Time Warp

July 25, 2014, 1:00 am

I'm sitting on watch in the wheelhouse of a 65' lobsterboat, 70 miles offshore on Georges Bank scanning the radar for other vessels. I check our course, speed, and the engine vitals. All's well. I glance at the clock again: 1:05 am. It feels like the slowest hour of my life. I remind myself that the boat clock is wrong (it wasn't set back for DST), but it doesn't really matter out here. We're on boat time. The measure of time is completely relative in this reality. It doesn't matter what clock the rest of the world is operating on. We have no appointments to miss, no designated time to arrive to work (besides rolling out of your rack after the captain's wake-up yell), and no calls to make. In fact, we're out of cell phone range and the sattellite phone is for emergencies. The only occasion that World Time might be relevant is in checking the tide chart, but, to the captain, the tide is more of a feeling than a time.

My eyelids start to succumb to gravity and I stand to stay awake. 20 minutes left now. I fetch my pee bucket and toilet seat, quickly relieving myself before returning to the wheel. We have reason to be tired. I've been on my feet for the past 20 hours hauling 40-trap trawls with captain and two experienced deckhands. The boys do all the hard work handling the traps (the end traps weigh 250 lbs each!), line, poly ball and highflier. I handle the bait. It's smelly but lightweight compared to their tasks. At least I'm well-qualified for measuring, notching and banding lobsters. When the boys get behind I break the rail with the next trap. We work like a production line: clean out trap of lobsters and crabs, bait the line, hogring the vents, close trap and slide down the rail to stack on deck.

Some things never change. I've spent the past 3 years getting my Master's in Marine Science and transitioning into my current position as Supervisory Research Biologist at a non-profit organization. Yet I still find myself with my head in a bait barrel occasionally. My next phase of life will be as a doctorate student at the University of Maine at Orono studying the Gulf of Maine shrimp stock. No doubt my Ph.D. will also involve baiting shrimp traps with rotten herring. I don't stray far from the bait barrel.

This trip I'm along for the ride for research purposes: to haul scallop spat collectors. The only boat willing to make the trip had a condition: if I help them haul their gear, they'll help me haul mine. Fair enough. And a good excuse to experience offshore lobstering on Georges Bank.

My attention returns to the radar and to the present. The pinpoint of a highflier bobs about a mile to our south. A tanker crawls by to our east, a distant light on the horizon. My back hurts, my feet are sore, my right thumb is tired from banding lobsters (sadly enough), and I reek to high heavens. No time for a shower tonight. . . this morning. The smell of rotten pogies, slimy yellowtail and redfish racks, skates, and monkfish heads oozing with guts wafts from the deck. The vessel is beautiful, tidy and clean, but there's just no avoiding the stench of bait when trapping.

I've become accustomed to the luxury of research trips on 100' scallopers. New Bedford's scallop fleet is a fine one, which one would expect from an industry worth $380 million. Many of the boats have not one but two heads and the boys often generously give me a state room of my own. But it's humbling to be on a lobsterboat again. The rivalry between trappers and draggers even holds this far offshore with seemingly ample bottom for everyone to share. The lobstermen say that scallopers are spoiled with short watches, lightweight gear handling, relatively little time at sea, and huge paychecks. I suppose they are right in some respects. But handling 2 ton steel dredges is every bit as difficult and dangerous as stacking 120 traps 6 rows high. It's just different. Every fishery is unique. Trappers and draggers will always detest eachother.

Watch is over. Time to wake up the deckhand for his turn, after only an hour of sleep, poor soul. Time for me to rest.