The Math of my Winter
I was only supposed to be in Rhode Island for about 30 days when I came in December. It's now been about 90 days. When I drove across country, I thought that I had guaranteed work back in Washington in February and March but it fell through. I was subsequently left with no income and 11 monthly bills, 7 of them credit cards. Luckily a friend of mine is a captain on an offshore lobster boat, and he needed a guy to help out while they focused on catching crabs. In the winter, instead of hoping to catch 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of lobster the offshore lobster fleet moves its gear onto crabs and hopes to catch 15,000 to 30,000 pounds of crabs. Each crab weighing .7 to 1.2 or so pounds, which makes an average of about 1.3 crabs for every pound brought in.
The Timberwolf, the boat that my buddy captains, has 17 trawls on the crabs. Each trawl consists of 50 pots strung out in a line, with a line on each end. That makes 850 pots in total. They are in about 42 fathoms of water, which is about 252 feet. We average about 20,000 pounds of crab per trip.
When we approach each trawl, we grab the highflyer attached to the up and down line. A highflyer is a buoyant buoy with an aluminum pole that extends about 8 feet and has a radar reflector on the end. The line goes in the hauler, and said hauler pulls the line in until it gets to the first pot. When the pot comes, hopefully full of crabs, two of us grab it, turn it over and shake the shit out of it, emptying the crabs onto a specially designed table. Each pot, when empty, weighs 62 pounds, we average 20 pounds of keepable crabs per pot, so in reality the pots weigh 90 or more pounds, including the "bycatch". So, for the entire day, at this step of the process we lift 76,500 pounds. However, it's only 2 people, so really it's only 66% of the time that we're lifting this, so each guy here lifts 38,250 pounds.
After the crabs are dumped, they are culled and thrown into wheelbarrows to be wheeled back to the tanks, which are in the back of the boat. The third guy then takes the 62 pound pot and carries it to the back and stacks them one by one. So this guy ends up lifting 17,566 pounds, plus the 38,250 pounds when he's at either one of the other work stations. In total, each guy ends up lifting about 55,816 pounds, plus the fact that each crab is individually thrown into the wheelbarrow adds another 20,000 pounds divided by 3 guys.
It takes about 18 hours to get it all done, and we usually do it straight through. It's a long day, and I usually drink 2-5 sodas, 1 starbucks coffee drink, about 10 pints of water and however much lunchmeat, chips, and wheat-free shit I can cram down my throat. Sometimes I smoke a cigarette or two. We have satellite radio and listen to old hip hop and metal the whole time. It's actually pretty sweet, even though it's a shitload of work, it's with friends, and it's beautiful out there.
It then takes about 7 hours to drive the 54 miles back to port, where we have to lift all the crabs back out of the tanks and then into the building that buys them. On average we make between $550 to $900 bucks for the trip. Sometimes I think it's worth it, then I remember all of the death, the bait the crabs, the lobsters, the poor ling, hake and cod that come up in the pots and die from the pressure change that we can't legally keep that gets thrown back in the sea. Why can't rich people just eat lima beans and wheat grass, and why do broke fuckers like me always have to do this shit, oh, we don't, or do we
I was only supposed to be in Rhode Island for about 30 days when I came in December. It's now been about 90 days. When I drove across country, I thought that I had guaranteed work back in Washington in February and March but it fell through. I was subsequently left with no income and 11 monthly bills, 7 of them credit cards. Luckily a friend of mine is a captain on an offshore lobster boat, and he needed a guy to help out while they focused on catching crabs. In the winter, instead of hoping to catch 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of lobster the offshore lobster fleet moves its gear onto crabs and hopes to catch 15,000 to 30,000 pounds of crabs. Each crab weighing .7 to 1.2 or so pounds, which makes an average of about 1.3 crabs for every pound brought in.
The Timberwolf, the boat that my buddy captains, has 17 trawls on the crabs. Each trawl consists of 50 pots strung out in a line, with a line on each end. That makes 850 pots in total. They are in about 42 fathoms of water, which is about 252 feet. We average about 20,000 pounds of crab per trip.
When we approach each trawl, we grab the highflyer attached to the up and down line. A highflyer is a buoyant buoy with an aluminum pole that extends about 8 feet and has a radar reflector on the end. The line goes in the hauler, and said hauler pulls the line in until it gets to the first pot. When the pot comes, hopefully full of crabs, two of us grab it, turn it over and shake the shit out of it, emptying the crabs onto a specially designed table. Each pot, when empty, weighs 62 pounds, we average 20 pounds of keepable crabs per pot, so in reality the pots weigh 90 or more pounds, including the "bycatch". So, for the entire day, at this step of the process we lift 76,500 pounds. However, it's only 2 people, so really it's only 66% of the time that we're lifting this, so each guy here lifts 38,250 pounds.
After the crabs are dumped, they are culled and thrown into wheelbarrows to be wheeled back to the tanks, which are in the back of the boat. The third guy then takes the 62 pound pot and carries it to the back and stacks them one by one. So this guy ends up lifting 17,566 pounds, plus the 38,250 pounds when he's at either one of the other work stations. In total, each guy ends up lifting about 55,816 pounds, plus the fact that each crab is individually thrown into the wheelbarrow adds another 20,000 pounds divided by 3 guys.
It takes about 18 hours to get it all done, and we usually do it straight through. It's a long day, and I usually drink 2-5 sodas, 1 starbucks coffee drink, about 10 pints of water and however much lunchmeat, chips, and wheat-free shit I can cram down my throat. Sometimes I smoke a cigarette or two. We have satellite radio and listen to old hip hop and metal the whole time. It's actually pretty sweet, even though it's a shitload of work, it's with friends, and it's beautiful out there.
It then takes about 7 hours to drive the 54 miles back to port, where we have to lift all the crabs back out of the tanks and then into the building that buys them. On average we make between $550 to $900 bucks for the trip. Sometimes I think it's worth it, then I remember all of the death, the bait the crabs, the lobsters, the poor ling, hake and cod that come up in the pots and die from the pressure change that we can't legally keep that gets thrown back in the sea. Why can't rich people just eat lima beans and wheat grass, and why do broke fuckers like me always have to do this shit, oh, we don't, or do we