[Last modified: November, 15 2024 05:45 PM]
Seagulls screech overhead. They swirl and dive as I approach the fishing boat. The smell is overpowering, fish, shellfish, the sea, everything maritime. The boat is second from the harbour side so I traverse the gangplank to the first boat – balancing – the plank is wide but it’s unnerving nevertheless. My feet pick a way across the first boat, rope coils, lobster pots, cables, winches, wet everything wet. One boat to the next. I look down. Dark waters, scummy on the surface, weed, litter, foam, the colours of the rainbow traced in the sheen of diesel.
Ropes are thrown and the deep chug of the engine followed by the delicate nose of diesel we move away from stability. A gentle rock of the boat – my body adjusts to the rhythm. Past the other boats towards the harbour entrance. The rocking increases, not so gentle now – my body adjusts again. A small stagger as I try to synchronise my legs to the deck – soft knees I remember and eyes on the horizon. The wind picks up as we leave the harbour, spray splashes my face, salty, wet, the sharpness of cold water down the back of neck. I adjust my oilskins. It is cold but fresh and exhilarating, my mood lifts. This is what it’s about. This is man against nature – the noble fisherman!
Now we’re grabbing ropes. Wet ropes, serpentine coils, nets, buoys, all thrown overboard. So cold on the hands, “get some gloves man, you’ll rip the skin from your hands” as I drag the net to the side. Nausea. The swell is too much – my body is in revolt. I can’t adjust to the wallowing roll. I vomit. The crew laugh. I flush red despite the cold clamminess of my sickness. Can you be cold and clammy with sickness and hot and flushed with embarrassment at the same time? Apparently yes – the wonders of my body! “We’ve all been there mate”. I’m the rookie. I wretch, my stomach contracts again and again and again and again. Nothing left – farewell microbiome I think reflecting on ‘Gut Anthro’. I have no control over this body of mine. I steady myself. I’m an outsider here. The crew have their own routines, their own rhythm, often unspoken just done. Here there are no social norms there are fishing norms or really crew norms what happens here happens nowhere else, similar perhaps, but not the same. There is a kinship I think. But I know I really am not going to get much anthropology done today – a fish out of water or a lubber on a boat. I continue my participant observation of the sea as I bend over the side of the boat staring down – Captain Ahab I am not.