Want to spend a summer working aboard an Alaska commercial fishing boat?  Excited about the possible adventures and rewards, the dangers and drawbacks? Curious about the day-to-day details of life aboard a fishing boat in the Last Frontier and wondering how to get started? Step One - Alaska Fishing In past years, a hopeful deckhand would travel to Seattle or Homer or Kodiak or Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and head straight for the harbor and marinas.  Then our hopeful deckhand would walk from boat to boat, looking for work. “Pounding the docks,” the old salts call it, going from boat to boat while asking for work.  The perspective crewman needed to ask one pertinent question: Do you need a good crewman?  A skipper (or deckhands) would then ask the greenhorn several questions in what had to be the shortest job interview in America.  What experience do you have?  What skills do you possess?  What kind of work have you done recently?  Can you work long hours under difficult conditions?  Have you ever been on a boat?  Ever get seasick?  All the while, the skipper and crew stood above, sizing up the novice - YOU - with a wary, skeptical eye and ear. For over a century, the ability to get a deckhand job aboard an Alaska fishing boat has always been equal parts determination, self-confidence, persistence and luck.  Every year a large percentage of novice crewmen step aboard an Alaska fishing boat for the first time.  Most novices have never been aboard a boat of any kind in their lives. I have worked in Kodiak, a beautiful little town of 6,000 population and the epicenter of Alaska fishing, for the past twenty years.  I’ve spent many summers on Alaska’s “Emerald Island,” aboard some of the top fishing boats there.  The work is long and hard but richly rewarding in many different ways.  Of course the work is also tedious, tiring, monotonous, dangerous, frustrating and scary.  And sometimes - not often - a lucky crewman can earn a very large lot of money in the span of an unforgettable summer while savoring the satisfaction of accomplishment in a difficult and dangerous field.

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In June, on a typical day of fishing, we arise at 2:30am and hoist the anchor.  Leaving a sheltered cove or protected bay along the sparsely settled west side of Kodiak Island, we motor to the nearby fishing grounds.  The best boats - highliners - always pull their anchors well before sunrise, while the rest of the fleet savors another hour or two of sleep. 

Like firefighters we hurry into boots, gloves and protective raingear while the day grows lighter.  Excitement builds - and tension.  We cruise offshore a half mile, the cool breeze a welcome change from the stuffy focsle and galley.  While the skipper checks the radar and tide book (on Kodiak Island the tides typically rise and fall 10-15 feet), the deck crew tends the towline, net and gear.  After a quick bowl of cereal or cup of coffee, a crewman jumps into his powerboat at the stern of the seiner and starts his engine.  A towline is tied to the skiffman’s boat and he will pull one end of the net for approximately thirty minutes.

After thirty minutes the two boats circle the seine - the quarter mile-long net - and two or three crewmen begin stacking as it comes aboard.  A hydraulic powerblock makes stacking the seine easy - even girls can do it and often do.  Within twenty minutes a bag of fish thrashes alongside the boat and the skipper dumps them on deck to count the catch.  If, by lucky chance, hundreds of salmon swing aboard, a skipper may dump them directly into the fishhold accompanied by whoops and hollers of delight.

By midmorning and a few more hauls, daylight reveals several more fishing boats awaiting their turn at the productive cape.  Now is the time to nap, says the skipper, while waiting another turn.  Someone preps a second leisurely breakfast while a crewman drops the anchor.  How long until out next turn, someone asks?  Two hours, replies the skipper as a pair of crewmen strip off their raingear and boots and jump into their bunks.  Bacon fries in a cast iron skillet as the skipper makes a list of boats ahead of us.  With approximately 400 sockeye salmon aboard weighing 2,000 lbs, we crewmen have earned about $150 dollars each.  With luck we might triple that amount by the end of the day.

By midday, however, at low tide, the salmon migrate along the shore in smaller schools.  The weather worsens, as it often does in June.  Rain and wind sweep across the deck and eight foot waves make footing uneasy. The skiffman looks forlorn seated in his 18 foot boat, salt spray and diesel fumes sweeping his face as we stack the net during our next turn. Tethered to the Shawnee, the power skiff keeps the big boat from drifting on the rocks as we stack gear. 

A half dozen fish in our next catch dissolve any optimistic ideas of tripling our income by the end of the day.  But the season is still early; the height of the run is in July and August.  And at least we can anchor and brew a cup of coffee in a nearby sheltered cove.  The radio crackles constantly with fish and weather related chatter.

Salmon season opens on June 1st in Kodiak.  In years past as many as 380 salmon seine boats fished the Kodiak area.  Each boat usually carries a crew of four including the skipper.  Often one or two crewmen are completely new to the fishery.  Pay depends upon experience.  Crewmen collect a percentage of the net profits from the boat, ranging from 7-12 percent.  An average boat will gross well over $100,000 while the top boats gross close to a quarter million dollars.  Presently, perhaps 100-125 boats, ranging in length from 38’ to 58’ fish for Kodiak area salmon.  Prices for wild Alaska salmon are rebounding, having fallen precipitously in the past twenty years due to the abundance of farmed salmon.  Presently the demand for wild salmon is good.  An average Kodiak crewman can earn $10,000-15,000 for three months work aboard a salmon seiner.  A few lucky crewmen have earned over $20,000 for a summer spent aboard a top boat.

Delivery 
By sundown most salmon have ceased moving along the shore.  The light from the long summer days in Alaska begins to fade (You can read a newspaper by natural light at 11 PM in June on Kodiak Island).  A few hours before sunset, most salmon boats hurry to deliver their fish to larger boats, called tenders.  No one wants to wait a couple of hours at the tender, behind five or six other boats, and finish delivering well past midnight.  No one wants to lose three hours of precious sleep for the sake of a few extra fish.

These tenders are usually crab fishing boats, those same 100 foot boats - Maverick, Time Bandit, Lucky Lady - seen on the popular television series, “Deadliest Catch.”  During the summer, when crab fishing in the Bering Sea is closed, the tenders collect salmon from the far flung areas of Kodiak Island and deliver millions of pounds to the Kodiak city canneries. 

In the summer of 2006, I worked aboard a Kodiak tender.  The Katrina Em is a 101 foot, steel crabber/ tender which can pack 250,000 lbs of fish.  Typically a tender carries a skipper, engineer, cook and deckhand.  Quite often, women work aboard the salmon tenders as deckhands.  The work is long and often quite boring but not strenuous.  As if to illustrate, the first fifty days aboard the Katrina Em were spent chipping, sanding and painting the entire exterior steel surface of the boat.  Normally a week or two of gear work will prepare a boat for fishing or tendering.
Tender crews are usually paid a daily rate, ranging from $100-200 per day, but only during their contracted days of labor, called a charter.  Unfortunately, payment to crewmen, whether on a salmon seiner, salmon tender or crabber does not include the prep work done on any boat, which can amount to many days, even weeks of free labor.  This free labor on Alaska fishing boats is euphemistically called “paying your dues.” 

Tender crewmen do not catch the fish.  They assist in the unloading of fish from the smaller salmon seine boats to the larger, more capacious, tenders.  A salmon seiner with only four or five thousand pounds aboard may pitch the fish into net baskets.  Often, at the peak of the salmon season when salmon gather in enormous schools, salmon boats arrive at the tender fully loaded, with fifty thousand pounds or more.  Then the tender crewmen lower a large hose directly into the fishhold of the salmon boat and, literally, vacuum the fish from the hold.  Fifty thousand pounds can be pumped and sorted from a fishing boat in about ninety minutes time. 

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The US Congress has determined that Alaska commercial fishing is the most dangerous job in the world.  As anyone who watches that popular television series, “Deadliest Catch” knows, fishing in Alaska, especially during the turbulent fall and winter months, is extremely hazardous to your mental and physical health. 

Sadly, sometimes we get the fish, and sometimes the fish get us.  Boats capsize and sink; burn and drift; collide and limp to port; strike a reef and require salvage - or simply disappear. More often, in a moment of carelessness or fatigue, a crewman falls overboard and drowns.

Every year in Kodiak, the bell rings a memorial chime for lost fishermen.  And while a man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned, the sea makes no distinction.  Worsening weather and rough seas overtake a boat, and suddenly a following sea overturns a boat and the crew scrambles to survive.  The 50’ Kodiak salmon seiner, Evanick, capsized suddenly in a following sea.  The four crewmen scrambled outside in panic. Unprotected by immersion suits, they drowned or died of hypothermia within minutes and were never found. 

“Mayday, mayday; we have struck a rock and are taking on water,” the radio crackled this summer. “Eastbound a mile from Whale Pass; this is the Fishing vessel Silver Sword.”  As the first boat on the scene, we quickly tossed lines to the salmon seiner Silver Sword and began offloading her fish.  While US Coast Guard helicopters circled overhead in the darkness, we raised the sinking boat, literally pumping her fishholds dry in minutes. Then her skipper inspected the breached hull and fashioned a patch while pumps kept the water at bay.

I have now been both rescuer and rescued.  Twenty years ago, after a profitable day of fishing, my brother turned to me and said: “How does it feel to have made a thousand dollars?” Before I could turn to him and say “tired,” the engine room alarm rang and we were on fire.  Smoke billowed from the cabin while my brother calmly keyed the microphone. “Mayday, mayday; this is the Arctic Nomad.  We have an engine room fire and are adrift, a mile north of Gurney Bay.”  Well before the coast guard could determine our exact location a half dozen fishing boats sped to our rescue.

We are all our brother’s keeper on the wild Alaskan waterway.  Every skipper, every deckhand is aware of how easily the situation could be reversed: the rescuers of today could be those needing rescue tomorrow.  With life rafts required by the US Coast Guard and those cumbersome, insulated, survival suits aboard, a crew may survive a sinking boat.  Additionally, all boats are required to carry EPIRB devices - an electronic position indicating radio beacon.  Every boat I ever worked upon also carried radios, both CB and single side band. 
 

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The headlands and snow-capped peaks, the eroded spires and stacks at the edge of the shore, the seabird rookeries and glacial valleys, all become a kaleidoscope of panoramas.  Every day offers another exhilarating glimpse of nature.  Cruising beneath a sheer rock cliff towering eight hundred feet, your boat a speck in time, you realize the timelessness of the palisades and your own insignificance.  The keening seabirds, thousands of them, circle and alight in your wake.  You realize ten thousand generations of seabirds have nested on the exact same ledges since the last ice age. 

With quiet delight, you realize, as Henry David Thoreau once observed, the universe is wider than our views of it, (and) simply to see a distant horizon through clean air is wealth enough for one afternoon, and also that, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive. 

Suddenly you observe: Alaska rainbows often bloom in pairs.  The puffins resemble floating parrots.  The sleek sea otters glide as if each fishing boat were passing exhibits in their private preserve.  The porpoises frolic at our bow like hyper-active bathtub toys.  The distant grizzly bear moves with a deliberate, unhurried grace.  The bald eagle is a lonely yet majestic scavenger.  Ravens may be wise, but magpies are more clever. And you are the fisher and yet one of the fish. 

Why Fish?
Of all the jobs in the world, fishing may be one of the oldest.  And simplest.  And most satisfying.  And most frustrating.  And easiest. And most difficult.  You can blend all those qualities into a single day of fishing.  You can awake with a sense of rugged independence, catch ten thousand dollars worth of fish, exalt in the  beauty of nature and your dominance of it, and suddenly find yourself towed back to town, powerless and humiliated, with a burnt engine, behind a tender. 

And yet commercial fishing is a skilled profession, whether in New England or Alaska.  The best commercial fishermen carry a competitive sense of pride in their work.  A fisherman is a gambler at the helm of a boat.  Stubborn as a mule, he imagines himself as an endangered species also, a rugged individualist in the Last Frontier.  Likewise, crewman resemble that fictional old character, Red, in the movie, Shawshank Redemption: “I find I am so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head.  I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.”  New crewmen have embarked on a long journey that may take them into danger, into riches and rewards, but more likely carry them closer to maturity.

Logistics & Logic: Can You Do It?
To get to Kodiak or Homer or Dutch Harbor, Alaska may cost you as much as a thousand dollars (round trip), depending on where you start in the USA.  Alaska Airlines offers many flights from Seattle, connecting to the rest of the continent.  You may find a cheaper airfare if you plan in advance.  You will need money to purchase a commercial fishing license, about $130 dollars.  You will need raingear and gloves, approximately $100.  Add another $50-60 for rubber boots.  So you’re looking at considerable expense even before you start. 

Yes, you can find fishing jobs through the Internet.  A simple search on Google reveals resources such as www.alaskafishingjobs.com and  www.alaskafishjobs.com and, of course, www.fishingjobs.com.  Or if you prefer to conduct your own search, simply type in the three words: Alaska, fishing and jobs on Google.com and begin your research.  Unfortunately, I cannot vouch for the reliability and satisfaction of finding a job through the Internet.  Indeed, I chanced to meet three, somewhat disgruntled crewmen who worked aboard a Kodiak salmon seiner in 2006.  They were getting drunk in the Village Bar, in downtown Kodiak, having just gotten off the boat.  They told me the skipper of the Dolphin usually hired his crew through the Internet.  “We wanted to drown our skipper at the end of the summer,” they all confessed.  However, despite their rancor, they had each made more than $10,000 for an exercise in patience, pacifism and fishing forbearance.

Once there in Kodiak city, if you haven’t lined up a boat, you will need a place to stay.  There are numerous lodges and hotels in downtown Kodiak.  The best cheapest place is St Francis Shelter, a block from McDonald’s.  St Francis is sort of a hostel and bunkhouse and centrally located two blocks to the harbor and a block to the library. 

In years past, some crewmen looking for work simply staked a tent on Near Island.  Sadly, the island is becoming more developed.  Also the city declared camping on Near Island illegal, although few campers (to my knowledge) have ever been prosecuted.  Spruce forests still cover the central part and provide excellent coverage.  Best of all, Near Island is adjacent to St Herman Harbor, home to hundreds of commercial and sportfishing boats.  Both the fishing vessel Shawnee and the tender Katrina Em are berthed in St Herman Harbor.

Downtown Kodiak is only a mile away, across the bridge that spans the ship channel.  If you flew into town, St Paul Harbor, encircled by a breakwater is the first marina you’ll see.  Scores of salmon boats, as well as many smaller tenders, sportfishing and halibut boats, find shelter there.  If you’ve arrived in Kodiak at 2 PM Wednesday, don’t be surprised if you hear a loud, continuous siren.  This is the Tsunami warning, sounding every Wednesday at exactly 2 PM. Much of Kodiak, and all of St Paul Harbor, were destroyed by a tidal wave (tsunami) in 1964, on Wednesday at 2 PM.  Since then an early warning system alerts residents to a possible recurrence. 

During the late spring, Kodiak holds a Crab Festival, usually the last week in May.  Then is the best time to be in Kodiak.  Pillar Mountain, rising a thousand feet over cannery row, appears to transform from brown to green overnight.  Barometer Mountain, appearing to rise over St Paul Harbor, begins to lose her snow.  A warm breeze blows from the west and the sound of purse seines running through hydraulic powerblocks, of diesel engines idling and skiff engines throbbing, of crewmen calling and skippers clamoring impatiently, orchestras from the harbor in a working class symphony.  Before you descend to the docks, you may grab a cup of coffee at the Harborside café.  Check the bulletin board by the door for boats.  Good luck and I’ll see you there!