A Summer on The Bay: Living and Working on a Commercial Salmon Boat
I quit my corporate job and moved to Dillingham, Alaska to work as a deckhand on the commercial fishing boat, GK. Here’s what I learned.
8 min readOct 3, 2016
- Everyone in Alaska is a fisherman or is directly related to one. It doesn’t matter where you are — Dillingham, Dutch, or Wrangell — you hear people discussing the salmon run, their boat engine, and the good, bad, and ugly of captains and deck hands. On the plane going to and returning I was surrounded by fisherman. Your worth is judged by how fast you can ‘pick fish.’ Fishing is the main thread in the cultural fabric of Alaskan life.
- Small town America is still working in Alaskan fishing communities. Their industry — fishing — is still there. Walk down most small town American main streets and all you see is shuttered store fronts. In Alaska, especially during the salmon run, these streets are teeming with fishermen and activity. Businesses that sell nets, supplies, engine maintenance, etc, seem to be thriving. Fishing provides a solid middle class for those who want it. An average captain can make $60k to $100k just fishing the 3 month sockeye run. While these communities face many of the same challenges as we do ‘down south’ (i.e. lots of drugs) they still felt whole to me.
- Alaska is a different country. I was lucky enough to venture outside of the boat yard and get to know some local Dillinghammers and see how they live (thank you Mike, Robert, Fritz, and especially Virginia). Yup’ik culture of subsistence is a daily part of life. Half of Dillingham’s population is Yup’ik and their cultural traditions are felt everywhere. Almost all families — Yup’ik or otherwise — put out a small subsistence net to ‘put up fish’ for the rest of the year. Most families moose hunt and take 1, 2, or more of these 600+ pound giants. Almost everyone has a storage freezer in their basement. Elders get feed first with the prime cuts. Part of this is necessary — food is a downright fortune. The culture of subsistence was strong and so different from ‘down south’ it felt like visiting another country. Alaska is ready for the zombie apocalypse.
- We can all learn a lot from Robert Heyano, a good friend of our captain “Iron” Mike Larussa. I love his background: Robert’s dad was Japanese and mother was Danish. His parents met in World War II, after which his mother traveled from Denmark, through Ellis Island, all the way to the fishing village of Ekuk, as remote a place there is on earth about an hour boat ride from Dillingham. She had 6ish boys, including Robert, which made his mother a rockstar on the Japanese side of the family. In the boat yard, he came to the GK almost every morning to have coffee with Iron Mike. He’s the type of person that helps his friends without asking for anything in return — countless times we used his boom truck, skiff, and back with no questions asked. He strictly adheres to the adage of listen more than you speak, which has led him to become a local leader. You hear him on the radio discussing the salmon run and read his quotes in the paper on economic development matters. Don’t expect any hugs, though: a head nod and a stiff handshake are the highest praise and don’t come easily. I learned how to be kind and thoughtful without expecting anything in return from Robert and will pay it forward.
- 33% / 33% / 33% rule. Fishermen fall into three categories: 1) Family Affair. These boats are run by husband and wife teams and the kids grow up and deckhand on these vessels. Almost always, these families seem tight knit and the husband and wife seem happy. Foreign families, like the Russians that fish the Bay, are great examples of this. 2) Happy Fisherman. Mostly younger captains or those older who have a true love of the water. Their home life may be in disarray — as spending half your life away can easily do — but when they hit the water they are full of life and positivity. It’s an adventure and they’re right in the middle of it. 3) Washed Up. With countless summers on the water and an unsettled home life, many fishermen get washed up. Mostly older captains between 40–70 years old, Fishing isn’t fun anymore and the work is a means to a pay check. Deckhands, too, are a means to an end and there is little camaraderie between captain and crew.
- You need people in Alaska. Everything is harder and there’s no one else to fix the problem at hand but you and the people you know. People are close because of it.
- You can live on less sleep than you’re getting. Once the season got going, we slept in two 1–3 hour shifts a day. While you can live on this much sleep, you are a miserable son of a bitch. You want to quit. You hate the captain. You hate the weather. You hate salmon. Yet somehow at the end of the season you’re grateful the captain pushed you this hard… You know you put it all out there. You’ve also never laughed so hard in your life — shit gets weird.
- The mighty salmon. A lot has been written about the salmon. It’s a cultural icon in the Pacific NW. I understand why. Watching salmon jump and swim in the fishing grounds you come to know their power and speed. From a small Alaskan creek, down the Aleutians, over to Japan, down to New Zealand and back, they are 100% muscle. The power with which they hit the net never ceased to amaze me — it was violent, like a train wreck. I think we identify with them because they have a sense of home, like we do, always returning back to their birth place to breed and die. There are blue backs, green backs, spawning fish, zombie fish, and ghost fish. Is there anything better than eating a wild salmon? Cut open a sockeye and it’s red like watermelon and marbled like ribeye. Travel up the rivers where they breed and you can’t believe millions of them come through so small a passage from the vast pacific. We should all kill what we eat at some point in our lives. You gain an appreciation for the toll you take on another living creature. Accomplishing this was alone worth the trip.
- Temporary Slaughterhouse. The deck of a drift boat is a slaughterhouse. ~50,000 salmon hit the deck in 2016 with a satisfying thud. Every time you bring in the net, blood, guts, and scales (so many scales!) cover the aluminum, your rain gear, and hair. Lucky seals glide down the net, eating whatever side of the salmon that happens to be in front of them. Row, sperm, and hunks of flesh spill out of these half fish. For the particularly unfortunate at the top of the net, seagulls have pecked their eyes out. But this scene is only temporary. After re-setting the net, ocean water is used to clean the deck — all signs of death are washed away and the aluminum sparkles. The cycle repeats every hour or so. Rinse and repeat.
- Mental fortitude, not physical toughness, is the key to making it through a full season. Yes, you are physically tired. But nothing compares to the marathon of weather, sea sickness, fatigue, and emotional abuse you endure.
- Dictatorship. A fishing boat may be the last place in America that a total dictatorship exists. What the captain says goes. Period. No questions about ‘why’ exist on a fishing boat and there’s never a debate. As the captain’s mood goes, so goes the mood of the crew. The captain makes or breaks your experience, as there’s no place to hide on a 32' vessel! You are constantly told to ‘wake up’ and ‘pick faster.’ There’s no positive feedback in the Bay.
- Random thoughts on the sea. I am a land dweller: home builder and backpacker. I never gave the sea much thought. Here are some observations: 1) You don’t have a clue how you’ll fair on the water until you go. I don’t care how strong you are, if you get sea sick, you are a useless hand — why taking a green horn is such a high risk. If you get sea sick, you’ll quit after a few days or a week. 2) Weather, wind and tides. On a 32' boat you are acutely aware of the weather. Seas range from dead ass calm to 10'. Nothing beats a sunny day picking fish in a tee shirt. Nothing is worse than 7' swells, rain, and a few fish coming over the stern. In rough weather you teeter between excitement with your adrenaline pumping to recognizing the risk and questioning your motive for signing up. You live for the weather report. 3) The ocean comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors. I saw bright blue waters in the Nushagak, deep green in Egegik, and puddly gray in Ugashik. The water can rush by where you can feel the boat being pushed in by the flood or pulled out by the ebb. It can be dead calm where your net collapses on itself.
- The radio. No tv. No internet. All you have is the radio. This is where you get all your news — classics like the BBC and Marketplace, all your music from local DJs or national programs like World Cafe (Philly represent!), an hour of Yup’ik birthday songs on ‘Open Line,’ and all your fishing news. It’s on 24/7 and you love it.
- Bullshit artists. Fishing is an inherently lonely business, so a requirement of all worthy captains is the ability to bullshit. Every fishing district has a ‘coffee point’ where boats meet. All captains are in radio groups of 2–10 other boats to discuss everything from where to fish to the merits of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. As a deckhand, you get your only insight into your captain’s mind from listening to them talk on the radio. You also get to know other captains and crews this way without ever seeing them. While lonely, fishermen bullshit with the best of ‘em.
- My most vivid memory. My most vivid memory was in early July while we were fishing in the Nushagak. Like most days we fished until close to midnight. It was dusk, as the sun never fully sets this time of year. We had just offloaded our catch and were looking for a place to anchor for a few hours sleep. I was alone on the bow looking out over the water and was struck by the magnitude of the operation, truly a factory on the sea. 500+ 32' fishing vessels, 30+ 120' crab boats to offload to, and a handful of 200' processors that can, head and gut your catch to be sold. There were deck lights, green and red running lights, and the bright orange glow of the crabbers’ sodiums. What struck me then was the impermanence of this scene. In a few short months these waters will be dark, grey, and empty of both boats and life. Only a few supply barges coming to Dillingham will come through the channels.
