The Life of a Longline Observer

So I haven’t posted in a while…sorry for that. I thought that today I would give an explanation of my job through pictures and word. This might give you a better understanding of what it is that I do.

My ‘day’ starts off with me getting up about an hour before the haul starts. this give me plenty of time to wake up shake off the sleep and get my paperwork together for the upcoming haul.

 

After I prep everything that I need to, basically filling out the info at the top of my data sheets and randomly selecting my start unit and a few other things, I get suited up to head out to my tally station.

I head out to my tally station which is above where the fish come on board. I have to stand on deck for about 40 – 60 minutes at a time and count everything that comes on board, drops off the line or is removed by the rollerman (the guy who brings the fish on the boat, I have video that will come later). this is one of the parts of my job that, while being the easiest, sucks! It is usually windy on deck, it is usually at my back (not always) and the average temp while I was up there hovered around the 0 degree mark. there where times when it was below zero and it sucked even more :/

While I am counting everything that comes onboard the rollerman and bleeder are collecting by catch, anything that isn’t a Pacific Cod. This bycatch goes in to my blue baskets and waits for me to come down and work it up.

From the tally station I would walk through the house (the living quarters portion of the boat) and head down to my sample station and my waiting blue baskets of happiness.

Once I got done sorting my fish and weighing them I would clean up my sample station and repeat the process. I would generally have about an hour or so till I had to be on deck again so I would head back to the tool room and hang out there until the process started over again.

It took six or so hours to retrieve a string then two hours to set it out again. so I could take a nap from my last sample till we started hauling again, usually though I sat around getting paperwork together from the previous haul. that took about an hour or so and then my nap could begin…so I guess I really only got about an hour nap. I would usually work 18 – 26 hours and then take a haul off because it was unsafe for me to go out on deck because I was so tired. In fact one time I fell asleep at the rail during my tally period. I had to stop and go to bed. I not as young as I used to be :(

so here are some photos and video of the whole process from set to haul.

Once we fill the boat full of product we head back in to Dutch. It takes 24 – 36 hours for the offload the boat and then back load bait. During this time I have no responsibilities so I get to enjoy the sights in port.

Here are some of the sights that I got to see while in port:

So I really wanted to post videos but the Internet connection I am currently using is less then Ideal. I am hoping just to be able to upload all of these photos. Here’s hoping