The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea (10 page)

Until then the fishery had been relatively unregulated, but a new drift-entanglement net in the early eighties finally got the wheels of bureaucracy turning. The nets were a mile long, ninety-feet wide, and set out all night from the stern of a converted longliner. Although the large mesh permitted juveniles to escape, the National Marine Fisheries Service was still leery of its impact on the swordfish population. They published a management plan for the North Atlantic swordfish that suggested numerous regulatory changes, including limiting the use of drift nets, and invited responses from state and federal agencies, as well as individual fishermen. A series of public hearings were held up and down the East Coast throughout 1983 and 1984, and fishermen who couldn't attend—those who were fishing, in other words—sent in letters. One of the people who responded was Bob Brown, who explained in a barely legible scrawl that he'd made fifty-two sets that year and there seemed to be plenty of mature fish out there, they just stayed in colder water than people realized. Alex Bueno of the
Tiffany Vance
wrote a letter pointing out, among other things, that draggers weren't likely to switch over to drift nets because they cost too much, and that swordfish population estimates were inaccurate because they didn't take into account fish outside the two-hundred-mile limit. Sportsfishermen accused commercial fishermen of raping the oceans, commercial fishermen accused sportsfishermen of squandering a resource, and almost everyone accused the government of gross incompetence.

In the end, the Fishery Management Plan did not include a catch quota for Atlantic swordfish, but it required all sword boats to register with the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the Department of Commerce. Boat owners who had never swordfished in their lives scrambled for permits just to keep their options open, and the number of boats nearly doubled while, by all indications, the swordfish stock continued to decline. From 1987 to 1991, the total North Atlantic swordfish catch went from 45 million pounds to 33 million pounds, and their average size dropped from 165 pounds to no. This was what resource management experts know as
tragedy of the commons,
a reference to overgrazing in eighteenth-century England. "In the case of common grazing areas," explained one fisheries-management pamphlet, "grass soon disappeared as citizens put more and more sheep on the land. There was little incentive to conserve or invest in the resource because others would then benefit without contributing."

That was happening throughout the fishing industry: haddock landings had plummeted to one-fiftieth of what they were in 1960, cod landings had dropped by a factor of four. The culprit—as it almost always has been in fishing— was a sudden change in technology. New quick-freeze techniques allowed boats to work halfway around the world and process their fish as they went, and this made the three-mile limit around most countries completely ineffectual. Enormous Russian factory ships put to sea for months at a time and scoured the bottom with nets that could take thirty tons of fish in a single haul. They fished practically within sight of the American coast, and within years the fish populations had been staggered by fifty-percent losses. Congress had to take action, and in 1976 they passed the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which extended our national sovereignty to two hundred miles offshore. Most other nations quickly followed suit.

Of course, the underlying concern wasn't for fish populations, it was for the American fleet. Having chased out the competition, America set about constructing an industry that could scrape Georges Bank just as bare as any Russian factory ship. After the passage of the Magnuson Act, American fishermen could take out federally guaranteed loans and set themselves up for business in quarter-million-dollar steel boats. To make matters worse, the government established eight regional fishing councils that were exempt from conflict-of-interest laws. In theory, this should have put fisheries management in the hands of the people who fished. In reality, it showed the fox into the chicken coop.

Within three years of Magnuson, the New England fleet had doubled to 1,300 boats. Better equipment resulted in such huge takes that prices dropped and fishermen had to resort to more and more devastating methods just to keep up. Draggers raked the bottom so hard that they actually levelled outcrops and filled in valleys—the very habitats where fish thrived. A couple of good years in the mid-eighties masked the overall decline, but the end was near, and many people knew it. The first time anyone—at least any fisherman—suggested a closure was in 1988, when a Chatham fisherman named Mark Simonitsch stood up to speak at a New England Fisheries Council meeting. Simonitsch had fished off Cape Cod his whole life; his brother, James, was a marine safety consultant who had worked for Bob Brown.

Both men knew fishermen, knew fish, and knew where things were headed.

Simonitsch suggested that Georges Bank be closed to all fishing, indefinitely. He was shouted down, but it was the beginning of the end.

The swordfish population didn't crash as fast as some others, but it crashed all the same. By 1988, the combined North Atlantic fleet was fishing over one hundred million hooks a year, and catch logs were showing that the swordfish population was getting younger and younger. Finally, in 1990, the International Commission for the Conservation of Tunas suggested a fishing quota for the North Atlantic swordfish. The following year the National Marine Fisheries Service implemented a quota of 6.9 million pounds of dressed swordfish for U.S.-licensed sword boats, roughly two-thirds of the previous year's catch. Every U.S.-licensed boat had to report their catch when they arrived back in port, and as soon as the overall quota was met, the entire fishery was shut down. In a good year the quota might be met in September; in bad years it might not be met at all. The result was that not only were fishing boats now racing the season, they were racing each other. When the
Andrea Gail
left port on September 23rd, she was working under a quota for the first time in her life.

ALBERT JOHNSTON
has the
Mary
T back out on the fishing grounds by October 17th and his gear in the water that night. He's a hundred miles south of the Tail, right on the edge of the Gulf Stream, around 41 north and 51 west. He's after big-eye tuna and doing really well—"muggin' 'em," as swordfishermen say. One night they lose $20,000 worth of bigeye to a pod of killer whales, but otherwise they're pulling in four or five thousand pounds of fish a night. That's easily enough to make a trip in ten sets. They're in the warm Gulf Stream water and the rest of the fleet's off to the east. "At that time of the year it's nice to fish down by the Gulf," Johnston says. "You get a little less bad weather— the lows tend to ride the jet stream
off
to the north. You could still get the worst storm there ever was, but the average weather's a little better."

Like most of the other captains out there, Johnston started commercial fishing before he could drive. He was running a boat by age nineteen and bought his first one at twenty-nine. Now, at thirty-six, he has a wife and two children and a small business back in Florida. He sells fishing tackle to commercial boats. There comes a point in every boat owner's life—after the struggles of his twenties, the terror of the initial investment—when he realizes he can relax a bit. He doesn't need to take late-season trips to the Banks, doesn't need to captain the boat month in and month out. At thirty-six, it's time to start letting the younger guys in, guys who have little more than a girlfriend in Pompano Beach and a pile of mail at the Crow's Nest.

Of course, there's also the question of odds. The more you go out, the more likely you are never to come back. The dangers are numerous and random: the rogue wave that wipes you off the deck; the hook and leader that catches your palm; the tanker that plots a course through the center of your boat. The only way to guard against these dangers is to stop rolling the dice, and the man with a family and business back home is more likely to do that. More people are killed on fishing boats, per capita, than in any other job in the United States. Johnston would be better off parachuting into forest fires or working as a cop in New York City than longlining off the Flemish Cap. Johnston knows many fishermen who have died and more than he can count who have come horribly close. It's there waiting for you in the middle of a storm or on the most cloudless summer day. Boom—the crew's looking the other way, the hook's got you, and suddenly you're down at the depth where swordfish feed.

Back in 1983, a friend of Johnston's ran into a fall gale in an eighty-seven-foot boat called the
Canyon Explorer.
Three lows merged off the coast and formed one massive storm that blew one hundred knots for a day and a half. The seas were so big that Johnston's friend had to goose the throttle just to keep from sliding backward down their faces. The boat was forced sixty miles backward—despite driving full-steam ahead—because the whole surface of the ocean had been set in motion. At one point the captain glanced out the window and saw an enormous wave coming at them. Hey Charlie, look at this! he shouted to another crew member who was down below. Charlie sprinted up the companion-way but didn't get to the wheelhouse in time; the wave bore down on them, slate-colored and foaming, and blew the wheelhouse windows out.

That happened to be a particularly severe storm, and it devastated the rest of the fleet. A boat named the
Lady Alice
had her wheelhouse knocked in and a crew member paralyzed for life. The
Tiffany Vance,
which had just transferred fisheries observer Joseph Pelczarski to the
Andrea Gail
the week before, nearly went down with her sister ship, the
Rush.
The two boats were a mile apart when the storm hit, way out on the Flemish Cap, and both lost their portside stabilizing birds. The bird on the
Tiffany Vance
was hung from chain, and without 200 pounds of steel to keep it down, the chain started slamming against the boat. It had to be cut; Alex Bueno, the captain, stripped to his underwear, tied a rope around his waist, and waded out onto the deck with a welding torch. There was so much water coming over the deck that he had trouble keeping the torch lit. He finally managed to burn the chain free, and then he went back inside and waited for the boat to sink. "We didn't even bother calling the Coast Guard, we were just too far out," he says. "There's really nothing to do but rely on the other guys around you."

Unfortunately, the
Rush
was in even more trouble than the
Tiffany Vance.
She had cable on her birds instead of chains, and the broken cable managed to wrap itself around the drive shaft and freeze the propeller. The boat went dead in the water and immediately turned side-to in the waves— in "a beam sea," as it's called. A boat in a beam sea can count her future in hours, maybe minutes. Wayne Rushmore, her captain, got on the radio and told Bueno he was going down and needed help, but Bueno radioed back that he was going down, too. The
Rush's
crew went back out on deck and, taking extraordinary risks, managed to pull the cable free of the propeller. For the next several days the two boats rode the storm out side by side; at one point the sun came out, and Bueno noticed that the larger waves put his wheelhouse in shadow. They blocked out the sun.

BY ALL
reports, Billy's having a terrible trip. After fourteen sets he only has about 20,000 pounds of fish in the hold, which is barely enough to cover expenses, much less compensate six men for a month of their life. When Linda Greenlaw arrives on the fishing grounds Billy tells her that he's disgusted and is going to need more fuel if they want to make any money at all. Sword boats lend each other supplies all the time on the high seas, but Billy has a particular reputation for pushing things to the limit. This is not the first time Linda has bailed him out. The two boats rendezvous south of the Flemish Cap, and Linda drops a tow line and refuelling hose over the side. Billy comes up bow to stern and ties off the tow line, and the boats chug along, the
Hannah Boden
pulling the
Andrea Gail,
while the fuel gets pumped into Billy's tanks. It's a dangerous maneuver—with any other boat, Bob Brown would insist that Linda just tie floats to fuel drums and drop them over the side—but sister ships are a different matter. They'll do almost anything to give themselves an edge over the rest of the fleet. When they're finished, Linda hauls her lines back and the two crews wave goodbye as the boats draw apart. Half an hour later they're just white squares on each other's radar screens. The fuel is just the beginning of Billy's problems, though.

Throughout the trip he's been having trouble getting the ice machine to work properly. Ordinarily it's supposed to pump out three tons of ice a day, but the compressor is malfunctioning and cannot even handle half that. Day by day, in other words, the quality of the fish is starting to drop; a loss of just fifty cents a pound would mean $20,000 off the value of the catch. That could only be offset by catching more fish, which in turn means staying out even longer. It's a classic cost-benefit dilemma that fishermen have agonized over for centuries.

And then there's the crew. They get ugly at about the same rate as badly iced fish. By the end of a long trip they may be picking fights with one another, hoarding food, ostracizing the new members—acting, in short, like men in prison, which in some ways they are. There are stories of sword boats coming into port with crew members manacled to their bunks or tied to the headstay with monofilament line. It's a kind of Darwinism that keeps the boats stocked with rough, belligerent men who have already established themselves in the hierarchy. Billy would never permit that sort of viciousness on his boat—the crew are all friends, more or less, and he intends to keep it that way—but he knows you can lock six men together for only so long before someone gets crazy. They've been at sea three weeks and are looking at a minimum of two more. If they're going to salvage anything from the trip, they've got to catch some fish in a hurry.