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What They Do

Fishing and Hunting Workers Career Video

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There are many kinds of commercial fishers, but most make their living fishing along the coasts of the continent.

Karen Fulton is the editor of a fishing magazine. She believes that the once-thriving North Atlantic fishery is "a dying thing -- both wages and fishing is poor."

Steward Murray has more than 45 years of experience as a professional fisher. He is also president of a fishers' association. His organization was put together in the early 1980s to deal with the fisheries and various government agencies.

Murray laments the loss of freedom due to huge numbers of government regulations. But he does support whatever means are necessary to conserve fish stocks in the overfished North Atlantic. "If you don't have fish, you can't be a fisherman," he says.

Another longtime fisher, Roger Davies, goes after the enormous Pacific halibut and sablefish. From the Bering Sea to the southern coast of Washington, Davies saw the rise and collapse of much of the North Pacific fishery.

"We worked strictly on shares," says Davies. "A share per man and a share for the boat. It was free enterprise with a vengeance. But the problems that we see today aren't new ones. Conservation saved the halibut back in the 1930s when it was being overfished. The greed factor always kicks in."

Davies says working as a professional fisher is a wonderful life, and he loved it. Not only did he love the life on the waves, but the money was surprisingly good.

"I used to make as much money in a season -- we had to -- as a carpenter or piledriver would all year long. But it could be rough. Ninety and 100 mile-per-hour winds and having to recover the fishing gear. I've been out in weather worse than that."

For those who might find it tough to find work on a boat crew, Davies points out that even he had to scramble hard for two years before a skipper would take him on. He recommends that "green kids" hang around the docks and ask the fishers and skippers questions.

"Fishermen have always been a polite group. Nobody ever got cut down for asking questions."

Davies believes that with today's plastic gear, there isn't the skill needed that was absolutely essential in years past. "You don't even need to know as many knots!"

Don Pepper is a professor of fisheries economics. He is also a commercial fisher during the salmon and herring season.

Pepper says the single most important factor affecting a fisher is the seasons. "In winter, you have the herring spawn. In spring, the halibut are in the shallows. All year round, you have crab and other shellfish. The salmon come in the summer, but also in cycles. They come to the same river to spawn in different years, so that determines where you're going to fish."

As well, there are larger cycles and effects -- global warming, for instance -- that have consequences on fishing.

On the West Coast, there are many more men than women fishing. However, the East Coast fisheries have long employed roughly equal numbers of men and women.

Bob Rezansoff is president of a fishing vessel owners association. He says physical strength is a necessary part of working on a boat or as part of the "beach crew" securing one end of a net's rope to a stout tree on shore. He believes men are more suited to this kind of work.

"Women work on the [Pacific] trawlers," he says. "It's a lot of long hours, but not brute strength."

Just the Facts

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At a Glance

Take in the haul from the seas

  • Many fishers focus on selective fishing
  • Physical strength is important
  • You'll have to learn many of the necessary skills on the job