WHAT IT IS A challenge to get your claws into
WHY YOU WON’T DO IT There are easier ways to get your dinner
The red king crab is the most valuable of all the king crab and inhabits the waters at depths between 35 and 180 metres (120–600 ft). Historically, fishing for these prized crustaceans in the Bering Sea off Alaska has been the most profitable job a commercial fisherman can aspire too, but there’s good reason for that – it’s about as dangerous as fishing can get.
In good times, a crew member on a king crab boat can hope to make a six-figure salary over the course of a year. However, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics rates commercial fishing as the most dangerous of all occupations, with a fatality rate 90 times higher than the American average, at 300 per 100,000. Leading causes of death include hypothermia, drowning and industrial accidents. Despite there still being much money to be made, wholesale prices have declined since the boom years of the 1980s. The days when a boat owner could make millions in a single season are over.
The centre of the king crab industry is Alaska’s Bristol Bay, so you’ll need to relocate to this beautiful but harsh region. The many salmon fishing boats that operate in the same area will help you gain experience and stay solvent while you wait for your break on a crab boat. Check that your paperwork is all in order – fishermen are expected to have their own licences (roughly US$65 for Alaskan residents, US$165 for everyone else). Make sure yours is good to go so that you can act as soon as an opening arises – unsurprisingly, competition for these highly paid jobs is ferocious.
Vacancies don’t tend to be advertized, with news of job opportunities spreading by word of mouth – your best hope is to be in the right place at the right time, and to keep an ear to the ground. Train yourself to network. And if you find out about a job, move quickly.
Regardless of what other experience you have, if you’re new on the crab boats you’ll be at the bottom of the pecking order. You’ll assume the status of a novice and will be referred to as a ‘greenhorn’. Greenhorns very often undertake their first trip for no pay; if you can prove yourself, the rewards will follow later.
Stay tough, and keep yourself in good physical condition: awful storms might break at any moment, and you’ll certainly have to deal with extremes of cold in the subarctic conditions of the Bering Sea. In fact, it’s often so cold that water freezes on the decks, making every aspect of manoeuvring around the boat a challenge. You’re likely to spend a good deal of time chipping ice off your vessel, and should make sure you wear gloves at all times to avoid accidentally freezing yourself to anything. There is also a lot of seriously heavy equipment moving about, which just adds to the danger.
Prepare to work and live in very cramped conditions, with shifts lasting anything up to 48 hours. In years gone by, the fishing season lasted for only three or four days, so up to 250 boats would race for the prime fishing spots in a sort of derby. These days there are fewer boats (reflecting reduced stock levels), but the season is longer, with some boats on the water for three or four weeks at a time. The crabs tend to gather in the coldest water near the edge of ice shelves.
Crabs are caught in huge steel-framed pots weighing 360 kilograms (800 lb) each and baited with cod or herring. There may be 300 of these pots on a typical boat, lowered and raised from the sea by hydraulic winches. Once a catch has been sorted, the king crabs are stored alive in a holding tank.
Crab fishing is heavily regulated. There is a strictly observed fishing season, and only male specimens of a certain size can be landed, with smaller crabs and females returned to the sea in order to maintain stocks. Quotas are calculated on a season-by-season and boat-by-boat basis, and failure to adhere to the strict rules can be punished with fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars for boat owners.
Oh, and there’s one other unusual bonus – each season Discovery Channel’s hit TV show Deadliest Catch follows the boats out to sea on the lookout for new reality TV stars – so if you’re in the right place at the right time, you might find the fisherman’s life leads to unexpected fame as well as fortune.
