April 20, 2024 — When you’re 21, you know everything. When you’re 21 and a first-year captain of an Alaskan salmon seiner, you know even more. I was a 21-year-old captain once, and it took me all of 21 minutes to realize that I, in fact, did not know everything…
After a decade spent seining as a crewmember in perpetually progressing positions aboard my father’s high-producing salmon boat based out of Port Lions, Alaska (a picturesque pacific paradise positioned where the spruce meets the sea) in the Kodiak Island statistical salmon district, I was positive I was ready to fulfill my destiny as a salty sea-hardened highliner as the impending June 9th salmon season opener crept ever closer.
Despite my newfound status of skipper, my green as-grass crew, and my complete inability to grow a beard, morale was high. At the same time, we buttoned up boat work, and I did my downright damnedest to inspire and excite my crew about the upcoming opener with pre-season inspirational speeches during our nightly “team meetings” over barley pops and BBQ.
If my guys had any inkling, I commandeered most of my quotes from “Lord of the Rings” and “Rudy,” they kept it to themselves as we spent our last night in port preparing my newly purchased “pocket seiner” for our first trip by loading the last of the gourmet grub disguised as canned chili, a cup of noodles and store brand cereal aboard the boat in whatever nooks and crannies we could find. The borderline claustrophobic confines of the cabin were so short on space that Larry, my skiff-man, said it was “less cabin & more coffin.”
Somehow, no one seemed to mind that we’d eat like inmates, sleep like sardines, and likely smell like them for the next three months. We were boys, and to us, the ocean was just another adventure that we hoped would soon make us men.