8.22.2011

Repairs 08.13

This is Dennis patching a hole in the net. Guess who made it. A humpback whale! They swim through the nets like they’re not even there. Sometimes they leave holes the size of cars in them. This hole wasn’t bad enough to hold us up for long, but it required some repairs on our day off.





















Dennis is in his 70s. He’s our skiff man now, but he’s been fishing since he was a teenager and I don’t think there’s any aspect of the trade he hasn’t been involved with at some point.

I don’t know how to repair the net yet, but I did finally learn how to splice!
  
For the record, it’s not only the whales that take no notice of the nets; I’ve been surprised by the almost utter lack of bycatch, meaning animals we catch other than salmon. There have been boatloads of jellyfish, but besides them I can count on one hand the numbers of fish we catch in a day that aren’t salmon.

1 comment:

  1. Ugh. The day after I wrote this we picked up over a dozen rockfish, a handful of starfish, and a DUCK in the net. The duck was fine. The rockfish have sharp spines that hurt. The whole thing was really frustrating.

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