Tele Aadsen

writer - fisherman - listener

I woke up this morn­ing with a par­tic­u­lar post in mind. I want­ed to tell you about the changes afoot here at Hooked Cen­tral. Win­ter is abrupt­ly over. Cap’n J, Bear the Boat Cat and I are pack­ing up and head­ing back to Sit­ka next week, where we’ll reunite with our girl, the F/V Ner­ka. It’s been a tough win­ter up there, and we’re anx­ious to see how she weath­ered all these months alone. I’d planned to tell you about the long to-do and don’t‑forget lists, reflect­ing on the ways we say good­bye to one life in antic­i­pa­tion of the oth­er, and prob­a­bly would’ve end­ed up with some­thing very sim­i­lar to this post. That’s what I had in mind.

Then two tragedies book­end­ed the day, and sud­den­ly those prepara­to­ry details of our life at sea seemed ter­ri­bly trivial.

The first was out of New­port, Ore­gon. The F/V Chev­elle ran hard aground on the jet­ty this week­end. Every­one made it safe­ly to shore, but the 70-foot steel crab­ber remained lurched against the rocks, ham­mered by grow­ing waves. The News Lin­coln Coun­ty’s arti­cle includ­ed video of the wreck, and my blood chilled as I real­ized what I was see­ing.  As each wave hits, the Chev­elle’s aft deck rais­es inde­pen­dent­ly of her shud­der­ing wheel­house. That’s the sight of the sea slow­ly unzip­ping a boat down its mid­ship line, like a piece of paper torn in half. For the ocean-goers amongst us, this video is more fright­en­ing than any hor­ror movie villain.

Tonight, I went back online and saw this head­line from today’s Seat­tle P.I.: “Boat sank so fast no time for dis­tress call.” The arti­cle includes all the worst kinds of heart­break… The crew­man who’d had a bad feel­ing about mak­ing that trip, but a worse feel­ing about his house pay­ments. The deck­hand who’d been hired on just a day ear­li­er, eager to work. The Coast Guard sta­tion that received an EPIRB alarm from the Lady Cecil­ia at 3:37 a.m., and arrived on scene, 17 miles off the Wash­ing­ton coast, only to find an oil slick, some debris, and a life raft — emp­ty. The search team that scoured over 640 square miles of uncon­cerned ocean. The four men who weren’t found. The two year old boy who won’t see his father again.

Here at our house, we keep a lit­tle altar over the fire­place. Some can­dles. A weep­ing Bud­dha, cir­cled with small memen­tos from the sea. Pho­tos of peo­ple we’ve lost. I keep a pho­to­copy of an old Port­land Ore­gon­ian arti­cle tucked up there, too. I don’t know the author’s name or the pub­li­ca­tion date, don’t even know how it came into my hands in the first place, but I know it res­onates in a deep, water­logged place in my heart and it’s all I real­ly want to share with you today.

The Price of Fish

The deep sea fish­ing boat ‘Repub­lic’ will nev­er sail out for the tuna again, nor for the salmon – out of Asto­ria into the green swells from west­ward. Part of her bow has drift­ed ashore near Long Beach, and some of the for­ward deck – and where the hulk of her is, only the sea can tell. Her last port of call was the storm. And the fish­er­men who sailed her, and looked to her fish­ing gear, and har­vest­ed the sea? Where are they? Per­haps the gulls know, or the cor­morants. Only this seems cer­tain – that they and their boat will fish no more.

You walk through the mar­ket and glance at the fish stalls heaped with limp sil­ver. Only a day or so ago these fish, most of them, were out where ‘the low sky mates with the sea.’ Now they bear price tags. Even fish, so we say, is high priced. That is true. Fish are high priced – and the least of the price is reck­oned in coin.

Men who would rather fish at sea than work ashore sail out on the fish­ing boats to seek and fol­low the fish. It is a glad, hard life, and they love it well – but they stake their lives on the catch. It isn’t often that the boats don’t come back to port, for their oil-skinned skip­pers and crews to shout to their friends on the dock with word of their luck – but some­times they don’t. The ‘Repub­lic’ was one that didn’t. And how are you going to fig­ure that into the price of a pound of fish?”

Rest in peace, Dave Nichols, Jason Bjaran­son, Luke Jensen, Chris Lan­gel, F/V Lady Cecil­ia, and F/V Chev­elle. My heart goes out to all of your loved ones left on shore.