Captain Toshi Hayakawa stood on the balcony overlooking the rear deck of the Nisshin Maru in the rising sun. The eight-thousand ton ship was over four hundred feet long—a floating fish factory that could haul up a mile of net and process over two hundred thousand pounds of fish before heading back to port in Japan. Featuring a newer design, the trawler had a stern ramp that could be raised and lowered at will. When cruising, the ramp was up in a vertical position like a typical stern. When they were deploying nets, the rear wall dropped down on giant hydraulic pistons until the top of the wall was a foot or so beneath the waterline.
The late-summer seas were calm, under sunny skies that promised good weather. The captain smoked a cigarette and watched the nets being winched in by the giant mechanical gears. The stern trawler had the rear ramp open to the sea, and as the nets slowly cranked into the ship, tons of water and fish filled the giant deck. It took almost forty minutes to get the net completely into the ship. Thousands of gallons of bloody water drained off the deck back out to sea, and tens of thousands of pounds of fish of numerous species tried their best to fight the net.
Many of the fish were already dead, but the pile was like a single living being, writhing and shimmering in the sun. Deck hands quickly began their assault on the pile, opening the net that was being loosened again. The Nisshin Maru had a crew of thirty-two, which included everyone from the officers and engineers, to cooks and fish mongers. The deck hands worked in shifts on a ship that worked twenty-four hours a day. There were nine crewmen in “the pit” pulling apart and sorting the fish. The nets had been the pelagic type, scooping up everything in the mid-water larger than an anchovy. While whales and dolphins weren’t the targets of the hunt, they’d be processed along with the mackerel, tuna, and any other species that ended up on the deck. Once the fish were sorted, machinery would head and gut the catch, crew would pack the meat into tubs, and it would be flash-frozen for freshness and then stored for the trip home.
On some ships, the captain’s orders were to return live mammals and endangered species back into the ocean if they could be saved. On Captain Toshi Hayakawa’s ship, every animal inside the net was fair game. Whales, sharks, turtles, dolphins and every fish in the net was kept and processed. Endangered species were packed and mislabeled with a system that allowed Hayakawa to know what was inside the packages, but would fool any type of port inspections. He cared almost as little about his crew as he did about the legality of his catch.
Under his watchful eye, crewmen worked at a frenetic pace whenever the nets came up. The fish quality depended on freshness and quick work, and Captain Hayakawa was a harsh task master. The men in the pit knew he was overhead watching, and worked like animals in the hot sun. There were no breaks for water or food until the net was empty.
Kenji had been working the Nisshin Maru for three years, and was a well-respected seaman. When he paused and looked at the small creature on his wrist, above his glove, the other men stopped and looked over. “Taking a break” from throwing fish was unheard of.
“What’s that?” asked Sadao.
Kenji shook his arm to get the thing off, but it was stuck to him. “I don’t know. Squid?”
Sadao jogged over to help his friend. He stared at the small creature. It was similar in appearance to a basket star, with many appendages of various sizes that were covered in suction cups. The central disc was roundish, and pressed against Kenji’s arm. Kenji cried out in pain, surprising Sadao.
“It’s hurts! Get it off!” He screamed.
Sadao used his two hands to pry the thing off, exposing Kenji’s shredded skin. “It cut you!” Sadao cried out. He pulled it off a bit more, bending the central disc back enough to expose the mouth. There were gruesome teeth showing inside the hole that served as a mouth, and a long black tongue was still inside Kenji’s skin. As Sadao stared in horror, the tongue withdrew, and the creature spit a long milky strand of goo that hit Sadao in his face. His skin sizzled on contact with the digestive fluid, and he began screaming as he let go of the thing. Kenji was now screaming, too, as much in terror as in pain. Another crewman ran over when he saw Sadao’s face melting before his eyes, and began screaming for help.
Up on the rear deck of the bridge, the captain cursed and flicked his cigarette. He stormed down towards the aft deck where his men had apparently stopped working. There were a few tons of live fish on the deck in the hot sun, and all work had ceased—he was not a happy captain.
By the time Captain Hayakawa got down to the aft deck, Sadao was on his back screaming with two men trying to flush his face with water. The white bones of his cheek were showing on one side of his face, beneath a milky blind eye. Another sailor had managed to rip the thing off Kenji’s wrist and threw it off the stern ramp of the ship into the wake, and was holding a towel over Kenji’s open wound. The skin wasn’t cut, it was shredded, and some was missing where the creature had devoured it. Closing the wound would be difficult.
When Captain Hayakawa saw Sadao’s face he stopped walking and stared in disbelief. “What happened?” he screamed over Sadao’s crying.
“Some type of sea creature,” replied one of the sailors, obviously shaken by what he had seen. “It spit at him and did this!”
“Where is it?” asked the captain.
“I threw it overboard.”
“Good, get him and Kenji to sickbay and get two more crewmen up here. Let’s go, people! Back to work!”
Kenji helped the other crewman walk the injured sailor to sickbay, where their medic would do his best to bandage him and control the pain for the next ten days or so before they headed back to port. The captain stood staring at the men until they got back to work. They were tentative at first, looking for strange creatures, but nothing else appeared for another hour…