12/01/2023
I walk out the door to the sound of the trees swaying in the early grey morning. I know this means it’ll be worse at the wharf, and worse again offshore. But I’m hoping it dies out like it’s forecasted to do. My stomach is rolling over with excitement and nervousness. Most of the people I know are feeling the same the Fall months leading up to this. Everyone seems to have a bit shorter fuse, a bit ‘more on edge’. Broken sleep, a month or two of overthinking and second guessing every spot on the chart, bait type, trap style and worrying over expenses has led to this day…the opening of another LFA in Atlantic Canada.
This is a month of nothing but the ocean, the boat and lobsters. There are no hours, schedules or mandatory breaks. The clock doesn’t exist. Almost nothing else exists. ‘Off days’ are consumed by oil changes, replacing/repairing things that need fixing or restocking for the next break in the weather. Fishermen’s phones are full of texts and questions describing upcoming weather and rumours of catches both good and bad from different areas:
“when are you headed out?”
“did you talk to anyone who’s leaving early?”
“what did you hear about the price? “
“any lobsters deep?”
My drive is short. The truck barely gets warm. I get to the wharf and it looks like organized chaos, as if a huge hardware store just got a shipment and called all employees in to help sort it. It’s dark in the AM and no one has their head down or appears to be tired or wanting to be anywhere else. The mood is upbeat. People are putting extra lines, spare parts, groceries, anything and everything that they might think is even remotely necessary or forgotten on board. They are pulling tarps and fenders away from where it seems they just got put. It’s electric, exciting, and serious all at once. Some families are there to see the boats away, wives and children hug and kiss fathers, brothers, sons and daughters, just like mine did an hour ago. Some of the captains have a picture of their family or some significant item on the boat and touch it as if they were a talisman for good luck. Kids who will some day do this job and have their names written on the visor of the wheelhouse or have the boat named after them are eagerly watching and learning, dreaming of when it’ll be their turn to go. Decades and decades of knowledge passed down; tradition passed down.
But there is also the understanding that all of us will soon have to put our lives in the hands of the ocean and that she is unpredictable and uncaring. We know this because every community has lost loved ones and suffered tragedies. So we load safely and we tie and retie things down using years of experience as a guide. We hope it all goes smoothly, but we prepare for anything going wrong. Soon captains will have to tell crews, some of them sons, daughters, relatives or close friends, to make their way out over a trap pile and begin to set pots in the North Atlantic. Even if you’ve done it 30-40 times, it still never loses its adrenaline rush. Crew check their safety gear and remind themselves how serious the job at hand is as they exit the wheelhouse leaving the captain alone with his thoughts. Older captains wonder if they can they grind it out like when they were young or do they have it in them to get through a couple more fishing seasons knowing it’s become a part of who they are and that they’ll miss it when it’s gone.
I walk through the crowd on the wharf and see friends and family I grew up with and we wish each other well and tell each other to “stay safe, stay dry, good luck, good fishing.” The mutual respect we have amongst the fleet comes from knowing that if there is help needed then there is help given. No questions. No thanks needed.
Some of the boats start their engines and the sweet dank smell of diesel exhaust, both sickening and familiar wafts over the wharf. I crawl down the ladder and onto my boat and turn the key. Somewhere in Asia and Europe a global supply chain is reading itself for this day also. Soon people on the other side of the world will be buying lobster that WE caught. Lobster WE stressed over, that WE hunted. That WE got excited over if a trap fished good. That WE did our best to keep alive and healthy. Lobsters that provide for our families and our communities. That make places on the coasts somewhere families have lived for generations and thrived despite grinding through years of low prices and low catches, out migration, no other industry and limited options. I wonder to myself, if someone who has never smelled diesel smoke in a setting like this morning have a concept of what these lobsters really, really mean to coastal Atlantic towns.
The boat starts and I turn on computer’s electronics and lights. We untie lines, stow them away and I join the growing crowd of lights gathering in the harbour waiting for the season to begin on the opening hour. Its’s a sight that never fails to amaze and impress me even after many years. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of small business investment floating within a few miles. Not just in this harbour but in harbours all up and down the coast. I reach up and touch the good luck charm I have tucked away on the beam over my head and push the throttle forward to keep pace with the fleet as it surges forward like a school of fish reacting in time with each other. Good luck, good fishing, stay safe, stay dry.❤️
This one’s older. But 2023 and still feels the same
