Finding an Alaska Fishing Job: Part 1

Last June, I went back to Alaska. I left on my 29th birthday, and arrived by ferry to the familiar, sleepy fishing town of Haines two nights later. I walked up Main Street in the gray twilight, like I’d done countless times in the past, and welcomed myself back to town with a stout at the Pioneer Bar. Then I paid my tab and wandered down the empty streets to the small boat harbor. It still smelled the same--saltwater mixed with diesel and the faint scent of algae. The docks, fog clinging to their pilings, were more weather-worn than they’d been the last time I was here.

Alaska was a big part of my life in my early 20’s--I spent four summers working out of Haines as a deckhand on a commercial salmon fishing boat. As I walked up, alone, to the stall where the boat I worked on used to be, I caught myself thinking about how I first wound up on these docks eight years ago, and the crazy process that it took for me to land a commercial fishing job up here.

It’s hard to articulate exactly why, but becoming a deckhand in Alaska was my dream at the age of 20. An unsure, restless college kid trying to figure myself out, I think I really just needed a way to test myself. I had an overwhelming sense that my life in Upstate New York had been a little too quiet and scripted up until that point. I needed to go out, far from home, and have an old-school adventure in order to see what I was capable of. I think a lot of people in their late teens and early 20’s can relate to that feeling.

More than just a cure for postadolescent boredom, the risks and rewards of working on the sea were especially appealing. The job was something that I thought would be both dangerous and difficult--I saw it as a challenge. And by challenging myself, I hoped, I would come away with a greater sense of confidence and self-worth. I decided that getting on a boat was something that I had to do. The problem was, I had zero connections in Alaska and not the slightest idea of how to actually get a fishing job.

So late one May night from my cramped dorm room in Ithaca, and without any better ideas, I fired off a hurried Craigslist job application to username salmonslayer in a tiny Alaskan village called Chignik. I’d never heard of it before. The application was for a spot on a tender boat--the “helper” boats that assist the actual fishing boats with offloading fish, and provide them with fuel and ice while they’re out at sea. It wasn’t quite the “fishing” job I was dreaming of--but I figured that it would get me a much-needed foot in the door of an Alaskan fishery. Two nights later, I was jolted awake by my flip phone ringing at 1 am with an incoming call from Alaska. It was salmonslayer himself, telling me that I had the job.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can tell you that taking a last minute job on a boat through Craigslist was a piss-poor idea. Weeks after that phone call, I found myself crammed into a tiny, 6-seat bush plane flying high above the tundra, a death grip on my duffle bag as the Cessna descended shakily through the clouds and rain of the Alaska Peninsula. I watched as several warehouses and weathered shacks materialized out of the gloom below, and then a dirt landing strip lined with old orange traffic cones. I held on tight as the plane touched down, bouncing and rattling to an abrupt halt. With no roads in or out, I had just arrived in one of the most remote towns in the country, population 91.

When I got off the plane, there was nobody around except for a graying Aleut man in his early 40’s, sitting on an ATV and wearing a black hoodie that read “Bering Sea Fisherman 2010: Second to None.” He looked at me, unimpressed. “You the New York City boy? Get on,” he said, motioning to the four-wheeler with a tilt of his head and starting the engine. Gathering that he had been tasked with taking me to my boat, (and not about to argue the difference between NYC and Upstate), I climbed onto the duct-taped seat behind him and we began to speed down the unpaved main road to the docks. Without introducing himself, he reached into the pocket of his sweatshirt, pulled out a small plastic bottle of Evan Williams bourbon and handed it to me. “Welcome to Chignik.”

When we arrived at the harbor and I saw the boat I’d be working on, I immediately realized why taking a Craigslist job was a stupid thing to do. The boat was in bad shape--the hull was covered in rust, paint peeling off the sides, and the wooden deck was showing signs of rot. Evidently, I couldn’t hide my apprehension, because the man on the four wheeler chuckled when he saw the look on my face. “Yeah man, I wouldn’t want to work on that slab either,” he said, lighting up a smoke. “Only a matter of time before that one’s headed to Davy Jones.”

Life on the tender boat, I quickly learned, was pretty much as bad as I’d feared. In addition to feeling unsafe every time we left port, I was stuck on the boat with two men nearly fifty years my senior. The work was far less difficult or involved than I expected, and the down time between shifts was endless. After watching Castaway on VHS for the third time (and feeling a little bit like Tom Hanks’ character myself), I was fed up. I decided that I had to get a real fishing job, or bust. I knew that the ferry passed through Chignik once every two weeks, so I waited until it arrived--bound for Homer--said my goodbyes to the crew and jumped ship.

(*I learned years later that the same boat had crashed into the rocks while out at sea. All members aboard, hypothermic, were thankfully rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter.)

The MV Tustumena is one of only two certified ocean-going vessels in the Alaska Marine Highway System’s fleet--which meant that I had a full 24 hour ride ahead of me to kill, and nothing to look at but the open ocean. After watching Chignik disappear into the distance, I wedged myself onto a bench on the ferry’s top deck and tried to sleep. Between the boat’s incessant rocking and the roar of the engine, I quickly realized that sleep wasn’t in the cards. Instead, I walked down to the Pitch and Roll--a state-operated bar only slightly larger than a walk-in closet--and sat down at one of the four unoccupied barstools. I ordered an Alaskan Amber. Chignik is a dry town, and ironically, I had turned 21 while I was there. As the bartender slid me the bottle, it occured to me that this was my first legal beer. I stared out the window at the Gulf of Alaska and, since nobody else was around, toasted the abyss. “To finding a goddamn fishing job in Homer,” I thought.