Fatigue looms front and center in my life right now. We have less than two weeks to go until the end of the season at our lodge. Mike and I will stay here until mid-January, and then we plan to take a vacation and return by mid-to-late February. I don’t care about a vacation; all I want to do is sleep!
I have so many projects I’m excited to start but no energy
to begin them. Lately, I’ve been fighting to keep up with my weekly and monthly
deadlines – my blog posts, podcasts, and newsletters. I’m disappointed I haven’t
spent more time editing my wildlife book or writing on my next novel. My
publisher is annoyed I haven’t put more effort into promoting my last book, Karluk
Bones. Once our fall season ends and I sleep for 48-straight hours (just
kidding – I think) and stamp out my fatigue, I will have the energy to write
and edit my books, and yes, I will try to sell my latest novel.
I began my podcast, Murder and Mystery in the Last
Frontier, this past summer, producing two a month. At the same time, I cut
back my blog posts to two a month. So far, I am happy with this arrangement. I
think I was beginning to get bogged down by writing four blog posts a month,
but I look forward to doing them every other week. Podcast episodes require a
great deal of work, but I still find them fun to do, and I am reaching a new
audience. The newsletter is still my most time-consuming project every month,
but I’ve gotten faster at writing them, and I am slowly learning how to write
non-fiction – It’s not easy!
I know many of my blog post readers have never listened to a podcast, so here’s an excerpt from a recent episode. Just hit the arrow to play it.
Let me know what you think. I know a true-crime podcast is not for
everyone, so I understand if you aren’t interested in it.
I haven’t had a chance to thank many of you for buying Karluk
Bones. I appreciate you, and I hope you enjoyed the adventure.
In my next post, I will discuss tanner crabs, often called snow
crabs. I hope you’ve found my crab posts informative. I’ve enjoyed writing them
and have learned a great deal about king crabs, commercial king crab fishing,
and the laws (or lack of) governing the fishing industry. It seemed as if every
time I started a post, I realized I had enough information for two or three articles.
The deeper I dug, the more fascinated I became about king crab and commercial
king crab fishing industry.
As always, thanks for reading, and take a minute to leave a comment and say hi. Hearing from you will erase my fatigue in a flash.
In the 1970s and 80s, commercial crab fishing earned a deadly reputation, but fishermen opposed mandated safety regulations. With powerful politicians behind it, the commercial fishing industry fought against government interference of any kind, but when a bereaved mother took up the fight, Congress finally forced safety upon the most dangerous occupation in the United States.
Each summer, young men and women flock to Alaska, looking for adventure and a chance to make good money for a few months of work. They’ve heard the stories and watched shows like The Deadliest Catch, and they dream of adventure and riches. Unfortunately, though, the truth is not nearly as glamorous as the shows they’ve watched or the stories they’ve read. Topline fishing operations only want to hire experienced crew members who know what they are doing. The least appealing hire to the owner of a fishing boat is a kid out of college for the summer who wants to “experience life.” These eager young people are likely to find jobs on lower tier boats, the ones struggling to make ends meet.
In 1985, Peter Barry, a 20-year-old Yale anthropology
student, flew to Kodiak Island for a summer adventure. He was one of the annual
15,000 summer workers in the Alaska fishing industry. Barry met Gerald Bouchard
on a dock in Kodiak, and Bouchard, the captain of the Western Sea,
offered Barry a job as a crewman on his salmon seiner. Peter jumped at the
opportunity to work aboard a fishing boat in Alaska, and he called his parents
with the good news.
After a few days aboard the Western Sea, Peter sent
his parents a letter, and his tone sounded much less optimistic. He reported
the boat didn’t seem seaworthy, and the captain’s temper often flared, his
behavior erratic. Peter wanted to leave the vessel, but the captain threatened
him, and Peter decided to stay aboard awhile longer.
On August 20, 1985, a fisherman spotted the body of a young
man floating in the water near Kodiak Island. In the man’s pocket they found a
letter addressed to Peter Barry. The Western Sea was lost, and out of a
six-man crew, searchers found the bodies of only two other men. One of the bodies
recovered was Captain Gerald Bouchard’s, and a toxicology exam on Bouchard’s
body indicated he was high on cocaine the day the Western Sea went down.
Peter Barry’s father, Bob, flew to Kodiak and demanded
answers. Bob Barry was the former U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria and the current
head of the U.S. delegation to the Conference on Disarmament in Europe. When
Barry asked questions, he expected answers, but what he learned in Kodiak
appalled him. The crewman Peter had replaced on the Western Sea told
Barry the old wooden boat, built in 1915, was rotten and leaky and had no
pumps. The captain refused to spend money on safety gear, so the vessel had no
life raft, survival suits, life preservers, nor an EPIRB to transmit a distress
signal. The Western Sea was nothing more than a death trap with a
captain fueled by rage and cocaine.
What shocked Bob Barry and his wife, Peggy, more than
anything, though, was when they learned commercial fishing boats were not
required to carry safety gear or have annual inspections. Even though it was
the most dangerous industry in the United States, commercial fishing remained mostly
unregulated from the standpoint of safety.
Peggy Barry sank into depression after her son died, but
then she began to receive phone calls from others who had lost loved ones on
fishing boats. Peggy decided she needed to spearhead the movement to incite
change. Something needed to be done to regulate safety equipment and procedures
on commercial fishing boats.
Fishermen did not appreciate Peggy Barry’s interference, and
she was thought of by the industry as a “privileged outsider.” National
Fisherman quoted a lobbyist as saying, “Fishermen have been dying for
years, then one Yalie dies, and the whole world seems up in arms.”
Peggy ignored the push-back from fishermen and continued to approach
senators and representatives with her concerns. Representative Gary Studds from
Massachusetts agreed with Barry and took up her cause.
Because so many fishing boats, especially in Alaska, sank in
the mid-eighties, insurance premiums for commercial fishing boat owners jumped
dramatically. Insurance premiums on an average fishing vessel rose from $34,000
in 1976 to $169,000 in 1986. Congressmen from states supporting robust fishing
industries rushed to pass a bill for insurance relief. Studds saw this as a
chance to further his cause. If Congress could agree on a law requiring stiffer
safety regulations along with lower insurance premiums, perhaps it could
mandate safety for crew members on fishing boats.
Peggy Barry contacted the parents and wives of young men
(most lost crew members were young men) who had died on fishing boats, and with
an unflinching Peggy Barry by their sides, they addressed the Congressional
subcommittee on merchant marine and fisheries. Each loved-one told his or her
story and pleaded with the congressmen for safety reform in the commercial
fishing industry.
In the end, Peggy Barry and her comrades made some progress.
The Coast Guard could not support a provision in the proposed bill requiring
all fishing vessels to undergo stability tests. The Coast Guard also felt it
could not demand licensing for captains and crews. The final law required commercial
fishing vessels to carry life rafts, survival suits, and emergency radio
beacons. All crewmen must also take safety training, and a $5,000 penalty could
be imposed for failure to comply. The bill ordered the Coast Guard to terminate
the unsafe operation of any fishing vessel.
While this bill was a watered-down version of what Peggy
Barry wanted, it brought much-needed safety regulations to the most dangerous industry
in the U.S. While fishermen were not happy with the new law, indisputable proof
shows the new measures made their jobs less deadly. In the year 1983, long
before the bill demanding new safety measures, 245 commercial fishermen died at
sea. Over time, the death rate has dropped. Between 2000 and 2014, over 14-years,
179 individuals died in fishing-related incidents in Alaska. The mortality rate
has fallen to an average of 13 crew members per year. While this number is
still too high, it is an improvement.
If you would like to read more about the dangers of commercial fishing, I suggest the book, Lost at Sea by Patrick Dillon. He tells the true story of two ships mysteriously capsizing in the Bering Sea. I’ve read the book three times and was captivated each time by the way Dillon recounted this tragic tale.
