The bunkroom door swings open and light from the ship’s passageway pulls me from a thick fog of sleep. Soon, the silhouette of a deckhand appears with a coarse whisper: “hey observer, we’re going to haul in 15 minutes.” Wearily, I swing my legs over the top bunk, trying not to step on my slumbering bunkmate below, but the swells are big today and I lose my footing. For a moment, I worry that I booted him in the head, but he lets out an unbothered snore. I hop backward onto the floor and fumble around the darkness in search of enough clothing layers to overcome the Bering Sea cold. 

I nudge open the bunkroom door, blinded again by the bright passageway light. The galley is only ten feet away, so I wobble toward the smell of burning coffee and greasy bacon. After my first trip as an observer, I wised up and brought my own coffee and French press to avoid this very situation. But burnt coffee, as it turned out, was the least of my problems. Over my 250 days at sea as an observer, I encountered a range of unexpected hurdles, like having to extract a fish scale from my eye, pop my own dislocated kneecap back into place, cut out a shark eyeball (for research purposes, of course), and master the art of sharing a bathroom with six fishermen.

I push those flashbacks from my mind, blissfully flood my coffee grounds with hot water, and glance at the wall clock. It reads a few minutes past 1:00, but I check the nearest porthole to confirm that it is 1:00 am, not 1:00 pm. Sometimes, it can be hard to keep track of time with the erratic sleep schedule that comes from fishing around the clock. The sun glows a pale yellow just above the horizon, so I conclude that it is just after midnight. This far north in the summer, the sun never really sets.

Fortunately, I have the galley to myself; all the fishermen on this longliner are below deck, getting ready for the captain to start pulling up the line. A longline is composed of thousands of hooks attached to a line that can reach a few miles in length, each end flagged with a neon buoy. The hooks are baited and dropped to the seafloor where they attract an assortment of marine life. After the hooks sit on the bottom for a few hours, the crew gives the observer (me) the legally required 15-minute warning before they start hauling the line up to the boat. 

“At present, there are 891 certified observers in the United States, covering 73,743 total days at sea each year.” 

With my coffee brewed, my 15-minute warning has dwindled to less than 10 minutes before the hooks start coming up. I set my cup aside, get out a waterproof paper, and write down a plan to collect a sample of the catch. The boat has already brought up dozens of hauls this trip, so setting up a sampling plan is now a fairly robotic task. But it wasn’t always so—before setting out to sea for the first time, each observer is required to complete an intensive training program to learn about proper data collection protocols, safety at sea, and species identification, among many other things. After the training, observers are deployed to boats all around the North Pacific. This started in earnest in 1990, when the North Pacific Observer Program was created to collect reliable fisheries data for in-season management. Now, most ships that fish commercially in the North Pacific are required to carry a fisheries observer onboard. At present, there are 891 certified observers in the United States, covering 73,743 total days at sea each year. Some vessels have replaced observers with video cameras, a new data collection method allowed in the Electronic Monitoring trial program.

With my sampling plan written down, I navigate through the boat’s labyrinth of passageways into the gear room, which immediately greets me with a hot blast of cigarette smoke and stale fish. I pull on my comically stinky rain gear, zip on my lifejacket dusted in fish scales, and roll a pair of earplugs in place before marching through the factory toward the deck. 

Boats like this one, with entire factory systems on board, are called “catcher-processors.” In the factory, fish are turned into a product that is ready to be exported. The crew sorts fish by size, slices them into filets, and then packages the filets neatly into blocks that are frozen, bagged, and stamped with information for the fish buyer. Catcher-processors aren’t exclusively longliners, though. Some trawlers, like the Alaska Ocean, a megaship featured in an episode of Modern Marvels, also process their catch onboard. While these floating factories tend to garner attention for their size and ability to catch enormous amounts of fish, there are only a few in the Alaskan fleet. In reality, over 80% of the commercially registered fishing ships in the North Pacific are smaller “catcher vessels”. Unlike the factory ships, catcher vessels tend to fish for a few days at most, then offload their hauls to an onshore factory or mothership to handle the fish processing.

Up on deck, my eyes sting from the saltwater whipping up from the ocean below as it collides with the ship. I am positioned at the railing above the “rolling station,” where the line is being brought on board. From this vantage point, I watch the rollerman methodically swing his gaff, pulling each fish onto the ship. I yell out “bycatch” loud enough for him to hear over the roar of the engine and whistle of the factory machinery. With this signal, instead of knocking the unwanted fish back into the sea, he begins to fling the bycatch into baskets so that I can collect data on them. 

For nearly an hour, I count and identify every single thing that comes up on a hook: fish, crabs, rocks, skates, trash, even the occasional rubber boot. On good days, this could be hundreds of fish. On bad days, it’s nothing but empty hooks. Once this counting period ends, I head into the factory to count and weigh each item in the bycatch baskets.

“[Observer] data is essential for fisheries management. By systematically sampling every haul—whether that be a net, a line, or a pot—observers provide the National Marine Fisheries Service with data to assess fish stocks in real-time.” 

This data is essential for fisheries management. By systematically sampling every haul—whether that be a net, a line, or a pot—observers provide the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) with data to assess fish stocks in real-time. In addition to collecting catch data, observers also report marine mammal interactions, bird sightings, and safety concerns. Depending on the fishery, observers take biological samples from the fish, like scales, fin clips, and otoliths (fish ear bones). These samples can then be used by researchers to derive more detailed information from the organism, such as genetic composition, age, and growth rates. 

After counting and weighing all the bycatch in the baskets, I rinse the scales and slime off my data sheet and climb the stairs to the wheelhouse. This is the captain’s domain: he sits on a throne-like seat and grumbles at the greenhorn rollerman who just can’t seem to land fish on the boat. I faithfully plug my data into the NMFS database, lingering a few extra minutes to squeeze in as much WiFi as I can, the only connection on the boat. After transmitting the data to NMFS, I retreat to my bunk for a quick nap before it’s time to take another sample of this haul.

Hours later, once the entire line has been brought onboard, I shower off the fish scales that have crusted into my hair and climb back into the top bunk. With the boat fishing around the clock, it is only a matter of time until I see the familiar blast of light and hear the whisper, “hey observer…”