A Short Story About Lobstering

Sitting in the wheelhouse about to throw the lines and scoot out of the harbor for a few days. There isn't even a hint of wind on the pond right now and the weather looks good for the whole trip. One of the deckhands is joking about the flavor of Puffins right now, and I'm pretending to laugh as if it's funny, and the cliche"ness" of it all is kind of funny, but not really in a humorous way.

So below is a story about lobstering that I submitted to NPR's 3 minute fiction contest, and I knew when I wrote it that it wasn't great, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway. I haven't ever really written anything like this before, but what the hay?? Right?

I heard some of the stories in consideration this month, and they're way better, but my story is kind of based on a real incident that happened a couple of years ago in Point Judith, RI. Considering that one of the guys I fished with last week spent 7 minutes in the water of the Gulf of Maine in February last year, and since I've been fishing this year, 4 fishermen have died in New England on the job, and 3 boats out of Point Judith have sank, I think quite a bit about the realities at hand. As someone who is more than a little upset about our system and socio/political conditions in our country I find it ironic that fishermen are ALL independent contractors with NO health insurance, retirement or benefits of any kind. All this and they are 5o times more likely to die on the job than ANY cop in our country. Those stats don't add up for me, and I really hope I don't die for $500/week.

Stacked Four High

Stacked four high, the 75-pound lobster pots rested now on deck of the cold steel Barbara Lynn. 31 of 50 pots had been hauled up from the deep and flowing darkness along with almost a mile’s worth of line, of which, a corner of a short section lay under the concrete runner of the 23rd trap. The combined weights of the pots pressed down on the line, and briny tears of seawater streamed onto the deck.

In the east, the sky was beginning to soften in preparation for the sun, which wouldn’t come for at least an hour yet, and the hydraulic hauler screamed in a spinning frenzy as it pulled the line and pots toward the waiting crew.
Captain Chris deMarco controlled the hydraulic levers, and steered the boat as Enrique waited at the rail for the next pot. From grabbing so many spiny skates used as bait, the thumb and forefinger of Enrique’s gloves had worn small holes and his glove liners were soaked with seawater and the foul juice of the fetid bait. His fingers burned and throbbed and he put his hands together in front of his face and blew on them through habit, though no warmth penetrated the blue vinyl that covered his soft Salvadoran hands.

The green metal wire of a pot appeared and was quickly breaking the surface of the water as the captain stopped the hauler. Enrique grabbed the bridle of the pot with his left hand and smoothly cleared the snood over the block with the other and landed the pot on the rail. In the trap were 23 pounds of Rock Crabs, a small Black Sea Bass, a 2-pound female lobster clad with thousands of eggs, and a 12-pound Conga Eel that angrily writhed in the parlor and shook the pot.
A major storm was forecast to peel up the eastern seaboard beginning that afternoon, so the crew of the Barbara Lynn had worked through the night so they could finish before it got too nasty. 3 men had drained 11 energy drinks in 7 hours. Luis however had found an excuse between each trawl to go into the engine room, where he hid his own way of staying up all night.

After having gotten the bait ready for the next trawl, Luis was now just watching Jesus downstack the pots one by one as they were set back into the icy Atlantic.
“Man, I’m tired”, Jesus huffed.
Luis, in his best American redneck replied,” Son, are you a Mexican, or a Mexi-can’t?”
“I’m Guatemalan esse!”
“ Hey, what do you call a short Mexican?” Luis asked.

Jesus, though perturbed, played along as he grabbed a pot to set it down on the deck “I don’t know, what?” he asked, and the snood he was holding didn’t pull out easily, and as Jesus yanked on it, the ground line streaming out of the rope locker came up in a tangle, and that little piece of line under pot 23 that actually belonged to the 26th pot snagged on a barb of broken wire and began to pull the pot and the three others stacked on top of it, aft. The top pot in the pile tumbled and hit Jesus in the chest as he was bent, still yanking frantically on the line. As it did so, the rest of the pile moved over Jesus as Luis, with his back turned, said “Paragraph. Too short to be an essay.” and Jesus was overboard.
Frantically, with tears welling up, Luis flung the cabin door open. “Jesus, he’s gone! He’s in the water!”

Atlantic Puffins off of RI, (way off!!)

So, the last trip out on the boat was an eventful one. For most of the winter we concentrate our efforts closer in to shore to target Rock Crabs as our quarry. However, we still have 700 pots in the deepwater near the boat's normal lobstering grounds on Hudson's Canyon. Hudson's Canyon is the remnant outflow of the Hudson River and lies due south from the RI coastline about 100 miles. We haven't checked those lobster pots since the end of November or December as there just aren't enough lobsters around to make the trip all the way down there. Once in a while though we have to go down and make sure everything is still there. The weather can really take its toll on the gear, and it's not uncommon for whole trawls to just disappear. At $100 bucks a pot, and not to mention the mile of rope involved in each trawl that adds up to a lot of money.

So, this last trip we made the long steam to the south. Since there are few lobsters, hauling the gear is a lot easier than when we are working in the crab grounds, so we rotate with everyone getting a trawl off to rest. My trawl off happened to be at sunrise, after having started work at 0300, and there was not a puff of wind in the air. It was gorgeous and I went up on the bow to try and get a photo or two of the many Dovekies that were around. To my surprise and excitement the first bird on the bow happened to be an Atlantic Puffin, and I got to see a few more mixed in with the literally hundreds of Dovekies on the calm sea.
This photo is cropped in as the bird was pretty far away, but you can still see the sweet Puffin bill!!

I then got this photo of two Dovekies taking flight. With their wings made for swimming under water it takes them a lot of flapping and a little extra time to get off the water. Then, it was back to work!