Life on a long-liner is a game of numbers: 15,000 hooks arranged, baited, discharged and retrieved each and every day. If one man with a rod and a hook can catch one fish at a time, how many can he catch if he has a line of 15,000 hooks? The answer, by the way, is not normally 15,000 fish.
19:00, Thursday, 23 April 1998
After picking up our licence from King Edward Point, we sailed sixty miles north to the edge of the continental shelf. We would be fishing in water 800 metres deep, but just a few miles further north the seabed dropped off into the abyss. When darkness fell it was time to put our first fishing line in the water. Boats hunting for tuna, marlin or swordfish will set their long-lines to float near the surface, but we were interested in Dissostichus eleginoides, also known as Patagonian toothfish, which feed near the bottom.
Found from southern Chile down to the sub-Antarctic islands, including South Georgia, they are usually limited to waters where the temperature at depth does not fall below 2ºC. South of these islands, beyond about 55ºS, the water becomes too cold and another, similar, species, known as Dissostichus mawsoni, or the Antarctic toothfish, takes its place in the ecosystem.
The two species look almost identical, save for a few differences in the scales on their heads, but internally the D. mawsoni are adapted to carry more glycoprotein in their blood, which, as natural antifreeze, allows them to live in waters cooler than 2ºC. Although the surface water is icy around South Georgia, the temperature at depth is crucially marginally warmer, allowing the D. eleginoides to swim around without freezing.
Marine biologists would describe the toothfish as a mid-water predator. They hunt in the water column with their upturned mouths seeking food from the water above and around them, but not from the sea floor. Skulking at depths down to 2500 metres, they are fearsome killers. Their storm-cloud colours form a perfect camouflage, their muscular bodies equip them with speed and power, and their mouths become an inescapable trap for their prey. A profusion of thorn-sharp, recurved teeth jut out from their gums at all angles, with two rows in the top jaw and one in the bottom.
Toothfish do not have the gas-filled swim bladder that allows other fish to adjust their buoyancy to cope with changes in depth. Many deep-water species lack these and are forced either to sink to the bottom or waste energy by perpetually swimming to stay up in the water column. Instead, toothfish have changed the very composition of their bodies to become neutrally buoyant. Their skeletons and even the fringes of their scales contain more cartilage and less calcium than do shallow-water species, making them lighter. Their big, dense muscles contain large deposits of lipids, and these buoyant fats are carefully distributed through the fish’s body to be most abundant near the centres of gravity and buoyancy. At their largest, the streamlined and powerfully finned toothfish can reach well over a hundred kilos in weight and two metres in length. They are an abyssal cruise missile with a toothy grin.
Their nostrils and taste buds strain to pick up the drifting flavours of mucus that tell them a meal is nearby. The gently bowed lateral lines that resemble knife scars along their sides, and that give them the name Dissostichus (separating lines), monitor the still water for pressure waves from the panic of disturbed prey. Sensory canals on their heads perform a similar purpose, detecting water vibration and temperature changes. Using their large eyes to search for pinpricks of light, the toothfish patrols the gullies and crests, waiting for those giveaway flicker reflections of bioluminescence from their prey’s scales. The juvenile toothfish and defenceless grenadiers, squid and crabs make for a nutritious if sparse diet. At the low temperatures in which they live, with a metabolism to rival that of a corpse, food would not need to come often, but with time they grow large. It takes a toothfish nine or ten years to reach maturity, when it can reproduce, at which point it is about three feet long and its only predators are elephant seals and sperm whales. The seventy-kilo fish we were hoping to catch may well have been alive for thirty, forty or even fifty years.
Slow-growing and slow-living, toothfish spend their whole lives in the pure, chilled waters of the Southern Ocean. This, combined with their formidable muscles developed for hunting, makes them delicious to eat and one of the ultimate examples of organic produce. You won’t find toothfish for sale in any fishmonger’s or restaurant. Who would want to buy ‘toothfish’ for dinner? ‘Here we are, darling, toothfish and chips.’
What about ‘Chilean sea bass’? That sounds much better. Once it is rebranded you can order, for twice the price of rump steak and only at the most exclusive dining tables around the world, a piece of an ugly, oversized, buck-toothed fish that never saw the light of day.
• • •
Boetie explained that we were fishing a bottom-set ‘Spanish’ long-line, which uses a weighted rope mainline to take the strain and a set of parallel fishing lines to hold the hooks, each of which dangles on its own little branch line or ‘snood’. The lines float just above the seabed, and create a wall of baited hooks from which the scent can drift down-current. Boetie believed that this was the most effective way of long-lining and meant that we could make incremental changes to each component of the line. However, it was also one of the most labour-intensive methods. I had seen autoliners (with automated retrieval, baiting and discharge systems) in Scotland and they seemed to take a lot of repetitive work out of the process. Labour on our boat was cheap though and hand baiting meant that he knew each and every hook was properly prepared.
If the baited hooks were deployed during the day, albatrosses and other birds could be lured to their deaths as they tried to gorge on the 15,000 baited sardines they see, and the 15,000 hooks they don’t. Natural selection has attuned their senses to seek out small silvery prey in the vast ocean. Long-liners, therefore, present a parade of irresistible silvery flashes every time they set their lines. On the Sudur Havid, the line would be sent plummeting to the seabed after nightfall, in order to catch the fish during the night and early hours of the morning. It would be retrieved over the course of the following day, and processed as it came aboard.
Nearing the first of our chosen positions, the crew prepared to set the line. On the bridge, Boetie stared ahead into the darkness, watching the waves and the froth hurl themselves at the toughened glass in front of him. I needed to be right at the stern, observing the seabirds, so I wrapped myself in as many layers as possible under my deck-suit, and pulled my woolly hat down over my ears. The air was cold tonight. In the alley between the crates of rope eight of the crew were waiting, kitted up in oilskins, their faces hidden by scarves and balaclavas. They were eager to start. Trevor stood by the door, tucking his gloves in under his oilskin sleeves. He was in his forties but seemed older than most of the other crew on board. Cape Coloured, with a bushy beard, he was quick to joke and never complained. His smile now reassured me. ‘Are you ready, Matt?’
I realized that shooting the line could be a dangerous operation for me. I needed a good view but there would be ropes under tension and hooks zipping through the air, as well as the risk of falling overboard. I didn’t have a deck lifejacket, but neither, I saw, looking around, did anyone else. The boat was operating with a minimum number of lights, and this meant that the stern deck was disconcertingly dark. I had found myself a small corner, just to one side of the stern, which had a wooden shelf that I could stand on. Shuffling past Sven and Trevor, I used Hannes’ shoulder as I climbed up. Joaquim barked some simple instructions. ‘Matt, you stand still up there. Don’t move, and watch out for ropes and hooks.’
The wind was blowing strongly and the boat was pitching and rolling on the swells. At least with my feet braced against the guardrail and my back against the crates, I was stable and sheltered from the gusts and the spray.
Joaquim threw the buoy of the bird streamer line overboard, and the fifty metres of rope paid out. The boat towed the buoy along, and it danced around on the end of the rope, shaking strips of ribbon and tape that decorated it. This simple arrangement was designed to scare away the seabirds, to stop them from hovering over the back of the boat.
Without ceremony, Joaquim next wrestled our first marker buoys of the season over the side. Trevor and Sven fed out the anchor rope, throwing bundles still half coiled into the water. In total, this was a mile of rope, twice the depth of the water we were in. Hannes and Morné stood waiting, struggling to balance the two 45kg steel-plate anchors on the rail of the boat, while the anchor chains rested at their feet. At Joaquim’s signal, they let go and the anchors tumbled overboard with a metallic clang and rattle of the chain. Starting their descent to the seabed, the anchors dragged the 20mm mainline rope with them. The boat steamed away at six knots and the crew tied on the fishing lines as the mainline fed out from the stern.
At intervals, thinner ropes called ‘droppers’ had been attached to the mainline. Joaquim passed the end of the first dropper down to Carlos, who was sheltered in the factory below. Carlos tied it with a fisherman’s knot to the end of a rope hanging from a basket, and a concrete weight. These knots were tied quickly, cold fingers fumbling the rope, before the mainline was dragged over the stern by the anchor and the progress of the vessel.
The 150 individual fishing lines, each coiled in its own giant plastic tub, were made of much thinner rope than the mainline. They were readied by the pot-makers on the boat, including Stephan, who neatly coiled the rope around the perimeter of its tub and arranged each of the hundred hooks around the lip. Each hook’s metre-long monofilament snood was coiled in the centre. Care and precision ensured that the line came out without tangling.
Just before the boat began shooting the line, the hooks had been baited with a sardine. These dangled around the rim of the tub like a bejewelled necklace, with each hook piercing the eyes of the bait. They were quite beautiful in their careful arrangement, until the moment they were attached to the line and became a blur of uncoiling rope and flying fish. The tub containing the fishing line was held at a 60° angle by Charlie at the stern hatch of the factory deck, which allowed each of the baited hooks to disappear into the night: thousands of single sardines flying as nature never intended before plunging into the sea, towed to the depths by the anchor and numerous weights. Once each tub had paid out, Carlos tied another knot to join the fishing line back to the mainline. One by one, we attached all of the 150 fishing lines in this way.
My only duty during this whole two-hour process was to watch, and to light an occasional cigarette for a crewman whose hands were busy. One fag at a time was best; lighting four at once made me dizzy. I reached for the packet tucked in the back of Morné’s woolly hat, and then put the lit cigarette in his mouth. Morné was the same age and build as me, and it was his first deep-sea trip as well. He growled out a deep ‘Dankie’ (thanks), and inhaled deeply. For the deckhands, with watches hidden under layers of clothing, the passing of time was marked not in hours but in cigarettes.
I had expected the process to be noisy, but the crew on deck worked almost silently with just a few requests or yells of command from Joaquim. I could see loops of rope forming, tightening and disappearing as they were pulled overboard. Occasional stray hooks flailed upwards or became tangled in the lines.
Hannes leant over the rusty guardrail to hand the end of a rope to the deck below when a hook snagged his jacket arm. Within seconds, the fishing line began to tighten. He wouldn’t stand a chance if he was pulled overboard, whether he could swim or not. The water was just above zero, and the shock of the cold water would probably kill him before he could be freed. Within ten metres of the boat he would disappear into the ink of the night, no floodlights to illuminate his flailing arms as the anchor and weights towed him under, like a sardine bait in cheap oilskins. Even the weakest component, the nylon monofilament snood holding the hook, was strong enough to hold a struggling hundred-kilo toothfish underwater, which was plenty strong enough to pull a man overboard and down.
Near my feet, a knife stood with its tip embedded in the wood of the bench. I had guessed that it was there for emergencies. It would take minutes to alert the bridge and to stop and turn the boat around as it steamed at six knots. Even if Hannes managed to free himself of the line in the water, I reasoned that he would flounder and drown before he could be found in the darkness.
‘Wo! Wo! Wo!’ Hannes cried out.
His voice rang out over the thrum of the engine and the wind. The line went tight. Joaquim grabbed the knife and leant over the guardrail. Moments before Hannes was dragged overboard, the thin nylon sprang apart under the blade.
The cries of relief were muffled by thick scarves, and the line carried on overboard as normal.
‘Caralho!’ came Joaquim’s supportive Portuguese reply – ‘Cock!’
Crisis averted, I forced myself further back into my little corner. Joaquim was right. I was safest when I was tucked back away from the lines. I was required to observe for an hour every time the line was set, but there were too many dangers and distractions for comfort. Once all of the 15,000 hooks had been deployed, another anchor would be attached to the mainline and dropped over the side, with a rope and buoys, and the ship could sail away to leave the line on the seabed.
Making my way back inside to get warm, I saw Bubbles frowning at the waves through the bridge windows that faced astern, as if trying to prevent an accident by sheer willpower. It seemed that Boetie worried more about the fishing, while Bubbles was more concerned about the crew.
That night, Bjorgvin kept watch on the bridge while we slept, and the oily scent from the sardines drifted in the current across the seabed hundreds of metres below.
07:00, Friday, 24 April 1998
Hauling the line needed to start at first light; it would take eight to ten hours to complete and we had to be ready to shoot away again in the evening.
Once the boat drew alongside the buoys, Sven threw a grappling hook overboard to snag the line between the markers, and pulled them on deck. He passed the anchor line to Walu Walu, who flicked it around the capstan of the massive winch. From half a mile below the surface, the anchors were slowly retrieved. They surfaced about an hour later and were carried back along the boat between Hannes and Trevor, who struggled to keep their footing on the moving deck. With the anchors stowed, the line was gradually reeled in from the starboard side of the Sudur Havid and ‘unzipped’, a process in which each individual fishing line was untied from the mainline.
The winch on the main deck hauled in the mainline, while a line hauler set into the factory deck below pulled in the thinner fishing lines with their hooks. Within the line hauler, a rotating drum held pistons which squeezed the line and held it while the drum turned, pulling it without tangling the hooks. The hooks passed through rollers that yanked them from the mouths of any fish caught, which slumped down a chute into the factory.
Joaquim and Carlos usually operated the line hauler to control its speed and to sort out any tangles that inevitably occurred in kilometres of line. The line hauler pit was entered by a heavy waterproof door from the factory, and sealed by handles called ‘dogs’. Most waterproof doors on a boat are fitted to open outwards, so that a wave striking them will push them against their frame to form an even more effective seal against the pressure of the water. But this one opened inwards, making it weaker. To add to its vulnerability, the door was tied open when we were fishing.
I watched from the rail as the fish came up out of the water. Boetie explained that if you let the winch haul a large toothfish out of the water using only the hook that caught it, there is a risk you will lose it. The weight of the big fish, or their struggles, could rip the hooks from their mouths. What you need is a man with a gaff – preferably someone with good hand–eye co-ordination and enough upper-body strength. Hannes fitted the bill, and he knew it.
Hannes leant over the side of the boat, wielding the three-metre-long bamboo gaff like a spear. When each fish broke the surface, he jabbed the six-inch-long hook on the end of the pole down into the water and then up into the fish’s gill slits, lifting it on to the aluminium chute that led into the factory. With nonchalance, he hooked the fish accurately to avoid damaging the valuable flesh, and worked with the winches to flick the fish aboard.
The water around the boat was now full of hopeful spectators, all at risk of being snagged on a hook. Even in these confused swells, the northern giant petrels bobbed expectantly, waiting for a dropped fish or a scrap of bait to fall from the line.
Airborne, the giant petrels were almost as elegant as an albatross. Silent and stiff-winged, they measured roughly two metres across. Once on the water, however, their mystique disappeared as they scavenged for scraps. With their speckled brown and ash plumage, and incessant jeering and croaking, they resembled medieval hags in sackcloth barging through a teeming market place.
In their midst were black-browed albatrosses and smaller Cape petrels. Rare wandering albatrosses flew in on broadsword wings, to land clumsily nearby. Their massive white bodies stood out among the crowd, and their beaks cleared a space around them. Occasional macaroni penguins popped up. It was difficult not to smile as I watched them bickering with the other birds, looking simultaneously comical but furious due to the unruly crests of yellow feathers over their eyes. I wondered how the birds had found us so soon after we started fishing.
When a toothfish bigger than me broke the surface, Hannes called out, ‘Trevor, Sven, come quickly, big fish!’
Gravity distorted the massive fish’s torpedo shape, its gut sagging to form an obese bulge and its mouth pulled open to reveal a staggering array of teeth. It twitched on the line, barely alive, its scales dull grey-brown in the harsh daylight.
A fish worth hundreds of pounds, it could easily be ripped off the hook by its own weight and lost back into the sea. Joaquim grabbed his video camera as Carlos slowed the line-hauler and Trevor and Sven ran to Hannes’ side. They grabbed gaffs from the deck and leant out over the rail. All three of them working together now, they hauled the impressive monster over the edge of the boat and on to the chute. Its head promptly wedged in the hatch, the tail flapped overboard and Carlos pushed it through into the factory below me.
From his chair up on the bridge, Boetie watched the hauling process and tried to adjust the position of the Sudur Havid, so that the line was almost vertical. If the line came too far underneath the boat it might rub against the hull, risking the loss of fish and wasting hooks to decorate the underside of the boat. If it fell too far behind the Sudur Havid there was the risk of tangling the mainline in the propeller, the results of which could be catastrophic, potentially disabling the boat. But if the line was too far ahead of the boat or too far out to the side, too much tension could be placed on the ropes and they might snap. Boetie’s eyes barely left the line or the deck as we talked in the wheelhouse. Serious about his fishing, the jokes and light-heartedness ended abruptly as soon as he noticed someone slacking at the front of the boat. Fuse lit, his voice exploded over the loudspeaker.
‘Hannes, what the fuck are you doing? Gaff all the fish, all of them, that’s money you’ve just dropped!’
From the line hauler pit, each fishing line, with its hundred hooks, passed through the hatches into the factory, where Grant coiled it roughly into a basket. At twenty-two, Grant was one of the younger deckhands. He was Cape Coloured, short and slight with a thin pencil moustache, a jester always louder than his colleagues. He came on the boat to spend more time with his father, Brian, who was always away fishing when Grant was growing up. Although Brian worried that his son was not built for the ocean life, Grant bounced around the factory with such energy and noise that he was hard to miss.
After Grant looped the line loosely into a basket it was ready for Stephan and the other pot-makers to untangle, arrange and re-coil in preparation for shooting again in the evening. The fine manipulation of the thin monofilament snoods and hooks required the pot-makers to work without gloves, even though the air in the factory was freezing. Doing this important and skilled job, the Namibian pot-makers were some of the worst-paid people on the boat. Some of the crew had blown their advances in the bars and brothels of Cape Town, so it would take them much of the trip before they would earn any money.
Although Bubbles and Boetie seemed to be respected and popular with the crew, the distinction between the bridge and the decks was staggering. Two or three metres of physical distance, but a gulf in comfort and reward. Golf jackets, jogging bottoms, hundred-thousand-dollar incomes and penthouse apartments for those on the bridge; drenched oilskins, damp freezer suits and twenty dollars a week on the decks below.
16:00, Friday, 24 April 1998
For the next hour I was in the factory collecting samples and measuring the fish as they came aboard. After the clear air and panorama of the main deck, the factory was noisy and claustrophobic. The rumble and whine of the engine and the winches, and the constant roar of the waves and the wind outside, joined with the clatter and laughter of twenty working men. The air was so cold in the unheated factory that any smells were subdued, and the fresh seawater washed away any stale odours of men, bait or catch. The way in which the crew of the Sudur Havid dealt with the fish was simply stunning. Processing went on all day as the line was hauled and, within an hour of being lifted still breathing from the water, the fish were headed, gutted, washed and into the freezer. Three months later, almost as fresh as the day they were caught, they could be offloaded to port or another boat, and then off to market.
Each fish that came down the chute from the line hauler was usually alive, and was seized by Mark with a thumb in one eye and a finger in the other. He rolled the fish on to his bench and on to its belly, and made a quick incision down through the neck from just behind the head, curving backwards towards the tail. Mark called this a J cut, due to the curve towards the tail, which allowed the gut of the fish to be removed with minimum waste.
The head was thrown to one side and the tail was cut off and then discarded. Any waste was kept in plastic fish boxes until the end of the day, when it could be thrown overboard without attracting the attention of the seabirds. With no proper storage, much of it ended up on the factory floor.
The body of the fish was passed on to Alfie, one of the gutters. His job was to quickly scoop out the insides and clean the cavity, before passing it to Big Danie, who was a washer. Big Danie cleansed the inside of the fish with a brush and cold fresh seawater, and then placed it into a white plastic fish bin. Finally, Morné took each fish and wrapped a noose of string around the tail-end before hanging it on one of the three rows of hooks on the scaffolding racks of the blast freezer, where the cold air could circulate freely around them. Monster fish, which were too big for the racks, would be placed on the floor.
The crew were not interested in processing the other species of fish that had been caught, including a small number of rays, grenadiers (‘rat-tails’), blue antimora, stone crabs and other deep-water oddities, none of which had any real value in the marketplace. Most of them went back over the side, dead, but the crabs were passed to Grunter. We would eat them later.
If Mark and Alfie had time, the heads of the fish would later be taken and trimmed to remove the ‘collar’ of the fish. This was the throat and ‘shoulders’, and formed the muscular attachment to the pectoral fins. The cheeks of the fish could be cut out with the twist of a knife. These small packs of muscle are renowned for their flavour and fine texture, and are particularly valuable. On a toothfish, they are also particularly large in order to operate its huge jaws. All of this extra meat was to be frozen and kept as a bargaining chip, undeclared to the company offices in Cape Town. Bubbles had a plan that it would be used to ensure an extra bonus for the crew.
By five o’clock in the evening, we had finished hauling the line. While Mark cut the cheeks from the gory pile of toothfish heads, I cleaned up the small bone samples I had collected. I wiped each of the tiny otoliths, the ear bones of the toothfish, with a tissue and placed them in envelopes. I had been dreading the start of fishing, apprehensive that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the pace of the crew, or would disrupt their work and routine. Now these feelings were beginning to dissipate. I had stayed out of harm’s way, at least so far.