[The Marine Quarterly, Spring edition Sept 2015 – Jon Tucker]
Sixty miles out from New Zealand’s west coast, the Tasman Sea can be as unforgiving as the North Atlantic when the Lows roll in. Yesterday there were twenty boats fishing in a fifteen square mile area, but today all except one have gone – diving for cover across the notorious Manukau bar before the rising swells close Auckland’s little used west coast back door for an indeterminate duration.
Aboard the 48 foot steel fishing ketch Sunniva, Colin and I have opted to ride this gale out. We are still towing eight of our thirteen tuna lures as the rising seas begin to sweep the aft deck. Colin chose to cut the engine – a 6LX Gardiner – an hour ago, bearing away when the nor-westerly rose above 25 knots, and we are now reaching under reefed main and stays’l. The disadvantage of trolling with a strong beam wind is that the nylon lines arc to leeward in our wake and the lures are prone to cross each other, becoming tangled in the white-capped turbulence astern.
‘FISH’ yells Colin as first one then three lines suddenly go bar-tight, zipping steeply downwards. The ensuing drill has become second nature by now, but as we hasten aft from the warmth of the wheelhouse, we are both aware of the need for caution on an exposed heeling deck swept with knee deep green water.
It is a profitable enough exercise, and within twenty minutes of vigorous action, nine good sized albacore tuna, ranging from six to eight kilograms, are sloshing among the melting ice in the slurry bin.
“That’s enough,” yells Colin, his Canadian accent barely audible above the multitude of noises which accompany any steel sailing vessel in a seaway. “I’ll get the lines in while you ice these fish down. We’re heaving to till this blows out.”
*
Sunniva was built in the late seventies as the fuel crisis began to bite. Designed by Dunedin naval architect John Hakker, she was New Zealand’s first purpose-built sailing fishing boat for thirty-odd years. Ketch rigged with four roller-furling sails and a five tonne ice hold, she began life long-lining for gummy sharks – with a family trip to Tonga as a bonus for her first owner’s wife and two kids. Evidence of that tropical voyage is still evident from my bunk in the focs’le, with the remnants of children’s coloured comic stickers adorning the deck-head. When Colin Armstrong bought her in the early nineties, a refit including replacement of sections of the 5mm bottom plates of her hard-chine hull was necessary before beginning the next phase of her fishing career.
I had chanced upon Colin and his distinctive vessel in Gisborne during a Wellington to Auckland yacht delivery in late 1994. My bread-and-butter career teaching History and Geography couldn’t compete with his offer for me to join him for the December-March tuna season.
Tuna trolling is unquestionably one of the most sustainable forms of commercial fishing in existence. Of the huge schools of pelagic albacore (and the less desirable skipjack), only a tiny percentage will successfully take a lure. Even when twenty boats are in a ‘hotspot’ – a locality where the fish have aggregated briefly – the bulk of the fish will live to see another year (unlike those caught in a seine net). New Zealand’s so-called ‘tuna fleet’ in the nineties comprised an odd-ball mix of smallish cray-fishing boats, trawlers and longliners which had left their various local grounds for a month or three in search of a little adventure and camaraderie. Maybe forty in all, seldom over fifty feet in length, they could be found in small packs working a variety of locations at any given time during the season. The mentality and lingo was that the old-time goldfields. They would head out ‘prospecting’, ‘stake their claims’ (and share their discoveries with only their closest mates), then ‘set up camp’ each night to lie on sea anchors in the ever-changing tuna locations.
Yet despite any rivalry, the HF 4417 mHz frequency would be alive at night with catch figures and essential information on who was discharging into which ports. Nobody wanted to be tied up for days in port waiting on a queue for ice supplies. And when anyone was in trouble there would always be plenty of offers for engine spares or even a tow.
*
It is now 40 hours since Sunniva was hove to, and the day has dawned to a sullen grey sea – a mere fifteen knots of wind-slop on top of a three metre groundswell. Sixty-odd miles away, inside Manukau harbour, twenty boat crews must by now be fretting in their wheel-houses, anxious for the swell at the entrance to ease sufficiently for the barway to be declared safe. Colin and I are stiff from the hours of ‘dodging’ at the height of the blow yesterday – hand-steering through large breaking seas in single hour watches with the deep-reefed main sheeted flat and the Gardner growling underneath the wheelhouse. It had been a relief to set a backed stays’l before dark and lash the helm down again as the weather perceptibly eased. Now with the prognosis of three better days, we are keen to get the lures back in.
Sunniva’s yacht hull has given us a clear edge over our competitors. Breakfast over, we begin working our way southwards towards Cape Egmont, watching the sounder and thermometer and streaming our thirteen lures, brightly coloured this time, as is the norm for a dull day. We are the sole prospectors for now in this patch of the Tasman Sea.
*
The lure of gold is not dissimilar to the grip that this type of fishing has on an adventurous psyche. After my season of albacore fishing with Colin, returning to a temporary teaching position was somewhat anticlimactic. However within a few months, Barbara and I were off on another adventure – sailing our own 45 foot gaff ketch New Zealand Maid with three of our five sons on a 3000 mile midwinter downwind sleigh ride through the roaring forties from Wellington to Mururoa, as part of an informal international flotilla in protest against the resumption of French nuclear testing.
The impending hurricane season eventually forced us back to New Zealand, and within days there was a call from Colin. He had agreed to deliver a ninety foot fishing boat to Wellington from Japan. Barbara had experienced three trips with us the previous year, and needless to say we both leapt at the chance to run Sunniva for the next three months.
And so another season unfolded. This time there were four of us aboard, as our eleven and twelve year old sons Sam and Matt were both more than happy to continue their correspondence education for another term with the bonus of pulling fish on the good days.
The lessons learnt from the previous season stood us in good stead. Sunniva could be sailed or motor-sailed to and from the fishing grounds, but streaming lures was best done under power. Dead upwind and dead downwind, a mile or two at a time, was the best way to tow lures – less chance of tangling lines or crossing paths with other boats in the locality. For most tuna boats with their distinctive poles, eight lures was the maximum. Sunniva was exceptional, thanks to her ketch rig. Two particularly long poles angled out to port and starboard from the mizzen chainplates, stayed to the lofty mast-head, with each one streaming three lines of dissimilar lengths. Another two short poles were stayed off the main chainplates, each supporting a five metre surface lure as well as a downrigger which towed a short line two fathoms below our aft quarters. Two other downriggers angled steeply down from each side of the transom, and finally – in an ultimate nose-thumbing to the mere mortals of the fleet – a thirty metre line streamed aft from the mizzen mast-head. No other boat in the fleet could tow the number of lures as we did on Sunniva.
When it came to pulling fish aboard, we were in reality almost as limited as the boats around us. Two hydraulic friction winches could do the donkey work pulling long lines while we hand-hauled the short ones. With our young crew as extras, it was possible to be bringing in six fish simultaneously. The reality, though, was that an average day might see around seventy or eighty fish in total, although our all-time record of two tonnes of 5 kilo fish was the day’s catch that could be off-handedly referred to as if it were the norm!
The albacore are certainly a fascinating fish. Their white flesh has a poultry-like texture when cooked, giving rise to the term ‘Chicken of the Sea’ in the US where its consumption far outstrips any other fish species. Capable of incredible speed, their respiratory system requires a secondary ‘booster’ to keep their metabolism efficient. As a result, once caught, they will heat up steadily, contaminating their flesh with dangerous levels of histamines unless rapidly chilled in a slurry of ice and water. The not uncommon horror stories of entire catches being condemned on discharge kept most prudent skippers wary of the age-old ‘fisherman’s frenzy’ which might see a ton or more tuna flapping on a sun-warmed deck as the crew continued to haul a ‘full-house’ of lines.
The strategy of prospecting is an art in itself. Albacore are extremely sensitive to temperature variations, and can be found in waters between 14 and 17 degrees Centigrade, unlike their cousins the skipjack and yellowfin which cope with somewhat warmer waters. Weekly satellite charts reveal the surface isotherms, which are the prospectors’ first clues on likely locations for hotspots. Of particular interest are the thermal breaks where warmer water meets slightly cooler currents, akin to an aquatic cold front. Schools will mass behind these breaks, unwilling to venture into any water temperature outside their comfort zone. As the season progresses, the schools migrate southwards in synch with the surface temperatures down the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island, then gradually northwards again.
Another valuable tool for the prospector is the ‘bathy chart’; a map detailing the topographic contours (bathymetry) of the sea-bottom. Undersea peaks, canyons, trenches, plateaux and rises – all with their own local names – interact with ocean currents to generate upwellings of squid and other small-fry which are the feed of the ever-hungry schools of albacore. With its metabolic necessity to be continually on the move, each fish consumes around a quarter of its body weight each day.
Once a prospecting vessel strikes a ‘hot-spot’ her skipper is obligated to inform his best mates of the location. In so doing, he will have returned a similar favour or ensured a future one. However the airwaves have ears, and the manner of passing on confidential lat/long details could entail considerable ingenuity. Elaborate codes would often be developed between allied vessels, utilising obscure frequencies. Mobile phones – when in range – could be useful too. However with the rogue vessels becoming equipped with scanners, such airwave communications were never infallible. I well remember a particular vessel once steaming alongside, her skipper furtively holding up a battered oilskin displaying a simple set of lat/long numbers, before slipping discretely away to seaward.
Human nature being what it is, however, the location of a hotspot could seldom remain confidential for long. In the nature of a multitude of overlapping alliances, the details would become steadily disseminated across a hundred square miles, and within a dozen hours the hotspot could well find itself home to a score of diverse craft.
Early starts and busy evenings would be taken for granted aboard Sunniva, as indeed is the case on most fishing boats. ‘Morning bite’ and ‘evening bite’ on an albacore boat had nothing to do with breakfast or dinner. The terms referred to the greater likelihood for fish to take a lure as the light dimmed and sea surface cooled a little. Even our two boys revelled in the chance for extra action, after watching for the elusive green flash as the sun’s upper limb disappeared over the horizon. Then, once darkness fell and mealtime was over there would be lines to retrieve and the business of making camp for the night.
The strategy of staying put for the night, some sixty-odd miles offshore, would vary from vessel to vessel. Some of the larger boats might simply set a parachute sea-anchor, flick on the radar alarm and turn in for the night. Others would launch less expensive drag devices, such as two or three fish bins bridled to the bow. Only the more vigilant might set anchor watches, or compromise like us with alternating lookout alarms set on the hour.
Aboard Sunniva lying ahull under reefed main overnight was our most comfortable option to escape the sleep-defying roll of a twin-masted yacht without steadying sail. It was a judgement call to steam upwind for an agreed guesswork distance to compensate for overnight drift, sheet the main amidships, lash the helm down and turn on the mast-head strobe. Our strobe was not technically legal, but neither were anchor lights or navigation lights for a vessel under way but not under command. Overnight collisions were not unheard of either, and on a dark night a red or green light from a drifting vessel might well not portray her actual direction of travel.
For Barbara, as school-mistress and first mate combined, the boys’ schoolwork provided an extra dimension. When Sam’s science set called for a study of spiders, her solution was to simply modify the exercise. With a little imagination, Sam was soon put to work measuring and weighing various samples of our catch. Weeks later came back his teacher’s enthusiastic endorsement.
*
The albacore schools still migrate to the Tasman Sea in the Southern Hemisphere summer – those which have survived the ravages of the Pacific seiners. But the fleet has dwindled. Like so many parts of the world, the big New Zealand company-owned ex-Icelandic trawlers have shouldered the small operators aside. An entire snapper ground which would provide a forty foot long-liner with a sustainable season’s worth of export quality fish can be cleaned out in two days by pair trawlers, the bycatch belly-up in their wake and the crushed cod-end snapper fit for little else but fish fingers. The small harbours are now littered with abandoned mid-sized fishing vessels, their carvel planking as gapped as venetian blinds. The lucky ones have been resurrected as cruising boats. Only a handful of adventurous cray-fishers might occasionally be sighted offshore, prospecting in the hope of eking out their diminishing incomes with some low-priced albacore and skipjack catches.
And Sunniva survives too. Recently she could be seen in the trade-a-boat column, advertised as a sturdy potential cruising vessel – in need of a little TLC.
