The River Killers (16 page)

A minute later, I lost them as the angle of the sun changed, or they dived. Was that what had attracted the
Kelp
here? But I had to save that thought for later. For now, I allowed myself only herring thoughts.

“Let's anchor in Wigham Cove. We'll start sounding real early in the morning and try to figure out if these fish are going to hang around here or move back to Spiller. And if they're going to resume the spawn, or hold off for a bit.”

“I guess last night, those fish that we thought were moving into Spiller were really leaving,” Pete ruminated. “Leaving the same old bedroom to have more exciting sex in a strange motel room.” He shut up when George and I both stared at him.

We dropped the hook and had time to enjoy Alex's clam fritters with crab salad and freshly baked sourdough bread. I went to bed too early and couldn't convince my body to relax or my mind to mellow. I lay almost rigid and stared at the bottom of the upper bunk as a stampede of woolly thoughts raised dust clouds in my brain. Just as I was getting most of them into a corral, the alarm went off.

It was two in the morning and, for the first time, I was the first one up. I dressed warmly and went out on deck for a pee. As my knees braced against the cap rail and I looked out over the water, I could appreciate what a snug little refuge Wigham Cove offered. Black hills formed a full circle around us except for the narrow opening. The small saucer of sky wasn't big enough to show the moon, but the stars were bright and the air still. I shivered, but lingered despite the cold. The only sound was the gentle lapping of water. I wished the moment would last forever.

A light came on in the galley, and I knew George was up. Minutes later, I could smell coffee and I went inside. We exchanged quiet good mornings and waited for the coffee. Just as George began to pour two cups, Pete joined us and George poured a third. We sat at the table and didn't say anything for a while. Finally, I began to ask questions. Had there ever been a fishery where the fish appeared to be holding now? Were there any boundary issues? Had there ever been a spawn here, or was it just a holding area?

George deferred to Pete. “There's room for a few boats to work the top end of Chatfield and the east side of Cunningham. They used to fish around here during the reduction fishery, but I don't ever remember there being much of a spawn.”

“I'd definitely feel more comfortable back in Spiller,” George agreed. “I bet the fish would too. I think we need to give them time to move back there.”

Great. Another two or three days of rising tension and rising tempers. I guess this is what I got paid the big bucks for. “Well, let's go look around and try to figure out what the hell they're doing.”

As it turned out, they weren't doing much of anything, but at least I was able to report to the fleet that the fish hadn't disappeared. Some of the cooler heads led the discussion and it was agreed that as long as a large spawn didn't start, we would wait and hope the fish returned to Spiller Channel where there was room for the whole fleet to work in familiar waters.

By Friday, the bulk of the fish were back in Spiller Channel and they were starting to spawn. I flew back to Shearwater that evening for an advisors' meeting. We decided to release the fleet Saturday morning with a fishery anticipated for noon. As I flew back to join the
James Sinclair
in Spiller Channel, I could see that the water was white with spawn. Biology had become destiny. There would be no turning back.

Saturday morning, pre-dawn, there
was a mist low over the water, but I knew it would burn off by nine or ten o'clock. Because of the mist, the planes were still on the water when the fastest of the seine boats began arriving.

Power skiffs were being launched and rigged to tow, bow up behind the seine boats. Plastic tarps that had covered the nets were removed and rigged to protect windows and shiny areas from slime and scales. Pumps and pipes were rigged to pump, hopefully, thousands of tons of herring into hatches. Herring, in the modern fishery, were sucked out of the net via a vacuum pump lowered down into the bag once the net had been dried up.

Soon, the whole fleet was sounding the channel like hounds scenting for a fox. Twelve or so boats had opted to work on the fish that remained in Return Passage, that lessened the congestion in Spiller Channel slightly. By 0930, at least six planes were in the air. The airwaves crackled with cryptic messages, everyone's voices sounding strained. There were occasional angry exchanges and it was still two hours before the fishery.

The
Racer
was up at the top boundary and we were at the southern end of Spiller Channel. We'd dispatched two Zodiacs to patrol the fishery in Return Passage, even though the boundary was completely arbitrary and we weren't particularly worried about strict enforcement.

By 1100 hours, we were running the southern boundary. Pete was gobbling Tums and George's grip on the wheel was just a little tighter than normal. I scanned the fleet with the binoculars and noted Mark's boat, the
Coastal Provider
, motionless close in to the beach. He'd obviously found some fish and was sitting on them, hoping they wouldn't move.

Between us and the shore, the water came alive. A school of herring boiled to the surface and the green water turned to silver, like the body of some prehistoric monster writhing in the shallows. Squadrons of gulls shrieked as they dive-bombed the almost solid mass of tiny fish.

A half hour to go. The fleet of about fifty packers was hovering anxiously just outside the boundary. When the fishery opened, they would come charging in to assist their partner boats by sounding for fish, supplying new nets for ripped ones and functioning power skiffs for broken ones, by holding corklines threatening to sink with the weight of fish, and by pumping fish out of nets once they were dried up.

About two minutes before noon, all radio chatter stopped. Everyone was anticipating the announcement. Even if there had been a reason to, I wouldn't have had the nerve to disappoint them. I squeezed the mike button and tried to sound calm. “Attention, the roe herring fleet in areas seven-dash-thirteen and seven-dash-fourteen, this is the
James Sinclair
, please stand by for an announcement.” I looked around, checking for any false starts. Boats were circling at ever-increasing speeds but no one had released their skiff yet. “Attention, the roe herring fleet in areas seven-dash-thirteen and seven-dash-fourteen, fishing for herring by means of seine net is now declared open until further notice.” Before I could finish the announcement, every seine boat lucky enough to be on fish was revving full speed ahead and their power skiffs were revving full speed astern. I finished my little speech even though I knew no one was listening. “Any boat fishing must be licensed for the area and all crew must have personal fishing licenses. Any boat wishing to change nets must notify the
James Sinclair
and do so in a designated area.”

There were five boats within a half mile of us and each was peeling off a set. Since each net was about a third of a mile long, the exercise would obviously take some cooperation and planning. Unfortunately, cooperation and planning were not in the lexicon of most herring skippers. Three of the boats managed to complete adjacent circles. One boat was forced into a lopsided oval of a set and the fifth boat was forced outside. Unable to complete a circle without enclosing another boat, he was forced to backhaul.

The boat that was forced to haul back his net was essentially crippled since he couldn't use his propeller without sucking his net into it. Powerless, he was drifting close to the corkline of another boat. His power skiff attempted to pull him away but in doing so entangled his prop in another boat's net. Much consternation ensued.

A big steel boat came roaring over and started a set right in front of us. George was forced to veer to starboard to miss the guy's power skiff. I grabbed the mike. “
Susan Marie, James Sinclair
. You're right on the line now, skipper. You don't want to go any farther south.”

A curt “Roger that” acknowledged my warning. And when he finished the set, a long tangent of his net lay right on the boundary line, but not over. God, these guys were good.

Many boats had started to drum in now and seal bombs were exploding like mini depth charges. Meant to scare the fish into the net, they boomed and lit up the water. Smoke drifted over the water like a battle scene. I scanned the binoculars in Mark's direction and could see them drumming in, everything seemingly under control.

It was now 1245. I talked to the
Racer
and the two test boats. We deployed all of our Zodiacs to start gathering hails, each skipper's estimate of how many fish he had, so we could figure out how long to leave the fishery open. One of our Zodiacs in Return Passage came on the air, his voice muffled by the whine of his outboards. “Everybody's heading your way, Danny. The fish here were too skittish. They're hoping to get into Spiller before it closes.”

“Thanks for that. They should get here in time but there're no guarantees.”

And then things got interesting. Because the Hailing Game had begun. If a guy had any amount of fish at all, it would take hours to dry up and pump out and get ready for another set. Therefore it would be in his interest if the fishery closed and reopened again later. To that end, he would tell us that he'd caught a hell of a lot of fish, hoping to panic us into thinking that the quota had been caught. We'd close the fishery, later these guys would “reassess” their catch downwards, and we'd re-open the fishery when they were ready to go again.

In contrast, guys who had a fast few hundred tons on board and were operational again would want the fishery to stay open, so they'd hail low. And boats with no fish yet, like the guys racing down from Return Pass, could only pray that no one else would catch very much so we wouldn't close it.

We started to get preliminary hails. Some forty and fifty tons, a few in the two-hundred- to three-hundred-ton range. I noticed Mark was hailing four hundred and fifty tons. Good for him. There were a few outrageous hails, over a thousand tons. Pete and George and I collectively raised our eyebrows at these, but you never knew for sure. Sometimes fishermen told the truth.

We were two hours into the fishery now and—in spite of some obviously inflated hails—had only caught about twenty-five hundred tons of the thirty-five-hundred-ton quota. Every one of the boats that had been here at the opening gun had got its net wet. About thirty boats were pumping big sets and the rest were running around, ever more frantically, looking for a school of fish worth setting on. Looking south, I could see the rump fleet from Return Passage racing toward the boundary line.

Those twelve boats plus the fifteen or so already here and still operational represented considerable catching power. I didn't want to go over the quota. The fishery would have to close soon. “We'll have to update the hails. I'd like to be no more than five hundred tons behind the real-time catch. Then we'll close at three thousand tons hailed and hope the final number is not too far over.”

The first of the latecomers roaring across the line flew a blue JS Macmillan flag. We weren't supposed to have the company's secret channels, but some previous techie had scanned them into our multi-band radio. We heard the JS Macmillan pilot screaming at the skipper that there was a big school just inside the boundary on the western shore. The big steel boat, which I could see now was the
Jeanna B
, heeled hard over and headed for the beach. She made two circles and then dropped her skiff and began a set. I knew her skipper, Sam Milosevic, and I knew he wouldn't set on nothing.

One of our Zodiacs reported a new set halfway up the channel that looked very promising. The fishing boat had called for one of his packers to go alongside the corkline and hoist it up, the sign of a big set. The newcomers were now peeling off sets—probably “hope sets”—but some of them would get fish.

I took a deep breath, looked questioningly at Pete and George, and seeing no response to the obvious question, picked up the mike and closed the fishery.

“Attention the roe herring fleet in areas seven-dash-thirteen and seven-dash-fourteen, the fishery is now closed until further notice. An update relating to possible further openings will be provided on a radio conference call on channel 78A at 1800 hours this evening.”

The fishery had been open for two and a half hours, pretty much standard for a modern herring seine fishery. I hadn't done anything except look out the window of the
James Sinclair
and use the radiophone, yet I was totally drained. Things had gone well after the initial panic over the misbehavior of what were obviously some herring juvenile delinquents. All the boats were still floating and none of the humans had needed to be medivacked out. In the next few hours, we'd find out if we were under or over the quota, but I was confident that we would be pretty close to thirty-five hundred tons.

“Gentlemen,” I said, “allow me to buy you a coffee and offer you the delights of Chez Alex.”

As we started to shuffle out of the wheelhouse, a fax began to whirr from the printer. I lagged behind, idle curiosity directing me to wait for the two pages that slowly scrolled into the receiving tray. My bullshit antennae perked up when I saw the
SPLAG
letterhead. When the whole document had been printed, I read it and laughed. Pulling it from the printer, I took it back to the galley for the amusement of my colleagues.

Alex had boiled some prawns as a pre-dinner snack. There was a variety in the species belonging to the shrimp family: side-striped, humpback, pinks, and the spotted prawn, which was publicly known and sold as the “prawn,” while the other species were called “shrimp.” The deck crew had already done serious damage to what had been a ten-pound bag. Now Pete and George were seriously engaged in the prawn ballet: rip head off, tear breastplate, squeeze meat out, dip in garlic butter, and succulentify. I partook of a few squeeze-and-dips, succulentified to at least a temporary sufficement, and then waved the fax with greasy fingers.