I have heard that commercial crab fishermen in Alaska work only two - three months out of the year and make a fair ammount of money doing it. The downside is that it is very hard work and ammoung the most dangerous work in the world. Is what I have heard true, because this sounds like a perfect deal, for a starving student like myself, to take on who isn’t afraid of hardwork and is still to young to have a healthy fear of death. Am I just being naive? Have I heard wrong about such jobs? Could someone with no experience get, or handle, such a job? Is there anyone or any company that I could talk to about this to get more information?
I knew one person who worked on a commercial fishing boat. They were fishing for crabs in Siberia. My understanding was the work was very hard, the conditions were very poor, the hours were very long, and the pay was okay. The guy also collected some of his pay “in kind” - ie he received about 200 lbs of crab meat which he resold in lieu of a cash payment.
Here in Nova Scotia, the fishing boats are mostly “family” affairs - the skipper hires on his sons, brothers, brothers-in-law, cousins, and so on. There is seldom an opening for an outsider, and if there is, it usually gets filled from the community, by word-of-mouth - they don’t place newspaper ads like “Herring seiner requires an experienced winch hand”. If you’re someone who is known around the docks (and you don’t have a reputation for drinking or laziness), you might get taken on.
And while the profits can be considerable, so can the losses. You don’t get a salary, you get a “share”. The captain gets multiple shares, and the boat itself gets shares as well. If you have a good catch of a profitable product (like lobster), then you’re golden. But if you get a marginal catch of a marginal product (like herring), you’ll probably need another job to make it through the year. Go through some bad experiences like getting fined for illegal by-catch, losing gear or (God forbid) losing a crew member, and you may go home with nothing to show for your efforts.
Finally, I wouldn’t call it pleasant work. For every picture-perfect bright, sunny day hauling gear brimming with a good catch, you’ll probably have ten days of rain, fog, high waves and wind, where you get to stand up to your ankles in fish guts drinking cold coffee laced with salt water. They earn their money!
Alaskan crab fishing is indeed one of the most arduous and dangerous jobs in the world. Every year, it’s not a matter of “if” someone will die, but rather how many. Or how many boats will go down. A few years ago, a journalist decided to ride along with a crabber to write a story about it. He ended working for a share, because one guy “lost it” and wouldn’t work anymore. Those guys work about 20 on, 4 off. Seriously. Anyway, the article is absolutely fascinating, and I believe it appeared in Outdoor magazine, and perhaps Readers Digest. It was re-printed in a Coast Guard magazine, which I can no longer find. At any rate, if anyone has a link to this article, the OP should definitely read it. (I’d be most appreciative as well!!)
As to how you get a job doing it? Here’s a good place to start. I’ve heard that some people just walk the docks asking the skippers for work, but as always, it’s probably best to call ahead.
Well I can’t fnd the article online, but it’s titled “When Hell Freezes Over” by Michael Finkel. It would seem that it appeared in Reader’s Digest, March 1999 edition - among other places. I really wish I had a copy of it, it’s quite a sobering look at the job that routinely tops the list of deadliest jobs.
I think that fishing is listed by the feds (either OSHA or the Dept. of Labor) as the most dangerous occupation in the U.S. I’d guess that hauling in crab pots in the fog and seas of the Bering Strait is the most dangerous fishing around.
A friend is the widow of an Alaska salmon fisherman. Sifting through some of the tall tales she has told, I got the impression that fishing is dangerous and a crapshoot, though the money can be very good on average. She claimed that her husband, as a captain of his own boat, took home a six figure income in the Seventies and early Eighties. Of course, he got a captain’s share, a crew share and another share for the boat. Those were his terms, though I’d guess that they would be considered generous nowadays, considering how many college-aged folks at least consider working in Alaska.
Also, I get the impression that the union locals aren’t a strong as they used to be, so the canneries set the price, not the fishermen. Also, there isn’t as much money in the small towns since large factory ships haul in most of the salmon. All of this works to drive down how much money an individual hand will earn.
I’d guess that the economics and work conditions for crab fishing would be similar to salmon fishing. I get the idea that the weather is worse though. I never knew whether to believe my friend’s stories of eighty-foot seas until I saw this. Crabbers might not have to work in seas like that, but they probably have to travel through heavy seas to get to the pots, and there will be at least some sort of sea all of the time.
My wife’s brother in law has done it. He lives in Alaska anyway.
The big money is owning the boat. Big profits and big losses possible.
If you’re willing to do some very hard, out of the way work for substantial rewards, I hear that oil-work in Alaska is much better. I know several college kids that would work in administrative positions as secretaries etc. on the North-Slope fields for pretty good pay. It was boring as hell, and not the type of amazing money that trades-people could make by working 18 hour days, but still pretty good.
Of course there’s also Iraq. I have heard that Halliburton will hire you for 1 year @$100,000 tax-free, and recent mess-hall attacks have left, shall we say, openings?
When I was twelve, Dad bought me a jon boat and motor and I took to setting trotlines and catching catfish on the weekends. I sold my catch to the Piggly Wiggly for 50 cent a pound. It was a profitable venture.
When I was eighteen, 1981, I spent the summer fishing commercially off the East Coast of the United States. Basically you would go down to the commercial docks and look for a boat that needed crew. Usually you would wake up, hung over, 50 or 60 miles off the coast and you would fish for a week or ten days or they wouldn’t feed you. There were fish then and I remember hauling them in, thinking of all the money I would get when we got back.
I remember unloading the boats and waithing for the captain to settle up. Many times I saw it written on paper: this was the cost of the trip, this was the value of your share of the fish, and you owe the boat this…here is a 20 go have a beer or two. It always happened and I was always disappointed…I did it four or five times in my life.
I remember the night me and three other guys hauled in 146 king mackerels, fishing with handlines. I’m proud to have been a commercial fisherman, not many people could/would do it and I would probably do it again. There are somethings that money can’t buy.
I’ll be visiting my uncle tonight, who used to be a commercial fisherman on the great lakes. My family started fishing commercially back in the 1850’s, and kept the family fish shanty running until the early 1960’s. My uncle kept his hand in, repairing nets for other fishermen until just a few years back.
They sure never got rich. They basically got wet, cold, and sometimes drowned.
My dad never cared for it; backbreaking labor combined with smelling bad, is how he described it. He went into sales instead.
I was reading The Perfect Storm at my parents’ house during a visit, and I asked my father if the depictions of New England commercial fishing were accurate. He said that they were. His dad and at least a couple of his brothers were commercial fishermen during non-Prohibition years*. My dad worked on his father’s boat when he wasn’t in school, and he did NOT think much of fishing as a career.
*During the Prohibition, his father and brothers smuggled booze, as this was less risky and more profitable than fishing.
Anyone around here with a boat that made real money in the seventies and eighties was smuggling grass. Having personally seen 3 tractor trailers loaded one Thanksgiving, I laugh at the posturing by the Dept. of Homeland Security. I wonder if they really think they could stop a threat should someone decide to bring it in by shrimp boat or yacht to our thousands of miles of coast. Had to hijack, sorry.
One of the big controversies in commercial fishing is that the vessels themselves are not regulated (inspected), and many will complain that this is the reason we lose so many. Here in New England, we lose commercial fishing boats all the time - often with loss of life.
Commercial vessels have few requirements above what private vessels have. All in all, it just amounts to the basics - PFDs, EPIRB, fire extinguishers, etc, etc. Some have argued that fishing vessels need regulation along the lines of small passenger vessels: CG inpsections, stricter construction standards, the works. Commercial fisherman are largely against this because it will cost big $$$, and don’t want the hassle of dealing with the CG all the time. They already have tons of state and federal fishing regulations to deal with. They will say that additional regs for the boats will put them out of business. And for some, it will.
BTW cornflakes, thanks for the link. I’ve seen those pics from “Recon-Randy” before, and they never fail to amaze me. The rest of those pics are amazing - almost unbelievable if you didn’t see them for yourself.
To my knowledge, no one ever said they could stop all threats from entering the US by sea. In fact, the only thing I’ve ever heard from DHS agencies is the opposite: Our ports are vulnerable. Always have been, and probably always will be. They’ve been saying this since before 9/11 when the Hart/Rudman report came out, and they’re saying it today.
I heard this today, and thought I’d share in case the OP (or anyone else) wants a good look at Alaskan crabbers. This Sunday, Jan 11th @ 9:00 PM EST, the Discovery Channel is airing America’s Deadliest Season: Alaskan Crab Fishing - Part 1.
I think I’ve seen this episode before, and if so, it is quite the eye-opener. Things to think about when ordering that seafood at the restaurant.