster Cock,” “We don’t want any small cocks today, only really big ones,” “there are some good looking cocks in that cage,” and yesterday (Friday) I even got “Nah, that cocks too soft,” priceless!

Fangle: Now I’m not actually sure if this one is “fangle” or “fankle” due to the thick Scottish accent in which I hear it said but I have chosen to go with the former because that’s the only way I can begin to guess at its origins. A “fangle” occurs when the rope gets tangled in the bottom of the boat when we are bringing the creels on board resulting in problems when we try to set them out again. A fangle, in my mind, is a serious tangle and as such I have decided that it originated from the truncation of the phrase “fucking tangle.” If I hear fangle in an exclamation I know to get my feet the hell away from the rope. If I hear it casually I know to get to work at un-fangling the fangle that has occurred somewhere in the piles of rope on the deck. All-in-all I know I’d rather not hear this one ever but it still makes me smile when I do.

Cling-ons & Death Stars: I have begun to be certain that at some point during the formative years of science fiction (notably star wars and star trek) there was a serious fishing connection. Maybe George Lucas had a lobster fisherman uncle or something along those lines. “Cling-ons” on a lobster boat are not strange looking aliens that constantly are at odds with galactic federations, but they aren’t far off either. They are, in fact, the smallest brown crabs that come up in most pots we haul wedged in the corners and tangled…no wait…fangled (so happy I just managed to use that in a sentence!) in the netting. They can be a pain in the ass to get out of the creels despite their small size and comparative weakness compared with their big brothers. Cling-ons always raise an annoyed grunt from Jamie and are only good for eating the bait and throwing at seagulls (more on that to come). When I think more about it the terms in fishing and sci-fi are basically the same; annoying life forms that cruise around their respective universes looking for objects belonging to their enemies to attack.
“Death Stars” are massive star fish which latch themselves onto the bait bags inside the creels and quite literally suck the life out of the creels. You know when a death star has been eating the bait because it has ceased to resemble the fish you put in the bag the day before and instead comes out looking like a big ball of snot. They liquefy the bait and it seems when a big death star gets hold of the bait the crabs and lobsters know and don’t bother going in the creels. There are often several death stars in a single creel and it becomes out job to tear them away from their meal, which often includes tearing off one or more of their limbs. I’m pretty sure they grow those limbs back but it’s my job so I really try not to think about it too much. All I know is that at the end of a given day the deck will be littered with flattened death stars and limbs from those we manage to pry loose, so I hope they grow back.
Once again the sci-fi connection is strong in these creatures; massive destroyers that maraud around looking for vulnerable planets (creels in our case).

These are all death stars, they get much larger than this also but I don’t always have time to snap photos. The one in the middle is over a foot across at least but I’m sure I’ll get a picture of a really big on before this is over.

Seagulls: Now this isn't exactly terminology so much as a distinction along with a casual rant but I would be remised if I didn’t take a few moments to discuss seagulls. Now I know that everyone has seen a seagull at some point in their lives and until very recently I would have simply said that I too had seen a seagull but after spending all this time in their company I now realize how many different types of gulls there are. I would have always just classified seagulls as seagulls and left it at that but I would have been terribly mistaken to do so. On any given day we are trailed by an entourage of expectant gulls waiting for us to lob the old bait from the creels into the water where they then battle each other ferociously for the spoils. Some fly above us taking the high route to the bait, diving down into the water when they catch sight of a tasty piece of rotten scad floating on the surface. Others ride along on the railings of the boat saving their energy for the fight to come. While others still paddle alongside us, riding the waves and hoping that our throws land in their direction. The gulls have an uncanny knack of arriving, seemingly out of nowhere, at the exact moment that the bait starts flying. It only takes one gull to notice whats happening, quicken its pace and dive for the food before there are dozens on the scene circling like sharks. As bits of food land on the surface the water is instantly transformed into a frothing bubbling cauldron by the hoards of battling birds vying for the tasty morsel.

A herring Gull riding along on one of the creels stacked on the boat

When it comes to seagulls there is a very obvious pecking order, just like with my hens (I now put the hens food in three separate piles so they can all get a fair share, otherwise the biggest and fattest of them claims it all). There are primarily three types of gulls following us; the common gull (actually very small in comparison to the others and fairly uncommon for us to see because of their inability to compete for food with the larger types), F gulls, which are the typical white with grey wings gulls that would come to mind when most people think of seagulls, and finally there are the dreaded black-backed gulls. The later are the pirates of the gull world, they are much larger than any other gulls (often twice the size) and have a propensity for thieving their meals from the beaks of other poor unsuspecting gulls (this includes any smaller black-backed gulls as well, they are not picky as to whom they rob their dinners from). The black backs don’t concern themselves with the smallest scraps of bait we toss over instead they simply float calmly waiting for the full fish heads and other larger pieces. Even when they are not going after a particular piece of food they make their presence known often with loud squawks so that the lesser gulls don’t forget to make way when the choice bits come tumbling into the water. The smaller gulls have only their speed and agility to protect them, and their meals, from the black backs. If a small gull gets a nice piece of fish they immediately take flight for their lives hoping that they have gotten just enough of a head start to evade the black backs that will undoubtedly be in pursuit. About half of the time the gulls simply give up after they feel the black backs hot on their tails and drop the fish, which the black backs gladly retrieve and wolf down. The rest of the time there are two potential outcomes of the chase; one, the gull manages to either get away or swallow the fish before they are caught and, two, the black backs literally rip them from the sky by their wings or tails and pull them down to the water, pecking and thrashing at them until the food is relinquished. This is literally one of the more vicious things I have ever witnessed firsthand in nature. There is no sympathy and no remorse from the pirates as they gleefully snack on the hard won food of the smaller birds. After a few minutes of throwing out bait I can look at the water and see feathers floating around everywhere, remnants of attacks and reminders to other gulls that the good stuff had better be left for the big guys.
I have decided that I don’t really like the black backs. They don’t partake in the initial fair fight, when all the smaller gulls dive and swim for the bait, but instead wait for a winner to come out with the food and then attack that individual. With the other gulls they generally stop fighting when it’s clear that one of them has a firm grasp on the food and, to me, that seems somehow strangely civilized and reasonable; everyone gets a good chance to get at the food and there is always a decent tussle but by and large there is no fowl play. The black backs, in true pirate fashion, don’t follow any rules but their own, which seem to vary greatly even among their own kind. I have taken to favoring the smaller gulls by throwing the bait closer to them and away from the black backs, which often does little to prevent the ruthless theft, but occasionally it gives the smaller ones a chance to swallow the meal. My other tactic involves the use of cling-ons and death stars…as cannon balls. I typically use one hand to put the fresh bait into the creel and the other to pull out all the crabs and other creatures. As a result I am often in the situation of having a cling-on or star fish in one hand and an old piece of rotting bait in the other. I then throw the bait and as soon as I see a black back rushing towards whichever gull has come out of the scrap I launch the crab or star at them. As you can imagine most seagulls don’t want to be hit with a brown crab (they are very hard and very strong with sharp legs and dangerous claws) or a star fish that hurtles towards them like a ninja throwing star and so evasive actions are almost always taken as soon as they catch sight of the missile. I have been very satisfied with myself on the few occasions where my bombs actually strike true and the confused and frightened shrieks of the black backs warm my heart as I watch the smaller gulls make off with a prize bit of fish. Even when I don’t hit them, which is most of the time, the counterattack is enough to confuse the black backs long enough that the fish they were after is long gone down the gullet of a very happy gull. You may now and forever after this refer to me as “Captain James-black back hunter and defender of the grey gull”.

I’ve been so excited trying to get everything that’s happening here written down that I forget to mention some interesting stories along the way. I’ll try to put a little bit of flow into what follows but it may be easier just to take each of these next parts as standalone tales, a quilt of tidbits sewn together from the last few weeks…

Finally with some of the madness of my first week of fishing now out of the way I am starting to feel more at home on the boat. I have never had issues of sea sickness and have never really felt uncomfortable when I’m on the water. What I realize now is that nothing I had previously done could really prepare me for working on one. It’s not that I was running to the side to vomit every time the swells got big, it’s that the swells didn’t stop when I get off the fucking boat. For at least a couple hours after each of my first few days every time I stood still it would feel like the room was rocking with the waves. I think I was somehow trying to compensate by leaning back and forth…hope Jamie didn’t catch me doing that in his living room. Football players could do a lot of good to their agility and balance if they spent a few weeks on a boat during some heavy waves. There is nowhere to sit when it’s rough save the tiny pull down bench in the one-man wheelhouse but if you were sitting during these rides you would be a corpse. There is definitely a major thrill when the boat launches off a wave and comes barreling back down in time to take the next one over the bow and plow on through, especially when you are the one driving.
Today was Monday and I was supposed to be at work at 7 to land the catch. We have been storing all the crab & lobster that we caught last week in cages in the bay and now we pack them into cases for the buyer to take. We are meant to separate them by size and also whether or not they are missing claws. Today was also the first day I was planning to take the kayak across the bay to my bike on the other side…never try to many firsts in one first session. As I set out paddling across the bay around 6:30am the sun was warm and the water completely still, now I see why my pops likes to get the morning paddle in. I pulled the boat onto the beach at the other side and started the mandatory dozen kick starts on the trusty Shenda. Only she was not planning to cooperate and had somehow sabotaged her own clutch cable during the night at the thought of having to start the day an hour earlier. I told her I knew how she felt and that it would be ok. It wasn’t ok. After some mild swearing I accepted the only option, kayak back across the bay and call Jamie (Remind myself to remind myself later why I like cell phones). The morning was breathtaking in a different way on the return trip. The upshot was that I had to kayak back across at 8:30, get a ride from the village van taking the kids to school to the bus stop and finally pay £1.60 to get the bus to the pier. After all that crap we ended up having the best day of the season for Jamie. We caught over 300 lbs of crab mostly in an amazing 100 pot set of fleets along the Berg. Every pot was teeming with brown crab and in almost all cases they were keepers. We ran out of keep cages on the boat and were down to the bait box when the skipper called it quits. The man just knows how to quit when he’s ahead. I asked about the creels we had over a small reef called the Boghmor in the mouth of the Loch but the waves had picked up as we got into the open water and it would have been very difficult hauling. I wanted to see what we had there because it was apparently good ground for lobster. Although it’s early in the lobster season in the Hebrides we got 6 on some of our morning fleets. I think we’ll have much bigger days but this was a really nice start.

In all the excitement and craziness of the first couple weeks I somehow forgot to mention the epic propeller-rope tangle rescue effort on my first day. I must preface that the effort and rescue were entirely by Jamie. We were hauling and setting creels in a small bay along the Loch when a stray rope made its way under the boat and jammed the prop. Jamie gave it a couple of quick looks and without a second thought stripped to his boxers and dove into the water with only a pair of flippers. He came up and first thing he told me was “lower me that knife doon wen I’m back there,” the second thing he told me was “ach, its no cold atall, quite nice actually.” Scotsmen are fucking nuts. After a few dives under he had the thing loose and was back on the boat getting dressed and making a hot cup of tea. I have no idea really but I’m sure I probably made a rookie mistake that led to the rope being where it was under the boat; Jamie never said anything and never seemed pissed off.


This is what was left of the rope Jamie cut from the propeller.

A rope in the propeller was definitely a wild way to start but I have quickly found that the world of fishing on the Ross of Mull has more than its fair share both of excitement and even drama. It was on the second or third day when we began moving some of our gear over to the Berg that I noticed Jamie was feverishly texting back and forth with someone. This was strange as he was not usually anywhere near his phone while we were on the boat. After I while I think he noticed that I was aware of the number of texts he was exchanging and he told me that he’d been receiving texts from a number he didn’t recognize. The texts were telling him in no uncertain terms to keep clear of the Berg fishing grounds as they were taken and to “stick to fishing Ardtun where you’re used to”. Ardtun is the name of part of the shoreline on the opposite side of the Loch from the Berg. Was this for real? Where we getting ourselves into the middle of a turf war? Fucking awesome!

As the texts kept coming in Jamie worked out that he knew the person sending them but that they were suing a different number that he didn’t recognize. They weren’t exactly threatening us on their own behalf but rather saying that they were already in a turf battle with another fisherman and that we’d be better off steering clear. Nevertheless the tone was aggressive and I could see the hairs bristling on the back of Jamie’s neck. I like to think that my first response helped Jamie make up his mind as to what to do. “Ah fuck ‘em,” I said, “You’ve got the right to fish here, what are they going to do?” “Ach aye, I do,” Jamie replied, “We’ll no be bullied around.” We had already put down 50 creels along the Berg the previous day and the next executive decision from Jamie set the tone on how we’d be dealing with the threat…we promptly loaded the boat with another 50 creels and steamed them straight to the Berg. Not only that but we extended our foremost fleet even further around the point to give us coverage over more ground. There were still no other boats creels to be seen anywhere and so we felt that we’d established ourselves early enough to have a fair claim to the ground. A few hours later I noticed Jamie taking out one of the many sea urchins that we pull up in the creels and placing it down in a bucket on the deck. Seeing me eyeing him quizzically he replied shortly “Ammunition”. I laughed and nodded to which he said “I hope you’ve got a good baseball arm, because if they get close enough you’ll need to land this right on their deck.” “Oh I’ll land it on the deck,” I replied. I seriously like the way this man operates.

Just as a quick update, we’ve not had any run-ins with the threat makers but every day I watch Jamie set aside one or two urchins just in case. The only boat we really have any contact with from time to time is a bigger boat called Scara Tang (meaning “thanks to the Scara” in Gaelic, “tang” means thanks and “Scara” possibly referring to Scara Brae, which was an ancient Viking settlement that had been forgotten and covered by sand for hundreds of years). They fish mostly for prawns and as such we pose little threat to one another. Shortly after receiving text the text messages Jamie got a call from them on the radio asking to borrow some twine. As we started heading towards the Scara Tang I gathered and coiled some twine to throw them. “Friends not enemies, I guess?” I asked Jamie. “Bit of both really,” came the reply. The world of fishing is surely more complicated than one can understand in a week or two, ask me about the politics again in a few months and maybe I’ll have them down a little better.

Its 11:31pm on Wednesday and I have just finished a marathon 4 hour crab bisque making session. I had left over mussel stock from a dish I made at the weekend (Moules Marinieres, for the connoisseurs among you) and was wanting to use it up. Since starting work I am also suddenly inundated with more crab claws than I can possibly handle. Every time a crab drops a claw on the boat we put them aside and I bring them home, usually about a dozen large claws each day. I decided the best way to use the ingredients I had was soup and so Bisque it was. After much slaving and substituting (its really hard to have all the right fresh ingredients on an island where the closest legitimate shop is a solid 2-3 hours travel away) the bisque was finally completely. The soup came out wonderfully and I’m using most of it for a dinner I’m making for some people from the village tomorrow. Despite the success it’s a little depressing as I’m looking around the kitchen now and it’s like a small nuclear device went off, only this device had a casing made of crab shell…what a mess. I think that’s my cue for bed, I’m sure someone will clean it up by the time I get…shit.

After Monday, when we had the best catch of the year, I said that I thought there were better days to come. Given I’d only be working a week and the fishing season is still in its infancy that was clearly a safe bet. There was, however, no way that I expected that the very next day out would make Monday look like amateur hour crab fishing at McGilvry jetty. This afternoon we brought back over 4 fish boxes full of brown crab, 2 baskets of Velvet crab, a box of green crab and, wait for it now, 19 Lobster! Finally I feel like an actual lobster fisherman because we caught more lobster than dogfish (only 4 today). I realize that in the stats I have just delivered to you there are no common units of measurement so it doesn’t really help that much but hopefully some of the pictures will put it in perspective. Just to give you some reference, 2 fish boxes (usually brown crab) or 2 baskets (velvets) combined roughly equal 1 keep cage, which is what we transfer the catch into daily until we land it on Mondays. Lobsters are so rare and valuable they are only measured individually, 30 would be an amazing day and anything over 10 is decent.
In the foreground is a keep cage, in the background is a fish box. You can see Jamie’s hand in the left side as he cuts the crabs claws so they can’t hurt each other or us when they are in the keep cage.

We’ve been starting to get some real beasts as well, Jamie calls them “crackers”. So as the pots are coming over the side I’ll hear an exclamation of “ach, here’s a right cracker,” or something to that effect and I know it’s time to get back over to see what we’ve got. Today I was working as usual stacking a pot at the stern of the boat when I heard “Oh my god, that is the biggest fucking crab I’ve seen in my life!” Such an exclamation warranted my swift investigation and as I leaped back to the side Jamie was just pulling an absolute monster out of one of the creels. This was a crab so large that upon being put with the other crabs he promptly disposed of two with his massive claws. For the protection of the rest of the catch we had to put him into Solitary confinement in his own fish box with a lid on it so that he wouldn’t simply scrawl out over the side (which would have been a small step for him). It’s very typical for the crabs we catch to get a bit feisty with one another and there are always claws and legs littering the bottom of the box when we empty it but there are very rarely crabs that die from it. The shells on their bodies are so thick that they don’t typically puncture through. King Kong crabby simply crushed straight through the middle of his victims heads and they were dead on impact.


Meet King Kong Crab! Notice the size of the crabs under the carpet beneath him, the carpet was mandatory as we ran out of fish box space and solitary confinement was no longer an option. I know that you are all thinking you’ve seen much bigger crabs on Deadliest Catch or something like that but this guy would have a field day with those spindly, all-legs-and-no-body crabs you see on TV. This is about 5 lbs of pure power and aggression; those gloves wouldn’t protect you in the least if he latched onto your hand.

I’ve been mentioned the basking sharks we’ve been seeing and we had several more sightings again today, only this time they were in a small bay with us and we were able to get very close. The size of these guys never ceases to amaze me. Unfortunately my little camera does not do justice to what the eye can see. We have had the shark counter going for the past week and until yesterday (Friday) we had seen them every day with a peak of somewhere around a dozen sharks on Monday. For their size it’s amazing how close they get into shore, much closer than we dare in the boat. Jamie is great about humoring the tourist within me and giving me a chance to get some photos. He has even started pointing out photo opportunities and steering the boat into better position for me to stand on the side and snap pictures. I’ve Here are a few of the resulting shark shots.

This one came right up near the boat and was easily between 20-30 feet in length. I tried to get one looking through the water so you could see the body but my camera doesn’t really have the gonads to do it.


If you look closely below the dorsal fin you can make out the dark and light mottled looking skin, closer still and you start to make out the outline of the body.

This picture is actually from pretty far away. The dorsal fin is at least 2 feet above the water so you can start to picture the length of this guy. When they were close to the boat we could even see the little cleaner fish (can't remember what they're called) hanging on.

After posting these pictures I am now fully in nature photography mode, so I’ll leave you with some shots of the various animals I share the island and sea with…

These sheep definitely have the right idea on a sunny afternoon.

Caught this guy trying to shed his skin in peace, needless to say I harassed him for a few minutes.

I call this one "Birdset" and comes with a special shout out to Marty, makes me think of l'Art.

Can't help but to slip one in of my chooks...

Some very fat and happy seals lazing around on the rocks, they weren't much bothered as our boat chugged in and we lifted creels around them for 30 minutes...

Finally while we are on the theme of laziness I give you "dead sheep"...just for the record this lamb is not dead, just really really tired...but aren't we all?

Lobsterman at last!

6/11/2010- Week 3

Today was one of the best days of my life! I have been working on the boat since Tuesday (its Friday night now) and I can’t describe how good it has been so far. I have to start with today because its fresh in my memory, so you’ll have to bear with me. I’ll go back and explain exactly what my job entails after I try to put my day into words. I woke up this morning at 6:30 before my alarm clock had even rung, I’ll give you a minute to let that sink in…before, not just a minute but long enough to forget to shut it off for 15 minutes and still not hear the alarm. It’s a great feeling to want to get up. I still don’t want to get out of bed because its warm but once I get into the kitchen and get the coffee going I immediately start getting excited about going out fishing. To be fair the excitement doesn’t get to a fever pitch until I get to the top of the hill where my motorcycle is parked, the walk is a little painful but as soon as I fire up the Shenda the fun begins!

This morning wasn’t spectacular like several I’ve enjoyed so far but the air was crisp and it woke me up more than usual. The ride was great and upon reaching a new top speed on the bike on the way to the boat yard I knew that the day was going places. On top of that I arrived at the pier to see that Jamie (my skipper) had gotten there early and already mended the pots and started watering down the bait (I’ll explain later). Basically what t came down to was that I didn’t have to do a bunch of the shit work i would usually do before we set out. Once again an omen of things to come. We head out of the harbor and almost immediately noticed something on the horizon. As we got closer we saw the fins of about six basking sharks in the water. We managed to navigate close enough to one that we saw it swim past the boat almost within arms reach. Jamie estimated that it was 30 feet long. I know what you’re all thinking, “fisherman always embellish, it was probably closer to 15”. Let me just say that I shit you not, it was bigger than the boat!

After getting a good look at the sharks we got down to business, the first fleet of lobster creels is a set of 18 and they are the light ones so it’s a good way to get the blood flowing. We just had to get a few fleets out of the way before we were to take 40 creels on board to move them across the mouth of Loch to a new spot.

Looking across from Ardtun (the side of the Loch that most of our gear is on) to the Berg, where we are bringing about half the creels to put out.

We got a tip from another local fisherman (obviously he wasn’t a lobster man, he goes for shrimp) a few days before that there was some good ground along the dramatic shoreline of a geological marvel they call the Berg and so we had already moved several fleets of creels over. I had been around the Berg once before on another boat but I was excited to get up close and to be working along it for a few hours. It is undoubtedly one of the most amazing backdrops one could possibly hope to work in front of. The combination of the scenery coupled with my excitement about the potential catch was only adding to what had already been a day to remember. Imagine yourself as a 10 year old, sitting at the top of the stairs on Christmas morning just waiting to bolt down to tear into your presents, the anticipation coursing through your veins. This is the type of feeling I get as I watch the seaweed covered rope wind up onto the winch and then the iridescent blue of the creel as they surge to the surface. On this day the crab were coming up thick and fast, Jamie’s decision tol act on the advice was proving a good one. Sometime during the 2^nd or 3^rd fleet as I was stacking creels I heard “Ach, that’s a cracker!” and turned to see Jamie pulling an absolutely massive lobster out of the cage. It was the biggest one that we had caught since I started, weighing about 3 lbs. You know it’s a good one when the skipper who has been fishing for the past 20 years is grinning ear to ear.

King Kong lobster had left us in great spirits and the rest of the day was flying by. As we steamed back across the loch (about a 30 minute ride) eating our lunch I could feel the wind pick and the swell intensify. As we hauled the next few fleets the weather only worsened and the boat was starting to pitch back and forth as I scrambled from creel to creel trying to keep my balance as well as avoid being knocked senseless by a disembarking creel or having my finger severed by an angry crab (these little fuckers have pincers that you would not believe and once they latch on the only way to get them off is by way of the hammer). We had about 50 or 60 creels left on the day when Jamie looked out to the open ocean back down to the swell by the boat and said we were calling it a day. It wasn’t worth the risk just to get a few more creels on a day when the catch had already been so good. Fisherman tend to know to quit when their ahead in regards to the weather.

We packed up the last of the gear and began heading for home. Then came words from Jamie that I never expected to hear “It’s getting to rough for the auto pilot, I’ll cut the crab, take us home.” He was gesturing towards the wheelhouse and I realized that he actually wanted me to take the helm. There was no chance that I was letting this opportunity evade my grasp. I have literally been watching fishing boats steam all around the islands every summer and crashing through waves on stormy days for over 20 years and just wishing that I could be the one in the captains chair, and now here I was. I took the wheel and laid my hand down on the throttle, pushing it forward to 2,000 revs and feeling the power of the boat at my finger tips. I glanced to the wind monitor and watched as the wind speed increased to 25 mph. I recalled Jamie saying this was about the maximum wind he ever fished in and as the waves began to crash over the bow of the boat I realized why. Jamie peered in the window and said “How about some music?” He reached up and turned on the player, Lynard Skynard-Greatest Hits. Could this get better? As “Sweet Home Alabama” sounded out I was getting into the adventure and by the time “Simple Man” came on I was belting out the words at the top of my lungs. As each wave came the coat would rise over it before being lifted airborne for a split second and then crashing onto and through the next wave. These were the roughest seas I had ever been out on and I was driving right into the teeth of the squall. This was quite simply one of the best experiences of my life. I had no fear with the knowledge that Jamie was right next to the auxiliary wheel so he could bail me out of any trouble that I might get us into, but that was nowhere to be found in the cards. For the next half hour or so I felt like a cowboy at a rodeo and there were several occasions where the force of wave after wave and the free fall between literally lifted my off my feet.

This is the view from the little wheel house, obviously not on the day I am describing above...there was no way to use a camera in those conditions and the windshield wiper was working overtime.

The day that had rivaled any of the best I could remember experiencing still had one more glorious twist that would simply serve to solidify its excellence. We were out of the worst of the weather and safely inside the opening to the bay, where the headlands protected us from the brunt of the wind and waves, when the proverbial icing was slathered over the gourmet gateau that had been my Friday. “Ach, tomorrows no looking very nice, we’ll just have the weekend off.” Typically fisherman fish at least 6 days a week, weather permitting, with Sunday being the general choice for a day off. So to hear the words “weekend off” caught me off guard and they were exactly what my tired and aching body needed after my first week as a lobster fisherman.

I’ll now try to explain what my job entails day to day. Experiences from the first 3 days (before Friday) will serve to paint a picture for you all. After my daily commute (involving walking up the hill to my bike and then the 20 minute ride to the boat yard)I arrive at the boat yard around 8 o’clock to meet Jamie. We bring down the gear from his truck (usually a couple of creels he wants to fix, the bait and some diesel for the boat) load it into the dingy and motor out to where the Arianna is moored. At 20 feet in length Arianna is one of the smallest fishing boats on the Ross of Mull (for those who don’t know Mull is the island that Erraid is off of) but she is wide and stable. There is enough room for the two of us, 4 boxes for the 3 types of crab and also the lobster that we catch and space to stack as many as 50 creels at the back of the boat. I leap onto the boat and tie the dingy up as Jamie hands the gear to me onboard. He then sets about getting the engine going (involving checking fluids, electrics and mechanics) while I start watering the frozen scad we use as bait. I then join Jamie, who by this point is busy mending holes in creels. He has taught me the knots that every fisherman knows and although I have not mastered them all flawlessly the one I do know the best is that used on the creels. Jamie can mend 2 or 3 creels to my one but I am getting better each day and even started getting nods of approval from Jamie over my work, instead of the first day where he had to step in to help me get each bit started. Once the bait fish are thawed enough that I can separate them I begin cutting each fish in half. This takes me 10 minutes or so and by the time I’m done we have steamed out of the harbor and are getting close to the spot where the first fleet of creels is set.

Jamie, my skipper, mending a creel at the back of the boat. This is probably about 40 creels stacked, it gets hairy when we have to get all of these out within about 5 minutes.

A fleet of creels typically consists of between 10 and 20 traps spaced at distances of either 5 or 7 fathoms (a fathom is the length of a man, which has been set in stone at 6 feet). They are all attached to a long rope (maybe a hundred meters or so) by smaller ropes that are about a fathom in length. We wind them in on a winch with Jamie at the controls and as they come over the side he throws them onto the rack attached to the side of the boat. One of us unlatches the door and we begin to pull out whatever creatures have been trapped. We separate the crabs into 3 boxes for the three types we keep. There are green crabs, which are the standard shore crabs that live around the seaweed and rocks in the shallower waters and fetch the lowest price. I believe they are used for crab stock. Next we catch velvet crabs, which are very fast and have legs shaped almost like oars so they appear to be running through the water, also often used in a nice soup. Finally the big guns are the brown crab, which can grow very large and have claws that can sever a mans finger down to the bone. Each crab prefers different types of bait. The velvets and greens like the frozen scad and mackerel and the browns salivate over the dog fish we occasionally use. We don’t buy dogfish as bait but often catch them in the creels and chop them up to use as fresh bait for the browns. The lobsters like it all but I’m told by Jamie that they especially go wild for Octopus and Conger Eel, neither of which we have caught to use yet but Jamie assures me we will eventually.

A box of very subdued brown crab, the goal is to fill about 2 of these fish boxes with browns in a day. You can't see the claws on these ones but trust me when I say they are frightening.

My primary role is that of baiter/stacker/thrower, which basically means that I do everything with the pots while Jamie mans the winch and steers the boat. Once a pot is unloaded and baited I seal it back up and carry it to the back of the boat to stack. After we bring in as many fleets as we are moving at once (usually between 1 and 4 at a time) we get ready to set them out. I stand at the loading platform on the side of the boat with the first creel in one hand and the buoy (that’s a float) in the other. Jamie typically gives me one of a few shouts to start letting them out: “Bombs away”, “As she comes” (which means I am to drop the first creel as the rope tightens after the buoy is in the water), a simple “Aye, now” or “let her go”. I get some others as well but these are by far the most prolific and all in a wonderfully thick Scottish accent. Nothing tickles me more than when I get the most Scottish of Scottish phrases out of Jamie: “ach aye”. Simply meaning the affirmative “oh yes” or something close to that and although it could be clichéd to say for some people when it comes from Jamie it just sounds right…not sure but that might be due to the fact that he’s actually Scottish.

Once I’ve launched the first creel I am at full work speed. I have approximately 10-15 seconds between the time I let go of one creel until the time the rope will come taught and rip the next creel from the stack and send it catapulting over the railing, taking anything it hits with it. This is one of the most intense things I have ever done. The boat is moving forward and the line of creels is moving backwards against it. Each creel weighs between 25 and 50 lbs. and once you have a couple in the water the force on the rope is incredible and far exceeds the strength of a man. So if you don’t have your shit together you risk serious injury to yourself or anyone else on the boat. On my second day (Wednesday) I experienced one of the worst nightmares a fisherman can have…

I was somewhere in the middle of a fleet of 10 creels and had just launched another over the side when I felt something sliding around my foot. I looked down to see with horror that the rope had looped around my boot. As it tightened around my leg I felt the pull of the half dozen creels already beneath the surface. I grabbed the rope and tried to take the strain, which was quickly becoming more than I could handle. By this point my initial yell had alerted Jamie and he was already in crisis mode slamming the boat into reverse and leaping to my side. His quick action took the force of the boat moving forward off the rope and gave me just enough slack and time to free myself from the loop as the next creel came bumping across the deck towards me. It was all I could do to partially catch/fend off the creel and direct it over the side. I could tell even Jamie was a little shaken and since we have been much more careful. It was basically just my inexperience here and I have learned from the mistake…but it scared me shitless!

Near death experiences aside things on the boat are great. We work harder than I’ve worked at any job in my life but I have more fun at the same time so it really doesn’t bother me. I only really think about it when I’m sitting at the Croft feeling the aches, cuts and bruises that I picked up from the day. In a given 8 hour day out on the boat I would estimate that we are flat out working for at least 7 hours. The only down time is when we are going between fleets but since most fleets are set one after another this is not usually more than a few minutes at best. The only exception is when we steam across the loch to the Berg. I wear the full yellow oil skin outfit with steel toe rubber boots and gloves and I am thankful for every inch of the uniform. It protects me from the wind, rain and most importantly the claws! Having said that if one of the big crabs or lobsters wanted to bite through my gloves and I wasn’t paying attention he could easily put me in a lot of pain.

The remainders of the daily tasks come as we head for home. We have to “claw” the crabs and “band” the lobsters. The latter is very self explanatory and you’ve all seen the resulting lobsters sitting in the shops with rubber bands holding their claws shut. The former is less clear and a skill that took me several days (and hundreds of crabs) to master. Basically in order to store the crabs for the week before we sell them to the buyers we have to sever the tendon that allows their claws to open and shut. For this one must take the crab and, being very wary of the other claw, force open one pincer and with a knife quickly cut the tendon. Its hard to get them to open wide enough and hard to find the right part to cut but once you get it there is a most satisfying pop and the top part of the claw goes limp. It sounds barbaric but I am assured by several sources that the crabs are unaware of any issues and based on their behavior (which doesn’t change at all post “clawing”) I would tend to agree with that. After all the crabs have been clawed and the lobsters banded we add them to cages that are kept on the ocean floor near the boat mooring until we land the catch, which will be happening tomorrow. It’ll be another first for me and I’m excited to see how our haul was for the week and how the process of selling to the whole seller goes. The key, Jamie tells me, is to put the nice big crabs and lobsters on the top of the box for the buyer…perceptions are everything!