Commercial Fishing for Adventure
Having been born and raised in Petersburg, Alaska, a loudly self-proclaimed and actual fishing town, I graduated high school with the attitude that commercial fishing was just another job. To me it was what people did who weren't adventurous enough to escape to another culture. Some of my friends and I even referred to Petersburg's Mitkof Island as "The Rock", a ridiculous comparison to Alcatraz Island, home of the infamous maximum security prison. Not that this is a unique sentiment among adolescents towards their hometowns, but for a town with so many boats it seems silly.
It wasn't until after a couple years at college in Montana that I began to realize just how special my summer job was, along with my home culture. Not only could I pay my own tuition and live off my crew share all winter, I came back to school every fall with some wild stories. Although everyone had summer stories, usually they resulted from adventures that cost money during time off from work, or from adventurous jobs that didn't pay much.
My appreciation for my privileged situation was dampened by the fact that I was in horrible shape for hiking and rock climbing every fall compared to most of my friends. Angst told me that I hadn't had a "real summer" since I was twelve.
Consequently, there wasn't much common ground between my college friends and I in the genre of summer stories. They were backpacking and climbing and whitewater rafting and going to music festivals and grilling all the time, while I was "stuck on a boat." In Alaska. I know. And to be honest I do a lot of grilling on the boat, but there still isn't much common ground there with the classic backyard cookout TV commercial that I imagined all of my friends in.
Whenever they told me their stories, I felt like I was missing out on "the perfect summer" that I thought was my right as an American thanks to cable TV. Whenever I told them my stories, they were either pissed that I was one-upping them in front of girls, horrified that I was committing salmon genocide, or they just compartmentalized me as their token Alaskan (Everyone in Montana needs an Alaskan friend, along with a pair of Carhartts and a plaid flannel).
Finally out of college, I have gained a bit more perspective on commercial fishing as compared to the various paths my college friends are starting down. I have come around to falling in love with fishing all over again, but it's different than the first time around. When I was twelve it was about fitting in with my friends, which meant being able to swap fishing stories every fall when we had to go back to school. Now it's because I realize what a unique adventure fishing is when viewed from a broader angle than my little home town. Or as one fisherman friend put it to me "Once you've been fishing, you get spoiled on real work."
So I am going to write down fishing stories that help me rationalize trying to make a living as a fisherman. I admit to being a fair-weather fisherman, only having taken part in summer fisheries within ten miles of shore. Some of my friends spend their winters in the middle of the Bering Sea or the Gulf of Alaska, slipping around on pitching decks and hammering ice off the rails. Only occasionally do I venture off shore in winter, and I prefer to slide on skis or a snowboard and bash ice with an ice axe. This places me squarely in the semi-salty category, somewhere on the spectrum from fo' real fisherman to armchair angler. But I hope to hook everyone's sense of adventure.