Within the fishing community, an incredible amount of diversity exists in boats, captains, and crews.  Take a walk along the docks in Homer and you’ll see boats ranging in size, color, and shape.  Some of them are so beautiful it seems a shame to use them for dirty fishing work, while others appear unable to leave the harbor without sinking.  Fishing crews range from young and eager deckhands to seasoned and tough fishing captains.  After seeing the wide range of boats and captains, I had no idea what the F/V Mylia Lynn or the crew would be like, but on both counts I was surprised and relieved.

The Mylia Lynn is a beautiful bright blue and yellow 53′ purse seiner that stood out among the Chignik fleet as one of the nicer looking boats.  From my greenhorn perspective, nice looking boat = good boat (this isn’t always true, but it can say a lot about the captains attention to his boat).

A typical fishing crew is made up of 4 members- a captain, a skiffman, a leads man, and a cork man.  With Axel as our captain, I filled the role of cork man, stacking the buoyant line of the net on deck, while Jeff stacked the heavy leads.  Lloyd ran the skiff that towed the end of the net away from the boat and doubled as our engineer.

As far as fishing crews go, the members of my crew were all comparatively normal (let’s be honest, you have to be a little crazy to fish in Alaska in the first place).   Axel had a family in town and was obviously serious about fishing, but he also wasn’t above having a good time with the crew.  He was full of stories from past years of fishing and would tell them as we mended net for hours on end.

Lloyd had spent most of his life fishing salmon, cod, and crab in the Bering Sea and around Kodiak Island.  As with Jeff and I, he was tall and blond, and we were mistaken for Norwegian brothers more than once by other fisherman.  Lloyd had a knack for working on engines and could tear apart and put together the boat when needed.  As skiffman, he spent the majority of his summer in a 15′ skiff by himself, and we attributed his craziness to the solitary nature of his job.

As the deckhands, Jeff and I worked shoulder to shoulder all summer, stacking the 1/4 mile net countless times a day.  At age 24 and recently graduated from college like myself, Jeff and I had a lot in common and enjoyed pulling pranks on Lloyd while keeping the deck clean and orderly while fishing.

Together we were the crew of the Mylia Lynn for the summer of 2010, and our summer proved to be full of adventure.  We had good days and bad days of fishing, as well as times of crew tension and moments of laughter – but that’s the world of a fishing boat in the North Pacific in Alaska.