: Erick Wickham
: Dead Fish and Fat Cats A No-Nonsense Journey Through Our Dysfunctional Fishing Industry
: Granville Island Publishing
: 9781926991245
: 1
: CHF 8.30
:
: Einzelne Wirtschaftszweige, Branchen
: English
: 300
: kein Kopierschutz
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
In this humorous, forthright and intelligent book, successful fishboat captain Eric Wickham explores how an industry that had flourished for decades and was supposedly being well-managed by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, could suddenly founder.

1


How I used to catch salmon


Regard me at 22: tall, with well-developed muscles, and a squarish and honest face that would have seemed right for the hero in an old Western. Not to say lusty and hard-drinking. But I knew about fish, not cattle. I was already a deck hand on my dad’s seagoing boat the summer I was a mere eight. Nature had also wired part of my brain for business. But those commercial capacities didn’t strike me — or anyone else — until much later. They weren’t visible in the fishing village where I grew up.

At 22, what sort of things did Inot know? Not enough about women’sminds. But I’m not going to say much about women. This book is about fish.

Here’s another thing I didn’t know at 22: what was developing in the Canadian fishing industry. In the political depths. Because salmon were easy to catch, I had moved out of the village and had my own boat. If there was any fish problem looming, I didn’t detect it.

There were many other things I didn’t know. I’ll get to them. This is a tale of bouncy optimism, rude setbacks, gradual awakening, increasing prosperity, fishing discoveries, melancholy interludes, and even a shipwreck.

But now consider my first boat —Joy II. It cost me $7,000, and carried a mortgage of $5,000. I paid a $2,000 deposit from savings I’d earned by crewing on other people’s boats. After high school I crewed full time for three years, mainly for my older brother Henry.

My first boat had a mild curse on it. I heard about it from the insurance auditor, who said: “For $7,000 you’re buying $10,000 worth of trouble.” I ignored him.

Now behold the boat itself. It’s 32 feet long (which means it would fit into your living room, if you have a spacious one). There’s a cabin, where I can sleep and keep out of the weather. There’s a refrigerator for some of my food supplies — I take food for a week. There’s a fibreglass fish-hold, kept cold with crushed ice. That’s for the dead salmon.

Joy II gets a clean-up.

I navigate by magnetic compass (this was 1964). A depth-sounder tells me how deep the bottom is. But it doesn’t alert me to schools of fish, the way every