OREGON TRAWLER

[Music] this is the uh fishing vessel betty a it's a 70 76 foot uh otter trawler commonly called a drag boat uh it is called a a dragger mainly because it drags a net along the bottom of the ocean to catch the fish the boat travels about nine miles an hour most displacement halls boats that pack a lot of fish do not travel very fast it is equipped with a 350 horsepower diesel engine the cruising range of the boat is is about 40 days my name is fred anderson i'm the owner and operator of the of the vessel it is my job to uh find the fish and and catch them it's the crew's job to take good care of the fish and clean them and ice them and sort them out we normally have a crew of of three people including myself occasionally when markets are good and fishing is good we have a crew of four including myself the west coast draggers use a stern reel to set their net and to land their net the reel is hydraulic powered it it comes in at 26 turns a minute and goes out about 130 40 turns it's uh depending on the opening of the valve but it will set five times faster than what it comes in the net reels have been used on this west coast for roughly 10 10 to 12 years now but we have found it to be a a very efficient way to operate these are the otterboards or the doors they're the what holds the net open the cable is attached to the to the doors from the winches when the doors hit the water they have a spreading effect one that is made of polypropylene one that is made of of uh nylon the net of polypropylene is a high opening net that you use on round fish such as lingcod and black cod and red snappers and perch pacific ocean perch the other net made of nylon is used for your different types of sole such as patrolling soul and the dover soul there is a mud line between the doors and the net and the mud line has this this name because it digs down into the mud and that causes a cloud that herds the fish back into the net here we're pulling the gear back you can see the spooler in front of the winches there that one of the crew is turning like spoons the wire on the drum more even and it also makes it so the crew cannot fall into the winches it's a very good safety thing the wire is constructed of steel galvanized steel and it's a six by seven there's a six strands and seven strands to the to the main strap my main job is to stay in the wheelhouse and keep the boat in the in the right depth we have a very good father meters and and laran systems for keeping the boat right where we want it a variation of of 100 to 200 feet of water can change the catch ratio here the doors are coming up it's the gear is landed in just reverse of what it's set the doors are hooked up on this uh this particular trip we were operating three men and myself some of the gear that we use now is called roller gear where we have the big rollers on the bottom of the net to go in rougher bottom the mud lines are transferred to the net reel by a short piece of cable and then wound in one thing that we have to be very careful of putting the net on the reel is that the balls of floats do not come out through the webbing and punch holes in it here comes the uh mud line gear going on the reel now soon the net will follow this this method of of dragging or auto trawling is a lot safer than the the old method of towing from the side of the boat and bringing all the gear up the side of the boat and stacking the net on deck and then setting the net in a circle over the side just loosely every once in a while they used to lose a man over the side in the net not that he drowned but he would or go to the bottom and then he would uh go out with it here you see the the boat is turning on the net now and it will come alongside and the fish will be hoist the board when this boat has a capacity of lifting roughly uh 6 000 pounds in one lift and when we have more than what we can lift it's we do what's called splitting here this is a split right there in other words there's a rope around the net through rings and it's lifted up and the rest of the fish spill back in the net in the water and you can take as many splits as you it makes no difference how much is in the net you split about 3 000 pounds off at a time by just going up and down up and down the lifting there of the net is is called that's hook lines and that's what we use there small winches uh with hydraulic power built on them one of them is used for the heavy lifts and one for the light one has a lifting capacity of five thousand and one about three thousand uh just by adding motors you can go to uh about any size left you want all the rigging is uh is way heavier than it needs to be but where you're working under it we don't want anybody to get hurt and that's the reason we make it so heavy on a drag boat several species come aboard at the same time and all these fish will be washed separated and stored down the hole in ice the net is rewound up on the reel after being emptied we are mainly fishing species that the plant wants different types of fish lay in different types of bottom your perch and [Music] rock pot and that type of fish is a you'll find on a harder bottom we use fish finding equipment we use one machine with a catherine tube that flashes a pitcher that shows exactly how far the fish off are off the bottom then we have a paper machine that has a graft that will show how hard the bottom is how uh where the fish are located and it'll also also show exactly which depth you're in uh depth is very important uh different species of fish live at different depths and a few fathoms one way or the other on depth can completely change your fishing when we have a poor toe we keep moving until we find good grounds we'll make short toes a duration of about an hour and a half and keep hauling back and checking the the production then when we find good production we lengthen the toes out to about three hours and we fish day and night right around the clock the net is uh always fishing except when you're bringing it back we make two to three day trips depending on on what market we're fishing on we usually try to get two trips a week when weather is uh permissible we fish mainly within a range of 100 miles of of coos bay that's 100 miles north and 100 miles south here comes another tow behind the boat now the vessel is uh one of the larger larger ones fishing out of the charleston area but it still just makes the two in a three-day trips for a fresh market we carry 16 000 gallons of fuel 1700 gallons of water drinking water this isn't really necessary for what we're doing now but if the boat was to go into the alaska fisheries or into the tuna fisheries then these things would all be very important here we are taking a another lift board for uh navigation we use a long-range uh radio navigation which is called iran our station is at in this areas at cape blanco and at astoria oregon we are normally fishing on the fresh market there's other types of drag boats that fish eight to ten days and store their fish in refrigerated holes and the fish are processed on shore and then immediately uh frozen but they they are not used on the fresh market after this length of time they are called fresh frozen fish [Music] [Applause] [Music] you