You can distinguish them at sea, even at great distances. They appear on the horizon as two little specks which never change relative position. At night it is the same. The pinpricks of light from their swaying mastheads are as twin stars low to the horizon, traveling their determined courses, but always the same distance apart. By these signs you will know they are pair trawlers, fishing together. But merely to say "together" is not enough; their true function must be expressed in stronger terms. What they are is two boats acting as one, firmly bonded by the the towing of a common net. How well they fare in this difficult union depends on the closest cooperation, on complete coordination of every move (Warner, 1977).[1]
As the quote
above suggests, pair-trawling entails a special kind of activity—one that is
physically and socially (and thus also cognitively) difficult to organize. It is commonly believed (by fishermen from
English speaking countries at least, cf. Thomson, 1978) that this
organization—and thus effective fishing with this technique—is highly
problematic given the stereotype of independent-minded captains who are
incapable of long-term, intimate cooperation.
In my experience fishing with a pair from Vindö this kind of cooperation
was both "natural" and "effective," although these evaluations are very much
complicated by the details of the practice and the changing ecological,
economic, and political environments in which it takes place.
Flyttrålfiske[2]
(known in English as "mid-water
pair-trawling") is a pelagic fishing technique whereby two boats draw a trawl—a
sock-like net, suspended between them—through the water. After several hours (or when the trawl is
judged to be full, or departure for port is required) the trawl is hauled on
board, the fish emptied into the hull for sorting, the trawl reset in the water
and the cycle repeated or departure for port initiated. One claim often heard among pair fishermen
of the Göteborg region is that two boats working together (or better yet,
working together with other pairs of boats) can have an advantage over boats
working alone. While this claim is
(under certain conditions) true, it ignores many of the complexities involved
in this cultural activity. Modern flyttrålfiske entails the use of two
ships, each generally around 30m in length with motor size on the order of
1000hp. To man each of these boats,
while pair-trawling for herring, requires a crew of about 5 men although crew
size is generally 6 or 7 to accommodate time off, sickness, etc. The single most impressive aspect of the flyttrål, both physically and
sociologically, is it's flexibility—it's capacity to be used in conjunction
with on-line sonar images of where in the water fish and obstacles are
located—enabling fishing in nearly all types of water, wherever there is
herring. The practice of modern mid-water pair-trawling along this coast—that
is, the on-the-water actions and their historical, social, and cognitive
entailments—is precisely what this and the following chapters are about.
The data for
this and the chapter following are derived from a total of seven weeks on board
a pair of trawlers from Vindö.
Additional data is drawn from my participation with these fishermen as
members of Vindö society, from interviews with these and other fishermen and
island residents, from written materials made available by the fishermen's
regional and national organizations (Svenska Västkustfiskarnas Centralförbund
and Svenska Fiskares Riksförbund) and Göteborgs Universitet, and from my
participation on board other fishing boats during my year-long residence on
Vindö. The subject of the next chapter is a "micro-analysis" of
fishing activity, constructed from audio and video data recorded while
pair-trawling for herring in the Kattegatt straits between Denmark and
Sweden. The purpose of the present
chapter is to build the ethnographic background necessary for that analysis and
to investigate the cognitive, social, and cultural-historical structural
properties of the practice of flyttrålfiske.
A
micro-analysis begins with a set of human actions—performances in a practice
bounded in time and physical and cultural space—and works toward a set of
regularities or principles which relate the actions to each other and the
contexts in which they take place.[3] As with all human actions, the observed set is
embedded in a cultural and physical context—actions are constrained by the
situation and draw upon resources available within this context for their
performance. Remove or alter the
context or (imagine a different) historical trajectory of the practice, and the
actions produced take on significantly different forms and meanings. This is true not simply because different
internal structures of the cognitive actors involved are evoked or put into
motion by different stimuli. Rather,
human cognition is context-sensitive because human actions are inherently mediated by the mutual organization of internal and external
structure and changes in this arrangement introduce fundamentally altered
patterns of behavior and meaning.
The difference
is an important one. For the former
view (call it the "competence view," in which the environment provides stimuli
which simply evoke or activate internal cognitive processes), actions are
generated by a mental grammar and are relatively context free. That is, the explanations given to cognitive
events are founded upon the structural/functional properties attributed to be
universal aspects of the brain, or "cognitive processes." Even if it is granted that different
cultures provide for different mental contents (thoughts, perceptions,
cognitions), culture is generally taken to be simply data which fill the slots
operated upon by universal cognitive processes. The object of cultural analysis, according to this view, is
simply to generate a larger sample of possible mental contents in order to
understand more about the universal properties of the brain which operate upon
them.
For the latter
view (call it the "performance view," in which all cognitive acts are mediated
by the situation in its historical, material, and social entailments), actions
are problematically generated by bringing internal and external structures into
coordination—the environment is, in an important sense, half of the material
from which action is produced. Internal structures, according to the performance
view, are thus not optimally described as discursively organized knowledge,
understandings, plans, propositions, or goal structures whose parsing, search,
or deep-structure-to-surface-structure generation is the essence of cognition. Internal structures are seen, instead, to be
learned arrangements of more general information processing resources for
performing appropriately in given contexts.[4] Internal structure, therefore, must be
understood with recourse to the patterns of actual
performances they enable, in the actual
situations where they are carried out, and with reference to the local sets of
meanings attributed or evoked in the process.
In summary, a
micro-analysis aims to describe human action by paying close attention to the
details of performance, as carried out in contexts which recur with enough
regularity (as is the case in any socially vital, physically bounded,
historically significant practice) to enable the observation of patterned actions. The goal of such an analysis is to work from
these patterns, via exemplary instances, to an account of the constraints and
resources (both external and internal, cultural and natural) which structure
the activity and the ways in which they do so.
However, before the micro-analysis can be introduced (the subject of the
next chapter), there is much
background material to cover, and relevant observations to make, about the
cultural context and content of the practice of flyttrålfiske.
Trawling for
bottom-dwelling fish with pairs of boats is probably as old as the practice of
trawling itself. Industrial
pair-trawling for bottom-dwelling species such as hake and cod saw it's debut
in earnest in the 1930's in the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea (Thomson,
1978). One of the primary constraints
on trawling technologies has always been the need for a suitable mechanism for
keeping the trawl trimmed as it is towed through the water—that is, a means for
providing maximum catching capacity with a minimum of drag. Using pairs of boats for drawing the trawl
is ideal for meeting these constraints.
Each boat provides the needed lateral force to keep the trawl open, and
the spatially separated ships afford more efficient use of engine power than a
single large ship is capable of providing.
Mid-water trawls have, as the name
suggests, the ability to catch fish which spend most of their time swimming or
drifting (pelagic fish, like herring) rather than sitting on or drifting near
the bottom (like cod, hake, plaice, and flounder). The invention of mid-water pair-trawling is credited to Yngves
Berntsson of Fotö, an island in the Göteborg region, who first experimented
with this type of fishing in 1943-44 (Thomson, 1978:77). The design of the trawl was elaborated into
a form—largely unchanged today—by a Dane, Robert Larsen of Skagen (a major
Danish port which lies at the northernmost tip of Denmark, 60 nautical miles
directly west of Göteborg) in the years 1945-48. The "mother" of this invention was clearly the long-standing
importance of the herring fishery in this region, and the diminishing returns
of traditional techniques.
As described in
the previous chapter, herring holds a place of special importance in Swedish
(indeed, Northern European) culture, making it the catch of choice for hundreds
of years in this region of the world.
In the first decades of this century, the technique of purse seining was
the dominant means for catching herring.
Imported from the United States via England and Norway, purse seining
afforded a natural transition for the vadlag
("net teams") of the west coast of Sweden—from their land-based practice to a
mobile fleet of vadfiske ("net
fishing") boats—in the last decades of the 19th century. In the 1920's, as the last sill period receded into history—and the
lucrative times of herring fishing with it—fishermen turned to more mobile and
less labor intensive forms of fishing.
What began, with the development of the motor and sheltered boat as a
way to move a land-based fishing technique (encircle and capture) and its
social entailments (large teams of fishermen) out onto the water, soon gave
rise to new techniques which exploited the mobility of one's gear as leverage
upon the problem of increasing yields while reducing costs. This is a trend which was to continue into
modern times.[5]
The quotation
which opened this chapter described a scene of two boats, fixed with respect to
each other on the surface of the water.
In fact, seen at a distance the two boats appear fixed in space, seldom
displaying the relative change in position that would reveal motion, as with
most boats seen on the horizon. The
boats of a pair move together for long periods of time on precisely parallel
courses, apparently attached to each other.
Were we to move closer, the line which seems to connect the boats would
twist and turn (now in two dimensional space) as the pair maneuvers around
wrecks on the ocean floor and changes in bottom contours or fish population,
and act to avoid other boats and pairs in the vicinity.
Figure 15 shows
a schematic drawing of flyttrålfiske. As may be evident from the figure, the
"line" which connects the pair of boats is primarily a product of the two
captains coordinating their steering so as to maintain a constant distance
between their boats.[6] This is an important aspect of the technique
because it fixes one of the variables responsible for controlling the depth of
the trawl (see below). In fact, the
general technique employed can be characterized as an effort to fix as many of
these variables as possible (ideally all but one) in order to put the trawl at
a depth where it captures the most fish possible and yet accommodates quick
changes to that depth should obstacles which endanger the trawl and its
contents suddenly appear.
Trawls are
expensive to replace, and the ocean floor is covered with objects which can
inflict damage that could be costly for the teams, in both repair bills and
lost productivity. All told, a trawl
costs on the order of $30,000 to $50,000, not including cable (which runs about
$3 to $4 per meter). The obstacles
which abound on the bottom of the ocean range from natural protrusions in the
sea floor, to discarded garbage such as cars and World War II ammunitions. Nearly every year a Swedish trawler is
reported to have scooped up an old mustard gas bomb while bottom trawling in
these waters.[7] The unfortunate parties involved must then
be decontaminated, which can cost the teams several weeks and thousands of
dollars in lost productivity and equipment cleaning and replacement. Probably the most frequently encountered
trawling obstacles, however, are the underwater remains of former fishing
boats. Although the identities of
wrecks are seldom known, in the year I was in Sweden several fishing boats sunk
and many fishermen reported an experience they had aboard a sinking fishing
boat. (Figure 16 shows the density of
known shipwrecks in a small area of water northwest of Göteborg.)
Figure 17 shows
the dual winches mounted midships on each vessel which, under normal
operations, are responsible for setting and changing the depth of the trawl by
lengthening and shortening the two (approximately one-inch diameter) cables
which stretch most of the distance from each ship to the trawl mouth. Each of these winches spools cable (vajer or "wire," also known as "warp" in
English) in and out to one corner of the four-corner trawl mouth, and is
controlled by a single lever next to the captain's chair (see Figure 18). Thus, the port vessel's winches control the
port side of the trawl, via the upper and lower cables which connect to that
side of the trawl mouth. The cables extend
from the midships winches aft through pulleys along both gunwales (starboard
and port sides of the bridge column) and leave the ship through pulleys mounted
up at bridge height in the center (or from both sides) of the ship's stern.
Figure 19 shows
the basic design and dimensions of the trawl itself. As shown, the trawl is some 53 m (wide) x 33 m (high) at the
mouth, tapering back (almost 200 m) to its end. The trawl is constructed by sewing together four panels of
graduated mesh size. The mesh size at
the mouth is on the order of 3 meters, while at the end (the kalv, or belly, as it is called) the strands of twisted nylon which make a
mesh only spread some 30 mm. This
graduation of mesh size has proven effective at increasing the catch of the
trawl while minimizing the power required to pull it. That is, research has shown that even the large mesh sizes
effectively "corral" the herring toward the center of the trawl where they
become entrapped by smaller meshes (once overcome by the advancing trawl) while
permitting other species of fish (with different behavioral patterns) to
escape. In practice, there are many
unwanted species of fish or "by-catch" (bifångst)
which are pulled in with the herring.
Ongoing research by the (worldwide) industry is aimed at producing
techniques and materials for reducing the levels of unwanted by-catch.
The top of the
mouth of the trawl ("headline," in English) is mounted with detachable floats
and a sonar device (sonde, "net
sounder" in English—see Figure 20) which sends a signal via cable to one of the
boats. By convention (and due to the
fact that the net sounder cable is spooled out as the trawl is released into
the water) the boat which carries the trawl being set is the one which receives
the sonar signal. This signal is displayed
by a device on the bridge giving a representation of the fish going in the
trawl, as well as the depth of the footrope of the trawl, the fish above and
below the trawl, and the bottom of the sea below the trawl (see Figure 21).[8] The floats on the headline keep the trawl
mouth open and are detachable, allowing easy storage of the trawl on a spindle
or drum winch. This winch is mounted
midships on the starboard side of the older style trawlers (those with rounded
sterns) and all the way aft on the newer trawlers (those with a squared stern
and an aft deck open to the sea which sits up quite high off the water, see
Figures 17 and 22).
The detachable
floats of the headline also make the trawl reconfigurable for different
conditions and depth ranges. Along the
bottom of the trawl mouth, a chain of lead weights is woven into the primary
rope, which holds the lower part of the mouth open in the water. This same principle, using floats and
weights to maintain a vertical spread of netting in the water (and sometimes to
establish its depth), is common to all
net catching techniques used now and throughout history here.
This long
history of homogeneity across fishing practices seems to have played a role in
the stability of the terms kork
("cork") and sten ("stone") to identify
the floats and weights of all nets,
from simple drift nets to huge trawls and seines. This language originates in times when corks and stones were the
actual materials used for floats and weights, respectively. I take the modern language usage to be more
than just "quaint custom." Rather, I
see it as an example of the systematic use of language which mediates the
understandings of a community whose members engage in fairly heterogeneous specifics in their daily
work routines, yet share some core elements which are the subjects of language
use. Purse seining is really quite
different from pair-trawling, and both are different from the practices of
retired fishermen engaged in småfiske
("small fishing"), yet all share enough in these separate activities to promote
the persistence of terminology whose literally interpreted referential content
is non-existent.[9]
In addition,
terms for parts of the trawl which may be ambiguous due to the trawl's vertical
symmetry are productively modified with the morphemes kork and sten,
effectively discriminating the parts by reference to the upper or lower side of
the trawl on which they reside. For example, sten svep refers to the lower ropes which connects the bottom of
the trawl to the two vessels' lower cables, while kork svep refers to the
upper ropes (see Figure 20).[10] Thus, these pieces of equipment take on
names given by their location in the upper or lower halves of the trawl, based
upon the identification of asymmetric aspects of the trawl construction (weights
are only found on the bottom, and floats are only found on the top). There appears, then, to be both
consensus-providing and discrimination-making functions at work in the
structure of this language use (Clark, 1987; Hutchins & Hazlehurst, 1993).
This view of
the persistence of non-literal referential terms—terms which no longer refer to
the literal objects from which the names come, and yet are "productive" in the
sense that they can be used to define aspects of new technologies—is
significantly different from the prevalent views of metaphor in cognitive
science. An often made claim by
cognitive linguists (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Lakoff and Kövecses, 1987) has
been that metaphor provides resources for making abstract concepts more
concrete. Thus, concepts from one
domain are used to structure a poorly understood or more abstract domain. This is fine as far as it goes, but the
emphasis shown in most of these analyses entails a commitment to grounding
metaphorical structures in a priori
universal concepts of bodily experience.
For example, Containers, Paths, and Body Orientation are taken to be
grounding image schemas (the fundamental organizers or templates of "concrete"
conceptual domains) because they are taken to be universal components of physical
experience.
In contrast,
the language of fishing nets in Sweden do not reveal universal experience with devices for flotation and orientation
under water, but rather the results of engaging in a historical practice and
the constraints of communication in and about that practice. Thus corks and stones—cultural innovations
for getting nets to perform properly in the water—have been used to communicate
modern properties related to the orientation of underwater nets in fishing
technologies because all nets share this feature even though they differ
radically in many other respects. That
these concepts are "productive" (that is, entail systematic properties about
underwater net orientation and are not simply fixed referential labels) is seen
in the way names for other parts of the trawl (the svep lines, as we have seen) take on the kork and sten
modifiers. The point is, that the basis
for this systematicity in language cannot be explained by the structure of some
image schema such as "Up/Down" as known by direct bodily experience. Rather, this systematicity in language
appears to be the product of experience in (and social discourse about) the
practices themselves. For example, the
talk about how to trim the trawls, how deep to set a net (and how to accomplish
this), how to fix trawls/nets/seines so they work better, and communicating
about the representations (provided by sonar) which actually show the opening of the trawl under
water.[11]
Each side (port
and starboard) of the trawl is managed by the boat on the respective side, via
two cables that extend back from each boat and attach to the svep which themselves attach to the
corners of the trawl mouth. These
attachments are made with safety latches which provide quick and easy
connecting and disconnecting of the trawl from the ships' cables. In this way, the trawl (with all 4 svep lines) can be drawn up onto one boat's trawl drum—we can call this
boat the "owner" of the trawl.[12] When the trawl is set in the water, the two svep lines to be pulled by the
"non-owning" boat are handed off, and both sets of svep lines are attached to the respective boats cables via the
safety latches.
Massive 500 kg.
weights (a collection of large iron chain links) reside at the end of each
boat's lower cable—where the cable attaches to the sten svep. These weights,
in conjunction with a differential in upper and lower cable + svep length, provide the key mechanism
for efficiently controlling trawl depth.
Figure 23 shows a schematic of the steady-state forces that are at work
on the trawl, which enable the trawl to maintain a fixed depth in the water
while moving forward in the direction of the center of the imaginary line which
connects the boats. To simplify the diagram,
only two dimensions are shown in a port-side view of the trawl mouth. In particular, the lateral components of the
forces provided by the two boats pulling outward (thus maintaining their fixed
distance apart on the surface of the water), are not shown in this figure.
From this
schematic of the steady-state forces on the trawl as it travels forward through
the water, we can get an idea of those factors which could lead to a change in the trawl's depth in the water. Keeping in mind that the only way to effect
(and maintain) a new trawl depth is via changes which construct a new set of
steady-state forces in the diagram, we can identify a number of actions
(intended by the captains or not) which lead to changes in the trawl's depth. These include: changing the floatation or
weight size (not an option while under tow), changed drag on the trawl (more
fish, a change in current, or a change to the hydrodynamic properties of the
trawl), changing the distance between the boats, changing the speed of the boats,
and changing the cable lengths. The
last three changes in this list are those which are possible intended acts which could be taken by captains during the course of drawing the trawl
as a means for moving the trawl to a new depth of water.
In a
three-dimensional version of Figure 23, the lateral separation maintained by
the boats would be reflected in the "boat" forces coming out of the paper,
reflecting "pull" directed along the cables which actually have lateral (port
and starboard direction) components. If
the boats pull apart, (and assuming they do not slow down in doing so) the
"boat" force is increased in its vertical and lateral components.[13] This should cause the trawl to rise in the
water. The trawl will come to another
steady-state, but now higher up in the water.
The reverse should be the case if the distance between the boats is
reduced.
This does not
appear to be an effective mechanism for intentionally changing the depth because
these forces put unnecessary strain on the equipment—strain which the equipment
is not designed to take. Furthermore,
the accuracy with which the captains can control depth changes using this
method would be (intractably) dependent upon the length of the cables. To take up the "slack" of a trawl that is
very deep in the water would require many more fathoms of lateral displacement
by the boats than when the trawl is drawn near the surface (assuming the trawl
is drawn at the same distance aft of the boats). In fact, the distance between boats is one of those variables
that is conventionally fixed—it is the same for all draws, with a given
equipment setup, 180 meters or 0.1 nautical miles (nm) for the pair I was
with. As such, there are cultural devices
which represent this distance, are used to reason about it, and make it salient
and communicable.
First of all,
the desired and actual amount of boat separation is known, polysemously, as avståndet ("the distance"). Although avstånd
is a generic quantity noun (like our "distance") in this context it is used and
understood as a referential noun—it means either the desired or current
separation of the boats of the pair, depending on usage. In both cases avstånd implies something about the expected effects on the trawl,
it is not (in this context) an
abstract concept of space. Thus it is
not uncommon to hear the warning hålla
avståndet ("hold the distance") when the "owning" captain—the one
monitoring the net sounder—has detected an unexplained depth change of the
trawl, which is assumed to be due to the non-parallel course of the companion
boat. On other occasions, avståndet represents a value which is
the actual separation of the boats. In
this usage, the word participates in the more generic meaning of "an abstract
distance between two objects" but, more specifically, connotes the distance
between the boats of the pair at a given point in time.
Furthermore,
the instrument which presents direct sensory evidence of avstånd is radar. On this
monochrome monitor (green foreground on black background) the viewing captain's
boat is generally represented in the middle, with the heading of his boat
represented by the vertical line straight up to the top center of the screen.[14] All objects on the surface of the water,
within the distance captured by the gain setting of the radar, appear on the
screen as echo blips—solid green ovals with axes of about 1/4 to 1/2 inch—whose
positions are accurately represented relative to the forward-heading
("up," on the screen) and center-occupying position of the host
(radar-sending) boat (see Figure 24).
In order to facilitate reading this screen in terms of avstånd, captains employ an instrument
function which generates a dashed circle centered at the host boat's
represented position (again, usually the center of the screen). This circle can be expanded or contracted,
by pushing and holding one of two keyboard buttons, to represent some desired
fixed distance—in all directions—from the boat. In this way, avståndet
is manifest in the represented circle (fixed at distance 0.1nm from the host
boat) and the position of the companion boat's echo blip on or near this
circumference.
By convention,
the "non-owning" captain is responsible for maintaining avståndet. This division of
labor and responsibilities relieves the captain busy monitoring trawl depth of
one thing to worry about, while giving the "non-owning" captain something to
attend to. However, the job of
maintaining avståndet requires mutual
effort since changes in course, differential boat characteristics, equipment
malfunctions and tricky water currents can complicate the job of maintaining
parallel courses. Principally, this coordination effort entails ongoing
communications so as to make small corrections as needed. The ships' autopilots facilitate much of
this effort by allowing the entry of a desired heading and automatic changes to
steering controls which will attempt to maintain the desired course. During turns and major changes in course,
more elaborate manual interventions (often including raising the trawl well
clear of the bottom prior to initiating the turn) are required.
Reducing boat
speed also results in a reduction in the "boat" force which will lower the
trawl in the water (see Figure 23). The
trawl will come to a new steady-state, now with reduced boat pull and trawl
drag, and travelling lower in the water.
The reverse should be the case if boat speed is increased. In fact, this technique is not employed as a regular method for
raising and lowering the trawl. The
primary reason for this is that the trawls are designed to operate at constant
speeds. The force we have
simplistically labelled "drag" is really a complex result of the angle and
velocity of the trawl with respect to the water. These trawls have been designed to accommodate not only fish
behavior, but also the hydrodynamic properties of pulling them through a range
of currents with a range of loads at fixed speeds. Altering boat speeds would not be a consistent mechanism for
changing trawl depth due to the introduction of unwanted hydrodynamic
properties affecting the trawl.
A second reason
why boat speed is held constant is that it is difficult to establish equivalent
speeds between the two boats of the pair (during drawing of the trawl), to a
degree sufficiently accurate to assure proper trimming of the trawl. The boats of these pairs are operated,
maintained, and upgraded independently, so there is no mechanism (other than
experimental trial and error) for maintaining equivalence between power outputs
and resultant speeds through the water.[15] If, on the other hand, boat speed is not employed as the mechanism for
changing trawl depth then the boats need only establish functional equivalence
between two or three power outputs (light, medium, and maximum), and these are
maintained via meters which display the liters of fuel per hour being burned.[16]
Thirdly, wear
and tear on the boats' engines is minimized by driving them at fixed speeds
rather than continually decelerating and accelerating. Finally, a good amount of boat speed is
required to overcome the herring, setting a (rather high) lower speed
constraint below which it is not feasible to draw and still catch schools of
herring.
In fact,
adjusting the differential between upper and lower cable lengths is the
preferred way to regularly change the depth of the trawl. As can be seen in Figure 23, drawing in on
the lower cable has the effect of reducing the angle ß which reduces the
downward pull on the bottom of the trawl.
The dominant effect of this action is that the trawl raises up in the
water. A side effect is that the mouth
of the trawl may close down slightly.
On the other hand, lengthening the lower cable has the effect of
increasing the angle ß which increases the downward force on the mouth of the
trawl, and lowers the trawl in the water.
It should be clear, then, that the "normal" configuration of the trawl
(one which puts it in the position to be quickly raised or lowered, while
maximizing the vertical opening of the mouth) entails that the lower cable+svep length be greater than the upper
cable+svep length. This difference in length (manifest in the
angle ß of Figure 23) is responsible for the downward force on the mouth of the
trawl which can be easily reduced in order to effect a (relatively quick)
raising of the trawl in the event it is needed to avoid obstacles on the sea
bottom or to more productively fish a school of herring.
In fact, since
the svep lengths are fixed (the sten svep are 8m longer than the kork svep in the particular
configuration of equipment we were fishing with), the only factor worthy of
attention by the fishermen is the difference in upper and lower cable
length. This difference is known as skina (a productively used shortening of
skilnad, "difference," in the local
dialect of the islands). Both boats
must maintain the same skina, in
order for the trawl to be properly trimmed, and this is accomplished through a
radio channel giving private and undisturbed communications. This radio channel is a medium for
coordinating changes in the trawl depth via actions taken to spool the cables
in and out on the boats' respective winches.
A regular feature of the dialog between captains, then, involves the
communication of intentions and desires for action regarding changes to the skina.
Since the lower svep is longer
than the upper svep by 8 meters, skina values are generally near zero,
reflecting a normalization around the most common cable+svep differential of 8m. A skina of "five in" thus means a cable length difference of 5 meters, but
also translates to a lower to upper cable+svep
length differential of +3m. This
configuration of cable lengths does not afford a well-trimmed trawl but is a
safe configuration for the initial "set" of the trawl. Once the pair is under way, those 5 meters
will be let out (if possible) in order to lower the trawl to a depth where it
is trimmed and fishing productively.
Skina, then, is a word—a culturally
provided resource—which "fits" the physical setup of the trawl and the two
boats' routines for manipulating the trawl, mediating the cognitive actions
entailed in the joint task of maximizing the productivity of the trawl. Rather than needing to compute differences
between upper and lower cable+svep—computations
with large values which redundantly involve an unchanging upper cable length
and an unchanging svep differential—a
single digit is maintained (the value of skina)
and dynamically adjusted by simple arithmetic, generally entailing integers 0
through 5 which coincide with the winch actions which affect changes to the
length of the lower cable. For example,
spooling out 1 meter when the skina
is currently en inne ("one in") gives
a skina of zero (usually called lika, "same"), which translates to even
cable lengths and an 8m cable+svep
differential. In this configuration the
trawl is certain to be well trimmed and, if the net sonar reveals the trawl to
be located in the layers of water with the largest concentrations of fish, the
captains can be sure that the trawl is fishing efficiently.
The value of skina is maintained in a number of
places. The most basic place is in the
represented differential of the cables themselves. Each cable is marked at regular intervals—beginning with the end
which attaches to the svep lines—with
additional metal that is woven into the strands of the cable, leaving a readily
visible yet unobtrusive clump (see Figure 25).
By noticing the difference represented by any two neighboring markers,
one from each cable, skina can be
roughly computed (by simply estimating the spread, in meters, between the two
markers). Again, the actual effect on
the trawl is a result of the cable+svep
differential, but this is just a translation of the fishermen's representation,
skina, into the domain of physics for
describing the effects of actions taken upon the trawl. This latter physics need not be salient to
the practitioners themselves, but does give us (as analysts) a way to
articulate the constraints upon their activity.
Another, more
common, method for computing skina
entails the winch meter on the bridge which records and displays changes made
to cable lengths by the spooling actions taken on the winches via the winch
control levers. Thus, having noted the
value of lika (or explicitly
initialized the meter to zero) before releasing the cables when the trawl is
set, the captain can read the lengths and their difference from this display
throughout the draw. If the meter was
not initialized to zero, then skina
is computed by subtracting lika from
the meter display. Since the actual
values of lika are local to each
boat, they are not communicated via radio.
Skina is the value which must
be communicated between boats in order to maintain coordination. When skina
is zero, then the word "lika" (but
not the value) is spoken, meaning a difference of zero between cable
lengths. Each captain does his own
local computations to derive skina from
the value of lika and the meter
displays or the observed differential in the cable markings.
While charts
are provided by trawl manufacturers to compute (theoretical) ideal
relationships between total cable length and cable differential for reaching
down to all depths of water, in practice fishermen need only know a very small
set of parameters which are adequate for establishing the trawl safely in the
vicinity of some desired depth. They
then utilize feedback from the sonar device mounted on the trawl to inform them
of the appropriate cable lengths for keeping the trawl well-trimmed, clear of
obstacles, and fishing the most productive layer of water. My records show that the general
configuration used to set the trawl entailed a basic 5:1 ratio of upper cable
length to desired depth of trawl. Each
time the trawl was set with a skina
of "five in," and this difference reduced (that is, lower cable let
out) once the tow was under way and the safety of the trawl could be monitored
as it was lowered in the water.
That is, once a
desired depth of fishing has been determined: one of two types of floatation is
selected for surface or deep water fishing, respectively; the appropriate
amount of upper cable is selected by multiplying by 5 and the lower cable is
kept 5 meters shorter; the cables are then adjusted as needed (as revealed by
sonar) once under way. This simple
association between cable lengths and depths constitutes a resource for
accomplishing the set of the trawl. But
this resource is only functional given the devices which mediate the task of
establishing the trawl depth: namely, the net sounder, the cable winches and
their meters, the boat sonar which is used to survey the immediate region of
water, and the sea charts (or their modern electronic version, the navigator)
which enable prediction and suitable "on-line" responses to the situation. The micro-analysis of the following chapter
will investigate how some of these devices mediate actual performance during
the activity of searching for where to set the trawl.
In former
times, without net sonar, the angle of the cables leaving the stern of the
vessel were used (along with cable length) to estimate the depth of the trawl.[17] (See Figure 26, for a picture of a device
designed to measure this angle. I have
no evidence that the exact device pictured was used here on the west coast of
Sweden, but I was told that fishermen did compute the cable angles for the
reasons stated and I assume some such device was employed.) This estimation of trawl depth could then be
compared with sea charts and computed boat positions to project and plan for
the safety of the equipment. Before the
use of net sonar, informants told me, someone was usually stationed on deck in
order to monitor the cables themselves for information about trouble. Collision with the bottom or other obstacles
will cause the cables to vibrate, make noise, and even jar the boat if a
serious snag developed.
This same deck
hand was also assigned the duty of translating the captain's desires into
actions taken on the winches. The use
of hydraulics on these ships only began in the sixties, and even for some time
after this (before levers were available for controlling the winches from the
bridge) crew members were required to hold watch on deck in order to translate
the captains desires for changes to cable lengths into actions taken on the
winches themselves. Prior to the use of
hydraulics, winches were belt-driven by a continuously running motor whose
engagement and disengagement was accomplished by the crew member on deck. Informants reported that deck watch was not
a very desirable job. It meant being
out on deck, or at the ready to go out on deck, at all times.
These tasks
have been eliminated from the crew's current routines. Controlling a vast majority of the draw
(virtually everything except setting and hauling the trawl) is now entirely in
the hands of the driving captains.
Sonar informs the captains about the need to raise or lower the trawl,
and hydraulics—controlled from their respective bridges—effect the changes in
cable lengths necessary to meet this need.
These technological changes are part of decades of modernizations which
have eliminated the need for manpower, while making the job of being a
fisherman less laborious and safer. In
the final section of this chapter, we return to the possible effects these
changes have had on the social organization of the crew.
Sonar works,
like radar and in some sense like eyes, as a device which represents
information otherwise not perceived, as a map of the objects found within some
spatial field or range. In the case of
sonar, this field lies under water.
Unlike eyes, sonar emits a signal which, when bounced off of objects,
returns information to a receiver. It
is the differences between emitted and received signal (as opposed to
differences between received signal and experience—encoded by evolution or
learning—in the case of the eye) which provide the information for constructing
an image, which is displayed on some device such as a plotter or a color
monitor. Unlike radar, sonar works
underwater, and provides useful information about the reflective properties of
objects—like density or hardness. Thus
the phenomena represented by sonar includes schools of fish, the sea bottom,
the sea surface, and the location of the trawl in the water. Each boat has at least two sonar devices:
one mounted on the bottom of the boat which projects straight down (ekolod, or "echo sounder") and one
mounted on the headline of the trawl (sonde,
or "net sounder," or "netsonde") which projects both up and down.
Before the
availability of modern color monitors, all sonar displays were paper
plotters. Like other such devices, the
paper would scroll by at some fixed rate in the right to left direction, and a
stylus mounted on a vertical moving arm would lay down black marks in
proportion to the signal received from the logic of the sonar device. Nowadays, displays are almost exclusively
inexpensive color monitors. Some of the
old paper plotters are still in place, remnants of a past technology, on the
bridges of these boats. However, given
the amount of time these boats spend cruising around looking for fish, the cost
of paper for the plotters is unbearable.
Nonetheless, there remains a skepticism (especially among the older
fishermen) for the quality of representation provided by the new displays. The many colors and the fine gain
adjustments of color monitors often provide too
much information; information which makes interpretation very
difficult. In Chapter 5, an
investigation into the nature of interpreting and communicating about color
sonar displays is undertaken.
Since the ekolod transducer captures reflected
signals from below (containing one dimension of information about the sea
directly below), and the transducer moves forward through the water with some
(boat) speed, the resultant image is a two dimensional picture—a side view of
the sea covered by the path of the boat on the surface (see Figure 59). In general, the ekolod does not know about the speed of the boat, so captains (when
not towing the trawl), will slow their boats down to some reference speed in
order to more accurately interpret the display.
The net
sounder's transducers are mounted on the headline of the trawl and send signals
both up to the surface of the water and down past the footrope to the sea
bottom. From the returns of these
signals, a composite signal is constructed and sent, via a dedicated cable
maintained on its own spool winch, to a display on the bridge (see Figure
20). This winch is usually found high
up aft of the bridge where it can spool line over the stern without getting it
tangled in the other trawl gear (see Figure 17). The boat from which the trawl currently in the water came (the
"owning" boat, see above) is the one which receives the net sounder's
signal. This signal is displayed on a
monitor, and gives an image of the fish going in the trawl, as well as the
depth of the footrope of the trawl, the fish above and below the trawl, and the
bottom of the sea below the trawl (see Figure 21).
A third kind of
sonar device, called asdic, emits
signals, not vertically like a ekolod,
but from a rotating transducer (as radar does). This enables the boat to capture information about objects which
lie along an imaginary surface (a cone whose apex is at the emitter, and whose
height and apex angle is adjustable) rather than an imaginary line (as with an ekolod). The display of this information is in the form of a circle—the
cone which is the field of sensing is projected onto a two dimensional circle
which is color coded for aspects of reflection (density, hardness, etc., as
with any sonar device. See Figure 27)
Asdic is primarily employed in purse
seining where a more static picture of a three-dimensional region of water is
desirable for deciding where to attempt to encircle a large shoal of fish with
the seine. On the move, asdic also proves useful as a sonar
device which can give information about fish activity out to the sides of the
boat. The pair of trawlers which are
the focus of the next chapter did not have asdic
on board. This technology, in a form
which can be used in deep water, is still very expensive.[18] These captains were, of course, well-aware
of the advantages of being able to "see" fish out to both sides of the boat,
and not merely directly underneath the boat.
Radar, like
sonar, is an instrument for making salient a spatial field which is (often) not
otherwise visible or accurately perceived.
Radar, unlike sonar, provides captains with information about objects above the surface of the water. These objects are usually other boats but
also include land, light houses which emit visible or radio signals, and
navigational buoys and markers. Some of
these navigational markers are equipped with radar reflectors for amplifying
radar returns, thus making these objects more salient and less ambiguous than
they would otherwise be. In addition,
some of the light houses are equipped to generate an identifying signal when
activated by radar signals. The
lighthouse signal is displayed on the sending boat's radar display and can be
looked up on a sea chart, a list of light houses, or may just be directly known
through experience.
As a novice on
the bridge, one cannot help but be awestruck with the way captains utilize
radar in place of vision to make judgements about actions to take. As a novice one is overcome by the
perception that there is just not enough information available to successfully
navigate when, for instance, on board one of these ships leaving harbor. From the bridge, even if the weather is
clear, it is not possible to see out over the towering bow of the ship. At night, visibility is further reduced by
the reflection of inside lights on the greasy, dusty pains of glass which are
sparsely distributed (often) around only the forward half of the bridge. In fact, there are many resources—one learns over time—for aiding in maneuvering
the ship which are just not available to a novice. Some of these are found in the feedback from levers and joysticks
which provide thrust and rudder control.[19] Other resources are inherent in the
representations provided by the radar screen about where the boat is relative
to certain objects with known or interpretable properties: how steep does that
piece of rock pitch into the water (and therefore how close can I come and be
safe)? how fast are those boats moving? in what direction relative to me are
those boats moving?
There are two
primary types of radar: True Motion, and Relative Motion radar. With True Motion radar the properties of
objects captured by the radar are represented with respect to a fixed
coordinate system (for instance, latitude and longitude for position and
nautical miles per hour for speed).
With Relative Motion radar, the properties of objects captured by the
radar are represented with respect to a coordinate system constructed from the
properties of the host boat on which the radar sits. In the latter case, the "host-centered" coordinate system yields
representations which take their meaning (for instance, position and movement)
relative to the host boat.
In general,
Relative Motion radar is older technology that is implemented with many more
analog or mechanical computations.
Reflected radio signals received at certain angles and with changes in
wave length (compared to the originating signals) are easily "drawn" on the
screen as radials originating at the center which change in intensity proportional
to the phase shift of the composite signal.
These lines are drawn for discrete positions of the antenna rotation,
which yield the characteristic display "sweeps" of the older (typically
circular) radar screens. True Motion
radar requires much more digital logic to translate these received signals into
various values which can be represented directly or integrated with data
collected from other instruments on the bridge. In general, True Motion radars have Relative Motion "modes" as
options, but the reverse is not true—that is, Relative Motion radars have only
one mode.
Both types of
radar have gain settings which control the sensitivity of the sending signal,
and the scale of the represented display image. Other aspects of these two types of radar differ significantly,
and are discussed separately below.
This discussion sets up the background for understanding the
micro-analysis of the next chapter. The
two boats of the pair studied in that analysis had different types of radar on
board. One boat had one True Motion
radar unit, the other boat had two Relative Motion radar units—one of these was
a low-cost unit dedicated to representing avståndet
("the distance," the separation of boats of a pair during fishing, in
order to maintain constant trawl depth), as described above. The discussion below, then, describes not
only some general differences between True and Relative Motion radar, but also
the particular differences of the two navigational
radar units of the pair-trawlers involved in the micro-analysis of the
following chapter.
Relative Motion
radar (henceforth, RM radar) displays the host boat in the center with current
boat heading "Up," thus constructing a relative coordinate system for
interpreting echoes displayed on the screen.
The boat's heading is represented with a vertical line known as stammen ("the stem")—a radial
originating in the center and drawn to the middle top of the display screen
(see Figures 40 through 44). As the
radar knows nothing of the actual orientation of the boat, there is no
representation of this anywhere on this instrument. Of course, the true orientation of the boat can be retrieved by
the captain from other instruments on the bridge. Likewise, the absolute orientation of other represented objects
on the RM radar display can be calculated by a computation which combines the
information from the radar with the boat's true heading.
Also available
on the RM radar display unit to aid with this kind of computation, are two
kinds of "cursors." One cursor is a
point (represented on the screen by a "+") which can be moved anywhere on the
display using a mouse-ball. A numerical
field displays this cursor's position relative to the host boat as "XXX˚,
YY.YYnm." This representation gives the
cursor's position in polar coordinates relative to the boat's position with
current heading as 0°. Thus "30°,
0.5nm" designates a position 0.5 nautical miles away along the radial which
originates at the boat and lies 30 degrees starboard of the boat.[20] A second cursor, manipulated with two key's
on the radar's keyboard, is a radial which originates at the boat and is
represented as a dashed line. A
numerical field gives the angle of this radial (in degrees) relative to "Up,"
and thus relative to the heading of the host boat. In general, the point cursor is utilized to locate the relative
position of point objects in the represented field, while the radial cursor is
utilized to consider changes over time in relative position of a moving
echo. That is, the radial can be
employed as a single axis against which changes in relative position of some
radar echo can be monitored and evaluated.
Finally, the
only form of "memory" in RM radar is a kind of "residual trace" left behind by
the screen rewriting process. That is,
the sweep which updates the display with the current state of the receptive
field can be set to leave behind a residue of former sweeps instead of clearing
them away. This is a display mode which
is selectable from the keyboard. The
effect of this mode is, over time, to leave a "trace" of the changing
(relative) positions of objects in the radar's receptive field. From this trace an object's motion can be
computed by (mentally) factoring out the contribution made by the host boat's
movement. For instance, if the host
boat were lying still, the trace is immediately interpretable as the object's
absolute movement in space. A trace
extending away from the host represents a net change in velocity (between host
and foreign boat) in the direction (along the trace) away from the
representation of the host boat. If the
host boat were moving in the same direction as the foreign boat (and with the
same speed), then the trajectory of the foreign boat will not be seen as a
trace at all on the radar display. Rather,
the foreign boat will simply be seen as a solitary echo which maintains it's
position on the radar screen.
True Motion
radar represents the host boat and receptive field on a coordinate system (generally) given in terms
of latitude and longitude. As such, the
display can be (and generally is) overlaid with latitude and longitude lines
(see Figures 45 and 46). It should be
clear that computing these absolute position fixes (latitude and longitude) is
only possible if the host radar "knows" where it is and how it is oriented in
order to construct the display. This is
accommodated via input from the ship's gyro compass and GPS (Global Positioning
System) satellite navigation receiver (see below). Thus, all echoes on a True Motion radar display appear to move
independently of each other and relative to an absolute latitude/longitude
coordinate system. This "map" of the
radar's receptive field is generally represented, like most maps, with "North
Up" on the display screen. The True Motion
radar of interest for this study (henceforth, TM radar) was generally operated
in a display mode which (like Relative Motion radar) keeps the host boat
centered on the display screen. Thus,
while host boat position and orientation was represented in absolute
coordinates, movement by the host boat results in the world "scrolling by" this
yielding a consistent range of view through time.
As with
Relative Motion radar, TM radar has a mouse controlled cursor for dynamically
computing the coordinates of points in the receptive field, as represented by
the location of the "+" on the display.
On TM radar, the location of this point is represented in an
alpha-numerical field in both relative (angle and distance) and absolute
(latitude and longitude) coordinates.
Also represented in or near this field is the ship's own position and
heading, as received from the interfaced gyro compass and GPS receiver. Also available on TM radar are both absolute
grid lines (latitude and longitude lines) and relative grid lines (concentric
circles marking regular distances from the host boat). Finally, TM radar has a sophisticated set of
memory features (even a disk drive for saving information to miniature floppy
disks) which accommodate the saving and retrieving of boat trajectories,
including the host boat's own history of movements.
Beginning in
1979, a set of international specifications known as ARPA (Automatic Radar
Plotting Aids) was instituted. The
general function of these design guidelines was to equip large ships with the
ability to compute and plot useful information about represented radar objects,
in order to mitigate the problem of collisions at sea. These computations include: distance to
object, direction to object, course of object, velocity of object. What I have labelled "True Motion radar"
generally has available some subset of these options, which proves to be useful
to fishermen who are (generally) very interested in keeping track of where
other boats are and where those boats have been. Although the "collision avoidance" purpose of this technology
applies to fishing boats as well as oil tankers, fishermen use this technology
primarily to aid their fishing practice rather than plan for safe passage. (The latter is generally not a problem for
these relatively small and maneuverable ships.)
The True Motion
radar of interest to this study, the one in place on one of the pair-trawlers
of the micro-analysis, had a semi-manual version of these functions. Any other boat's activity (within radar
range) could be traced by moving the cursor to the echo representing the boat
and plotting a fix by depressing a key on the keyboard. In particular, by first selecting the boat
number (an assigned number from 1 to 10), then moving the cursor to the echo
blip and pushing a key, a point is produced along with a line connected it to
the last fix taken for this boat. The
fix, and computed course and velocity of the boat for this segment, can then be
viewed. This manual version of boat
tracking was a limitation of the particular True Motion radar unit on this
boat. The automated version of this, in
which some number of boats could be tracked in parallel and traces plotted to
the screen at regular intervals, was available for purchase but expensive. Automated fixing and trajectory-plotting for
the host boat was available on this particular unit.
What is important about the available manual
plotting functions on this particular TM radar unit is that they served as a
memory of the trajectories of the other boats.
Recall that RM radar memory is limited to a screen residual of former
traces, which goes away when the screen mode is changed or the host boat moves
out of range of the currently displayed region of space. On the TM radar, plotting of the other boats'
trajectories is retained in memory as digital information, can be saved to
diskette, does not go away with changes in mode setting (unless explicitly
requested), and is replotted whenever the region of space of the trajectory
comes into range and is projected onto the radar screen.
The navigator
is an on board computer whose primary function is to represent the position of
the ship on a digital sea chart, but also serves as a private and communal
knowledge-base for fishing. This is
accomplished via three pieces of technology.
The first is digital sea charts, the second is radio navigation
(GPS—Global Positioning System—satellite navigation, and DECCA land-based radio
navigation), the third is computer functions which integrate, represent, and
remember aspects of the other two technologies as well as interface with the
user (and community of users).
Sea charts are,
of course, an ancient technology. Sea
charts represent objects of the natural and man-made world which have proven
useful for navigating or thinking about navigating, such as: high points on
land, sea depths, latitude and longitude lines, churches, DECCA (a land-based
navigation system) curves, light houses and their properties, shipwreck
locations and clearance depths, political boundaries, sea bottom composition,
etc.
Digital charts
are an attempt to take this accumulated store of relevant information and put
it in a form that a computer can represent and operate on. This is a non-trivial problem. There is an enormous amount of information on a sea chart, and while one way to
implement digital charts would be making simple bit-map images of the paper sea
charts (thus providing convenient storage and retrieval of the information),
this would not be the best use of computer technology. While the Swedish government (home of the
world's most renowned cartographers) has committed itself to standardizing
digital sea charts, the fishermen have been utilizing their own versions for
several years now. These are generally
created by the manufacturers of the navigators (or subcontracted companies),
modified by local knowledge, and handed around among the fishermen. The standard information represented on
these charts is generally limited to: outlines of land, depth curves at a
resolution of 30 meters, and some navigational aids such as light houses, and
way markers (see Figure 38).
GPS is a system
of some 25 satellites put into orbit by the U.S. government during the
1980's. Serving both military and
commercial purposes, the satellites provide three dimensional positioning fixes
at all times, anywhere within the sphere formed by the orbiting
satellites. In general, a fix within
this sphere requires 4 satellites which are guaranteed to be found somewhere
above the horizon at any time.[21] In brief, the U.S. government controls use
of the system by allowing one channel for commercial use (accuracy to within
100m) and reserving a private military channel (accuracy to within 10m).[22] A relatively inexpensive GPS receiver can
thus continuously (on the order of once every minute) compute a positional fix
in latitude and longitude that is accurate to within 100m. By remembering the previous fix the GPS
receiver can easily compute the host boat's velocity and direction as
well. The navigator takes input from
the GPS receiver, and plots a fix on the screen, overlaying the boats
position—a blinking icon—on the displayed digital sea chart. Direction and speed are also retrieved and
displayed on the navigator screen (see Figure 38).
Most of the
fishing boats also have (and, prior to the advent of GPS, had exclusively) a
DECCA receiver on board, which computes a fix that is plotted with a separate
icon on the navigator. DECCA is a land
based navigational system that has been in use in the North Atlantic since the
1940's, and has completely covered Sweden's far and inland waters since
1984. DECCA, like most radio navigation
systems, is built on the principle of an on board receiver translating the
differences between signals (sent from spatially separated senders) into
locally meaningful coordinates. The
coordinate system of DECCA is based on imaginary hyperbolas whose foci coincide
with pairs of signal senders. This
system is truly odd in it's engineering details, but has played an important
role in the practice of fishing on this coast in the past, and therefore
deserves a little explanation.
In the DECCA
system, coverage of some (bounded) region of the earth's surface is provided by
four land-based stations, known collectively as a "chain." Each chain is labeled and consists of one
"Master" station and three "Slave" stations.
The slave stations take their names from the colors used to represent
their contributions to generating a position fix on a sea chart which has been
prepared with DECCA coordinates "Red," "Green," and "Purple,"
respectively. Each DECCA fix is given
by the intersection of two hyperbolas, each of which is identified by a 4-part
label generated by three different properties: the name of the chain, the color
of the slave station involved, and a point along the line connecting slave and
master station computed from the difference in signals received by the boat
from the two stations (see Figure 28).
The fixing of a single
coordinate in this system (for example, ignoring the chain name for now, "Red I
16.30" in Figure 28) is based on the ability to measure the phase difference
between two radio signals (one from the master and one from the selected slave
of the chain) generated at known multiples of a known base waveform frequency
(f), and whose origins are some known distance apart (d).[23] The curve constructed from all points which
satisfy the computed difference in
distance from the two senders is, by definition, a hyperbola. That is, the DECCA receiver fixes the boat's position to be somewhere along
the imaginary hyperbola defined by the computed difference of the distances from
each of the two stations. Two such
coordinates, involving 2 different slave stations, fix a boat's position at the
intersection of two imaginary hyperbolas on the surface of the water.
The meaning of
the coordinate system (how the surface of the water is quantified or divided up
into meaningful units) was historically determined by the receiver's logic
gates, which must be able to discriminate between the received signals in a
consistent manner (see Figure 29).
These
constraints dictate that, given f—the frequency of the base waveform for the
chain—Master always transmits at 6f, Red at 8f, Green at 9f, and Purple at 5f,
and this was the standard established.
Coordinates in the system depend upon these ratios, since fixes entail
computations over radio signals which must be unambiguously interpreted and
represented by the receiver. Since the
base waveform is used to measure phase differences in all of the signals, it is the basis for the primary
conceptual divisions of the coordinate system, called "zones" which are
labelled with capital letters (usually "A" through "J").[24] Furthermore, the subdivisions of zones was
established by the gating logic of Figure 29—that is, 24, 18, and 30 (for Red,
Green, and Purple senders, respectively).
These have become the meaningful conceptual subdivisions of zones
(called "lanes") of the coordinate system, and take labels 0-24 (Red), 30-48
(Green), and 50-80 (Purple).
Remembering
that two such computations are
required to fix the receiver's position, we can now generate a label for the
fix which can do some work for a captain by being translated into a point (or,
more precisely, into a small region) on a sea chart upon which DECCA
coordinates have been drawn. Working
from superordinate labels downward, the fix is identified by: chain name
(usually given in the margins of the sea chart since a single chain covers a
large region), slave-1 color, zone-1 letter, lane-1 number, slave-2 color,
zone-2 letter, lane-2 number (see Figure 28).[25]
In practice, of
course, much of this is transparent to fishermen. What is not transparent
is the coordinate system and dealing with it to accomplish navigational
objectives. The bizarre crisscrossing
of diverging red, green, and purple lines on an (otherwise orderly) sea chart
cannot help but draw an observer's attention.
The DECCA system, despite it's clumsy coordinate system, was a real boon
to fishermen of three decades (1950-1980), and is still very salient to older
fishermen. Prior to this, the primary
forms of navigation were land based lines of sight, and radio-transmitting
light houses from which rather crude bearings could be tuned in.[26] DECCA, a system whose use was leased out to
boats at great expense in it's early years, was a true technological
breakthrough for farwater navigation.
The sea chart
provides an immediate translation of the hyperbolic coordinates into a point in
space which is directly meaningful to fishermen (see Figure 30). Although
I have only sparse data on how this system was actually used, there are
material remnants of its use which can give us clues. First of all, many of the old private logs containing shipwreck
information were recorded in DECCA coordinates. These are positions where wrecks are known from personal and
collective experience to lie, and are therefore positions to be circumvented
when trawling. These positions were generally
recorded directly from the boat's DECCA values when a wreck or other unknown
underwater obstacle was encountered.
These positions were then later transferred to sea charts (ones with
DECCA coordinates overlaid) in order to represent the danger spot in a usable
form.
It is
instructive to try and imagine what it would be like to make sense of the
hyperbolas constructed to crisscross the sea, in terms of translating DECCA
coordinates directly into courses of
action. The curves which DECCA
coordinates stand for are oriented in directions and with curvature only
predictable through local knowledge of them.
Therefore, the symbols read off of the DECCA receiver have little value
in terms of their arithmetic "compositionality," or their participation as
constituents in a calculus from which solutions to problems may be deduced—they
just do not mean anything by themselves.
However, by plotting them on the appropriate chart a representation of the
position becomes immediately available, in a form which is immediately
meaningful. Presumably these charts
were employed as one part of a cycle of position fixing conducted throughout
the day. (This activity is no longer
performed due to the automatic plotting of position fixes—generally, both GPS
and DECCA—by the electronic navigator.)
Two uses of
DECCA values as raw coordinates did
turn up in my interviews and observations.
In each case, these values were employed as parts of an
historically-constructed, tool-mediated, activity. First of all, since older fixes of positions—whether of desirable
or undesirable locations—where recorded in the DECCA coordinate system, they
are not easily displaced just because the new technology (GPS navigation) is
much more accurate. This is because the
continued usefulness of the original observations depends upon the inaccuracies of position fixing due to local
deviations which are peculiar to the DECCA system. Apparently these deviations are not easily factored out, even by
machine translation. Instead, all
fishing boats along this coast maintain dual navigation receivers (GPS and
DECCA) and continuously plot two different fixes of ship's position on their
electronic navigators. In addition to
providing a back-up radio navigation system, this practice renders intelligible
many years of observations that have been recorded in terms of DECCA
values. Despite the fact that the icon
representing the GPS fix of ship's position is much more accurate, a captain
still must worry when he sees the DECCA icon approaching a marker which stands
for a wreck because if the latter was entered as a DECCA value then the two
DECCA position fixes may be accurate in relative terms (the ship is quite near
the wreck as shown) even if they are both inaccurate in absolute terms (the
ship and wreck are not where they are represented to be in the ocean).
The use of
DECCA values also turned up in interviews with bottom-trawling fishermen. Prior to the use of computerized navigators,
smaller boats—which fish local waters more intensively for sedentary bottom
fish—all maintained hand-drawn charts of the trajectories which were known to
cover safe (and productive) local waters.
These private databases were, and continue to be, important components
of a boat's success. As the improving
technology of bottom-trawls enabled better means for fishing more difficult sea
bottoms, these representations—if reproducible—encoded valuable
experience. This experience often came
at the expense of damaged and lost equipment during experimentation in the
"uncharted" area. The knowledge thus
gained is seen as an investment which is not readily given away to other teams.
These
trajectories, curves laboriously reproduced by hand on charts which get rolled
up and kept out of sight, are thus valuable assets to the business. But they are only as valuable as the
accuracy of the means for first creating these representations and then turning
them back into actual trajectories on the water. In the pre-DECCA era, this task was generally accomplished via
rough rules of thumb which entailed making use of visible land marks—using
lines of sight—to establish a starting position, a stopping position, and a
heading during the draw. This method is
still evident in these hand-drawn charts.
One sees many plotted trajectories radiating from the dominant visual
landmarks of the area. It's as if the
landmarks themselves have served to constrain the possible trajectories that
can be represented, and therefore play a role in the trajectories actually
taken during fishing.
Also evident on
the modern charts are curves, constrained not by lines of sight, but by the
hyperbolic shape of adjusting ship's course in order to maintain a fixed DECCA
reading on the boat's receiver. That
is, by keeping fixed one of the two DECCA coordinates, a trajectory—a
hyperbolic path across the water—is easily and accurately coded and
reproduced. These trajectories are
evidenced in the private charts of these fishermen, and the coordination of
boat steering actions with the DECCA receiver's displayed symbols is the
"algorithm" for translating hyperbolas into a good chance of catching fish.[27] These trajectories are still used for
fishing even though the technology of radio navigation has changed. They are the residues of actions taken when
the practice was constrained by a different technology and different cognitive
and social structures for employing it.
However, with the introduction of GPS, digital sea charts, new trawl
designs, new markets for fish and new demands placed by debt financing, fishing
on more difficult sea bottoms with smaller margins for error has become
possible, profitable, and necessary.
The navigator's
most obvious function is to provide a representational system for navigating
the ship. With automatic plotting of
the received coordinates from a navigation system receiver (such as DECCA or
GPS) on a digital sea chart, the captain rarely has need to consult a paper sea
chart any longer. Some of the younger
captain's rely on this function of the navigator to such an extent that they
expressed a bit of anxiety, even if only in jest, over the prospect of having to use a sea chart to reckon
their position if the need should arise.
Paper charts were usually pulled out for entry or departure from an
unfamiliar port, as the digital versions provide only a sketch of the local
navigational details of most harbors.
Otherwise, the paper charts on most of the boats I was on, if accessible
at all, were tattered, out-of-date, and virtually unused. In fact, the main piece of "furniture" on
the bridges of these ships, the chart cabinet, is largely obsolete; a monument
to the former importance of paper charts.
The other major
function provided by the navigator is memory of fished and scanned waters. The digital charts which get loaded into the
computer off of casette or micro-casette sized tapes, can be overlaid with
additional information—symbols for trawl obstacles, bottom conditions, fish
sightings, and actual trajectories taken during trawling. Following selection of the plotting mode,
the navigator will plot the boat's position at regular intervals, creating a
trace of the actual trajectory taken during the draw. This function is generally turned on when the trawl is set, and
turned off when the trawl is hauled, creating a map of crisscrossing and
circular trajectories representing a boat's experience in the area (see Figure
16).
This memory
function is facilitated by maintaining separate tapes for different regions of
water, as required by the memory limitations of the computer.[28] For the small bottom-trawlers who fish local
waters these tapes also contain, like the hand-drawn charts before them,
private knowledge of the boat team.
This knowledge entails private strategies for success learned from
experience.[29] The general strategies—what kind of fish to
focus on, how "hard" to drive one's enterprise, etc—are not unknown to others,
but the details of the geographical terrain covered to accomplish the strategy
for a given boat is not generally public.
As such, tapes which contain this information, for example how close one
can safely come to a certain underwater berg
("mountain" or raised rock-bed) are not readily distributed. I was told that captains have available one
set of tapes for public distribution, and a separate set for the boat's own
use. This method meets the demands for
sharing information placed by general social pressures, while safeguarding the
investment in a private fishing strategy.
Bottom-trawlers,
then, can accurately reproduce a known draw through the water by steering the
boat so as to maintain the boat icon (the boat position as represented on the
navigator) on top of the represented trajectory. These actions entail a radical transformation of the problem of
navigating a draw. The old problem was
something like: figure out where to draw, compute target boat positions to
accomplish this draw, set course to achieve those positions, continually
compute where the boat is with respect to the target positions and generate
steering inputs to minimize these differences.
The new problem is something like: generate steering inputs on the
joystick rudder control so as to keep the blinking icon on the desired curve
represented on the navigator's screen.
Clearly, the new set of tasks has largely concentrated the cognitive
actions entailed to those taken by the captain with his navigator and rudder
control.
Pair-trawlers,
in contrast to coast-near bottom-trawlers, cover much too much water to build
up, or bother with maintaining, elaborate knowledge of any specific region of
water. Pair-trawler tapes tend to be
much more in the public domain, at least theoretically. The limiting factor in sharing tapes in this
context has more to do with a sparser distribution of these boats across many
communities, than any effort to withhold information for it's own sake.[30] Perhaps most importantly, the nature of
fishing for mobile herring, as opposed to bottom-trawling for sedentary
species, makes these maps of detailed territory less useful. Schools of herring do not occupy the same
region of water from hour-to-hour, let alone day-to-day.[31] The technology and practice of pair-trawling
is more suited to responding to information on the spot—in order to locate
large schools of migratory fish—than it is to reproducing specific
trajectories.
Pair-trawlers,
therefore, are primarily engaged in establishing their course of actions
dynamically. They are responding to
such information as: where are the other boats headed? how is the bottom changing? is the fish thinning out? is the fish thicker on one side than the
other? what are the boats up ahead and
off to the sides reporting? are there
any obstacles in our projected path? is
the trawl trimmed and riding through the most productive part of the
water? Much of the navigator's use in
pair-trawling therefore entails supporting or providing resources for aspects
of this dynamic decision-making process.
Wrecks and other objects plotted on the navigator are discussed between
the captains during the draw, and put constraints on the choices of action to
take. The navigator's movable cursor is
an important resource for this activity.
The navigator,
like the radar display, is equipped with a cursor—controlled by key, mouse, or
light pen (see Figure 38). The
represented location of the cursor, in terms of the current scale of the
screen, is displayed in a text field in both absolute (latitude and longitude)
and relative (baring and distance) coordinates. Extensive use is made of the cursor, for locating points (waypoints
and obstacles) in a representational field (whose background is the digital sea
chart) which can be translated into desired headings to take or to avoid. During a draw, this function is employed to
establish joint points of reference between captains of the two boats of the
pair. When not fishing, for instance on
the way back to port after a nights fishing, the headings represented by moving
the cursor to some desired waypoint, can be read off and dialed into the
automatic pilot. The auto-pilot will then
issue the rudder control commands necessary to maintain this heading. Progress of the boat toward the waypoint is
then easily monitored by a captain or crew member on watch.[32]
There are three
kinds of communication channels which are widely employed by pair-trawlers and
other fishing boats: cellular telephone, "private" vhf channels, and "public"
vhf channels.
Cellular
telephones are used to contact specific parties at long distance who need not
monitor their end of the line (other than "being home" when the phone rings!)
for a communication link to be established.
Cellular phones are generally employed for calling family, arranging
business transactions (such as a buyer for the fish, or supplies for the boat),
and reaching specific boats at a great distance.
Public vhf
channels are government- or fishermen's organization-sponsored vehicles for
coordinating many users of the ocean.
For instance, in the Göteborg region there is a specific channel
employed for traffic control inside the busy shipping lanes. Of most interest to this study is a channel
sponsored by the SVC which all of the
boats will be tuned in to as a collective vehicle for coordinating fishing and
maneuvering efforts. This channel is
used quite heavily to exchange information by boats in the same general area of
water.
Private vhf
channels are established by individual boats of a pair to facilitate
uninterrupted, private, and noise-free communications between the captains of
the pair. Ostensibly, this
communication is required for enabling the coordinated actions which ensure
safe maneuvering of ships and trawl. In
practice, the privacy of this channel is also desired as a means for pursuing
an economic enterprise—that is, making the business of fishing profitable. This privacy is achieved (or rather,
attempted) by installing devices which make available a large number of
discrete frequencies—frequencies which can be switched on a regular basis
(several times a year) to make it difficult for other boats to listen in on the
pair's conversations. Each boat is also
equipped with a scanner which is programmed to pick up the programmed (known)
frequencies of other pairs' private channels, or to search for other (unknown)
frequencies which are supporting private communications between fishermen.
There also
exist "semi-private" channels, that is vhf frequencies with some limited
distribution of listeners known to each other.
These channels appeared to exist amongst fleets of boats organized by
residence in a community, such as the fleet of smaller boats on Vindö. The team of pair-trawlers from Vindö (being
the only two boats from the island likely to be in a given region of water
occupied by the west coast pair-trawling fleet) did not participate (to my
knowledge) in any of these "semi-private" conversations.
Herring is a
migratory fish. Yearly migration cycles
are known (in their general outlines) to cover hundreds of miles and have
proven to be quite irregular in their details (see Figure 31). Fishermen have known about aspects of these
cycles for at least a century, and large spawning grounds—where huge
concentrations of herring appear yearly—are part of the folklore of fishermen
from many lands which border the North Atlantic and North Sea. Prior to the 1970's, Swedish fishermen also
participated in the pursuit of herring in the North Sea. However, over-fishing (by all of the nations
involved) lead to international regulation of these fisheries and the
establishment of off-shore political boundaries have virtually eliminated the
North Sea fishing option for Swedes.
Nonetheless, as the recent economic chaos brought on by plummeting cod
prices attests, herring remains a fundamental fishery for the Swedish
fleet. In general, as shown in Figure
31, herring from the North Sea area will enter into the Skagerack and Kattegatt
straits in fall and early winter, leaving again in late winter and spring. This leaves the Swedish pair-trawling fleet
with a narrow window of opportunity (in a small region of water) for catching
herring in modern times.
In general,
herring lie near the bottom of the sea, relatively inactive, during the middle
of the day. Occasionally, conditions of
calm and cold water will encourage the formation of characteristically large,
concentrated, mid-water shoals of herring.
These shoals are ideal targets for daytime fishing, especially with
purse seining techniques where the entire shoal may be trapped by the catching
gear. It is less often the case that
pair-trawling will be productive under these conditions due to the fact that
the trawl will effectively disperse the shoal on the first pass, and other
shoals are unlikely to be found in the immediate vicinity. Toward evening, herring become more active
and rise up in the water, apparently drawn by light from the night sky. This fact has been employed by coastal-water
seining teams in their use of artificial lights mounted on smaller "lightboats"
to attract sprat during the early winter months. For pair-trawlers, the increased herring activity means the fish
rise up where they are more easily spotted and caught by the mobile catching
technique of trawling. Thus night is
the primary time for flyttrålfiske.
The general
cycle of a 24-hour day of flyttrålfiske
consists of: steaming from port to the fishing grounds so as to arrive between
6:00 and 8:00 pm (dusk), conducting two or three "draws," heading for port before
daybreak so as to arrive between 7:00 and 10:00 am (when auctions or buyers
take fish), unloading the catch, and finally resupplying the ship and making
any equipment repairs necessary in preparation for departure again. A "draw" is itself composed of three parts:
searching for fish to decide where to set the trawl, setting and drawing the
trawl, hauling the trawl and sorting the fish.
A week of flyttrålfiske on the
west coast consists of: supplying the boat over the weekend, leaving Vindö at
12:00 midnight on Sunday, fishing the first night somewhere nearby, fishing the
remainder of the week according to the 24-hour cycle given above, and returning
home to Vindö Friday afternoon where the remainder of the day is spent cleaning
the boat and performing light maintenance work on ship and engine.
Ever since the
official formation in 1930 of the west coast fishermen's organization SVC (Svenska Västkustfiskarnas Centralförbund),
members have agreed (although not without contentious debate) to abstain from fishing
on Sundays and some other holidays (cf. Åberg, 1990). This particular issue has survived decades of economic,
political, and cultural changes primarily due to three factors which, quite
accidentally, have acted to preserve this proscription. These factors are: (1) the strong historical
and continuing influence of fundamentalist Christian religion in this area and
among fishermen, (2) an emerging consciousness of the problems of overfishing
since the 1960's, (3) a tension brought about by the desires to be both a
successful fishermen and lead a normal Swedish life (that is, to pay attention
to traditional and emerging forms of lifestyles which define oneself not only
as a fisherman, but also as a Swede).[33]
The
proscription against Sunday fishing is evidenced, for instance, in the routines
of (the few) Swedish ships still fishing in the Atlantic or North Sea.[34] These boats will often lie still in the
water on Sunday—often to the dismay of crew members who may not view rolling
about aimlessly on the ocean as a great way to spend their day off. The proscription against Sunday fishing does
not apply when SVC members fish in the Baltic, along the east coast of Sweden,
although some choose to abide by it in this case as well. Among those teams which choose to fish
around the clock on the east coast—something which becomes more and more
incumbent as idle ships become more and more costly—crew members will be
rotated on and off the ship weekly.
This arrangement will generally give each crew member two weeks on
board, followed by one week ashore for a 7-member crew of a boat requiring only
5 on-duty members.
A day's fishing
begins with departure from port for the fishing grounds. These two locations are generally between
two to five hours apart (at 10 knots steaming speed) and will change throughout
the week. Figure 32 shows the locations
we fished and landed along the west coast of Sweden during a week in late
January, the fourth night of which is analyzed in the micro-analysis of the
following chapter.
Arrival at the
fishing grounds takes place around 6:00 pm.
By this time, the night time patterns of herring behavior have been
established. Generally, this means that
the herring have risen up in the water, due to the nighttime darkness and a
behavioral pattern of increased activity at this time of day. This makes them easier to catch by flyttrål as the fish are clear of the
bottom where trawl obstacles and potential trawl damage abound. This active phase of herring behavior also
tends to disperse the fish a bit more at night, but this is not a problem for
the mobile fishing technique of pair-trawling.
The choice of fishing area is usually a product of the previous night's
catch and information gathering conducted both on the water and in port. If the catch was good, the pair is likely to
return to the same area. If the catch
was bad, then a shift in location is called for and an informal consensus is
reached about which direction to move from the reports of boats that fished in
the margins of the region. Other
constraints on the decision of where to move to—given that the night before was
not satisfactory—include: the proposed distance to the grounds, personal
knowledge about how productive this area is for this time of year, and waters
of a suitable depth and bottom to support the fish and trawling technique. The most influential constraint effecting
the decision, however, is generated by where the rest of the fleet is headed
for the evening.
Among crew
members of a pair, this discussion about where to fish is generally confined to
the captains who are the ones most aware of the territory fished on the
previous night and of the reports made by other pairs about their successes. It was not so much the case that other crew
members were excluded from the discussion, but rather that where the fishing
takes place does not really concern them.
Of course, decisions to change strategy which entail shifting to an entirely
new region of water and (possibly) alteration to their own schedule of
activities do become interesting to
non-captain crew members. Among
captains, the discussion is an attempt to pool any known information which
might prove useful. But even here, the
procedure is informal, entailing a minimum of explicit planning. Occasionally, there is an opportunity to
probe members from other crews directly, as they walk by on the pier or come
over to chat. But such opportunities
are few. Particularly rare, is the
opportunity to engage one of another pair's captains in such informal,
face-to-face conversation. It was clear
that the boundaries of this in-port, face-to-face communication were founded
upon land-based social ties. Thus crews
from the same port would often be seen associating together during free times
in port.
In practice,
upon departure from port many of the boats of the fleet seem to follow a core few who have decided where
to go (or at least, in what direction to set course) for the night's
fishing. Interestingly, this same pattern
of fleet behavior is reported about older forms of fishing as well. Teams from Vindö, older informants reported,
would often wait to see a few "leaders" leaving from the nearby islands, and
then follow them out to the fishing grounds.
In the early days of purse seining (ca. 1900), the fleet—once at the
grounds—would lie still while small scouting row boats (känare, "feelers") would be sent out to search the waters with hand
held lines to determine where the fish density was greatest. The team's känare was revered for his skill, and presumably for the power he
held for deciding (literally, single-handedly) where a crew of 10 to 20 men
should spend their next several hours pulling in the huge seine by hand. This was accomplished on the decks of open
boats which afforded very limited range and protection. Therefore, the "group fishing" strategy was
an obvious one for safety, productivity, efficiency, and general entertainment
purposes. Of course, competition among
the boats was equally fierce then, the old timers are quick to point out.
I was never
very certain of the extent to which our captains (aboard the pair from Vindö)
were influenced by—or able to influence—the others' decisions about where to
set course for the night's fishing. My
feeling is that a combination of the above strategies (monitoring the radio,
knowing the productivity of the night before, talking informally with other
crews in port), together with simply following the other boats out of port when
they leave, explains most of the decision-making procedure. Occasionally I heard the discussion
directly; our captain yelling down from the bridge to a group of fishermen
walking by on the dock (often members of the "core" of the fleet, from the largest
west coast fishing port), "So, where are we going tonight?" In part, this was making small talk. But it highlighted a lack of explicit
independent planning on the part of our own captains—we were going wherever the
pack was going! I tend to think this
kind of discourse was more about establishing a relation of inclusion with the
influential members of the fleet than about serious information gathering for
the purpose of decision-making.
This informally
cooperative arrangement among the fleet was also evidenced in the patterns of
behavior entailed in actually leaving port.
There was no warning, no radio dialog, no specifically known time to
pull out to begin the journey to the fishing grounds. But every day, sometime between 3:00 and 5:00, a few boats (the
"core") would start up their diesel engines and pull away from the docks. We would fire up our engines (often needing
to wake the captain first), scurry around to untie, and get under way as
quickly as possible so as not to be left behind. There was certainly never any real concern among the
(non-captain) crew members for where we where headed—they knew we would be
fishing somewhere, and the details of where were somewhat incidental.
Finally, the
general attitudes associated with this "follow the pack" behavior were also
reflected in interviews and more widespread cultural attitudes. One captain told me that he thought of
himself as a follower. He was not out
to set the pace, only to try and keep up with it and all of the payments and
responsibilities which go along with that.
He was clearly convinced that being in the same waters as these other
boats was a good way to accomplish this.
The micro-analysis of the next chapter will elaborate further on the
cognitive aspects of this theme through a detailed examination of the actual
means for decision-making regarding the setting of the trawl.
The trip toward
the fishing grounds often begins with (or in the middle of) a meal. This was generally the case when the
unloading (of the previous night's catch) began late or was delayed so as to
postpone the mid-day meal until late afternoon. An effort is made to get the midday meal—the major one both here
on board and home on Vindö—cooked and eaten before the ship is underway and
rolling about. The two driving captains
of the pair attend to the echo sounder, radar, and radio, while pursuing a
course which maintains contact with the pack.
At least one boat of the pair always follows with the pack in order to
be in a position to react to what others are doing and the fish they may
find. Being in the "thick" of the pack
activity is also important as a means for building ones understanding of where
boats are located on radar, in order to make sense of what one hears when
others report about the fish they are seeing.
On the trip in to port in the
morning the boats may have recorded observations of shoals of fish by entering
waypoints into the electronic navigator at the ship's position when the fish
were encountered. Now, on their way back to the same general area, one of
the two ships of the pair may pass by these points—generally not far from the
course of the pack—to assess the possibilities of fishing there. This process of recording observations and
checking on them later is a form of pursuing private information.
The search proceeds
until either good fish are encountered, or it is getting late into the night
and the standards of what is "good" have been significantly lowered such that
it is deemed worthwhile to set the trawl.
Ideally, the pair would like to get two draws completed in the
night. Each draw can take from one to
four hours each, depending on the concentrations of herring encountered. This means—allowing for some time lost
between draws—that the pair needs to set their trawl for the first draw by
10:00 pm in order to meet the schedule of a pre-dawn departure for port. Of course, this schedule for the night is
meaningless without the fish to justify the effort, cost, and risk of setting
and drawing the trawl. It never
happened, while I was on board, that we failed to set the trawl at all during a
night's fishing. Occasionally, we would
set so late (and on such meager quantities of fish) that we got only one long
draw in during the night. There was
definitely an attitude among the captains (particularly the older ones) that we
were better off getting the trawl in the water and catching something rather than steaming around
looking for better waters all night.
The search to
determine where to set the trawl is the most intense period of activity for the
two driving captains. In contrast, once
the draw is under way the decisions to be made are highly constrained
ones—should we change course, haul in the trawl, change trawl depth, etc. But where
to set the trawl puts the pair's productivity for the day at stake. The decision, which is left entirely up to
the two driving captains, entails information management and negotiation, as
the micro-analysis of Chapter 4 reveals in detail.
The sources of information employed in deciding where
to set the trawl include: radar displays of the activity of the other boats,
visual sightings of the other boats,[35]
radio dialog between and with the other boats, sonar displays of the fish
encountered, possibly private information obtained about this region (such as
sightings the night before), navigator displays which locate the boat relative
to features of the digital chart (such as depth contours which identify
landmarks where other pairs may be reported to be setting their trawls). The negotiation
of where to set the trawl takes place between the two driving captains. In fact, the captain who is carrying the
trawl which is to be set has the authority to decide by himself. In practice, he will seldom make a
unilateral decision unless the options are unambiguous—such as when a huge shoal
of fish is encountered. Needless to
say, this is an exceptional rather than a regular event.
Occasionally,
there are other pairs to negotiate with over where to set or draw one's
trawl. In general, the rule is ‘first
come first serve' so a premium is placed on getting the trawl set and the
course established by quickly getting under way with the draw. When the decision is made to set the trawl,
the crew is awakened or otherwise notified.
Besides the driving captain, there is ostensibly one other (non-captain)
crew member on watch at all times (although he may well be below watching TV or
chatting with other crew members). The
crew of the boat whose trawl is to be set now has the task of unwinding the
trawl from the trawl winch. This is
accomplished by keeping the boat upstream (and under power) away from the
trawl, in order to prevent the propellor from becoming fouled. Setting the trawl is much more easily
accomplished in the newer style stern trawlers, as they can slowly pull forward
leaving the trawl behind them in the water.
The older style side trawlers have to set the net out perpendicular on
the starboard side. With the ship's
hull now perpendicular to the current (and maneuverability largely restricted
to forward and aft across the current), side trawler captains must work to
avoid drifting onto the trawl.[36]
While setting
the trawl, each member of the crew has a role entailing a set of well-oiled
routines. Someone mans the trawl winch
controls, two attend to helping the trawl off of the winch spool and checking
that it is not tangled, one fetches the floats and net sounder which get
attached to the headline. When the
trawl is completely in the water, the svep
lines must be attached to the cable ends—two to the host boat and two are
handed off to the other boat of the pair for attachment there. This is accomplished by attaching a casting
line to the two svep lines intended
for the other boat (which are slack because the trawl ends have been
temporarily fixed to the host boat, ensuring that no trawl drag exists on the svep lines during the handoff). The casting line is a thin cord with a small
ball on the end. The ball acts as a
float in case it ends up in the water, but also as a weight for casting the
rope to the other boat. The job for the
thrower is to wrap the ball around something on the receiving boat. A crewman generally waits with a gaff hook
to try and retrieve the line if it falls short or bounces back into the water.
In order to
accomplish the handoff, the two ships come within 5 meters of each other. In rough sea it clearly takes a bit of skill
(driving these 30 meter boats) to make the handoff and get lined up ready to
draw without fouling the gear which is always close by in the water. These moments are intense ones for captains,
even though they have done this hundreds of times before. Missed attempts at the handoff generally
evoke grunts and curses of disgust from the captain—perhaps even yelling out
the window—which is noteworthy (for the ethnographer and natives) as an unusual
behavioral style. Seldom does one see
much behavior which pits members of the crew against each other as out-standing
performers (or, rarer still, as failing performers) of their respective tasks.
Clearly,
captains retain a kind of authority and responsibility which sets them
apart—but these differences are nearly everywhere underemphasized. Even the public acknowledgement of a
captain's mood-change when in charge on the bridge is given in terms of
impersonal job demands ("he's concentrating on all of the information and can't
be glib," the captains themselves will say) rather than in terms of authority
required or entailed. That this is the
culturally preferred reading of captain behavior is also evident upon hearing
negative judgements (among the general public) regarding captains who do a lot
of yelling at crew members. This is
behavior which is judged (by residents of Vindö generally) as unnecessary and
wrong. These same attitudes exist among
the crew members themselves, although not openly expressed, and these behaviors
are interpreted with a bit more understanding about the contexts which engender
such actions.
The draw itself
proceeds in a fluid, reactive, and yet highly constrained fashion. The driving captains adjust their course as
the fish (seen on their sonar displays) wax and wane. If one boat of the pair reports more fish than the other, the
pair will adjust their course in the more productive direction. This means that descriptions of fish seen on
sonar displays (verbal reports) must faithfully "mean" the same things to each
of the captains. That is, it is
important that members from both crews share the terms used to describe the
same fish and bottom conditions, as represented on the respective sonar displays. Each captain will generally produce
descriptions of the sonar display spontaneously as relevant changes occur. If uneven bottom appears, for instance, the
"non-owning" captain (the one whose trawl is not in the water, and therefore
who cannot see the net sounder display and is not responsible for issuing
commands to raise or lower the trawl) is likely to offer up this piece of
evidence that the trawl may be in danger soon.
In this capacity, this captain is acting as a "remote sensor" for the
"owning" captain, who is in charge of maintaining the trawl depth. Chapter 5 reports on an investigation into
the sharing of language regarding sonar displays, among fishermen from Vindö.
Radio reports
are also important pieces of evidence for making decisions to adjust
course. Boats off to the side of the
pair are sometimes consulted, and always listened to, in order to determine if
a lateral adjustment to the course would be more productive. Generally, the pair will find themselves
drawing in the middle of a pack, with one pair on their starboard and one pair
on their port sides. Often some of
these other pairs will be ahead, which gives our captains information about
what lies ahead for them. The behaviors
of (and reports from) pairs ahead are taken as evidence regarding the
productivity of proceeding forward with the draw. Pairs ahead which turned around, for instance, were strongly
correlated—I informally observed—with the decision by our captains to turn
around at or very near this same point in time.
Generally, a
draw proceeds along some fixed sea-bottom depth. A collection of these depths is known as a kant ("edge"), denoting a sloping sea bottom which is usually the
side of an underwater mountain or ridge formation. These kantar often form
the boundaries of shoals of herring due to their "collecting" properties. Shoals of herring are more likely to travel
(and collect) along the same depth, where water temperature and other
conditions remain constant, than to traverse across these boundaries. These kantar
have representations in the form of depth curves on sea charts—an underwater
slope, as on a contour map, is represented by a series of parallel or similar
curves. Captains, responding to queries
about their location, will often use the region of a kant as the primary feature of their response. This region in two dimensional space (now
projected onto the surface of the water) is often interpreted, via the
speaker's description and by way of the representations given on the map, to
constitute a boat or pair trajectory in a certain area of water.
That is, the
information in this kind of dialog promotes—for knowledgeable
captains—associations which yield relevant inferences (or additional queries)
about where boats and fish are located.
Knowing a specific depth that a pair is drawing at gives information
about where fish are located that may well generalize to ones own region of
water. Furthermore, knowing the depth
at which a pair is drawing yields information about a pair's location and course, since the pair will
likely maintain this depth for the duration of the draw. Finally, if one is following another pair,
knowledge of what depth they are fishing at is a crucial resource for
determining how to steer to avoid
drawing through the exact same water.
If pairs did not tend to maintain a certain depth during their draw, the
potential problem—short of much more elaborate boat-tracking systems—would be
really difficult to overcome. If pairs
were unconstrained in two dimensional space (on the surface of the water), how
could pairs behind be certain they weren't covering water that has already been
swept clean? But since pair behavior is
(generally) constrained by depth of the water, knowing the depths being fished
by the pairs ahead greatly simplifies the problem for a pair that is following
behind. The pair following behind will
often pay attention to the depth of water they (and others) are in, in order to
improve their chances of drawing their trawl through undisturbed waters.
In general,
pair-trawlers are out to catch large sill
("Atlantic herring"). Herring is graded
into three classes, based on average fish size, derived from the number of
herring per kilogram. Prices vary
(generally) from 2.00 SK/kg for nollor
("zeros," the largest, most desirable fish) to 1.00 SK/kg for the smaller
classes.[37] By-catch (species such as mackerel, whiting,
and sometimes cod and other larger fish) must be removed and discarded or sold
separately. An exception to this
procedure is when the pair is trawling for skrap
("scrap") or industri ("industrial")
fish. This is fish (of any species but
generally price-graded by fat content, and thus preferably herring) which is
boiled down and processed into fishmeal for non-human animal consumption or
fertilizer. Skrap fishing is a politically- and ethically-loaded topic, in
spite of its long history in this region.
(See Chapter 2, on the history of trankokerier,
"fish oil factories," in this region).
When fishing
for skrap, the pairs use a trawl
which catches all but tiny minnows.
Both fishermen and the general public feel guilt and dismay over the
modern practice of cleaning the seas of fish-life with modern technology for
the ambiguously useful end-products of fishmeal. For their part, fishermen are caught in a bind created by
economic circumstances which are, at least in the short term, out of their
control. Reduced market prices for
sorted herring of high quality, a trend begun in the late 1970's (see Figure
33), currently make the skrap option
attractive for owners of larger ships. Skrap prices are generally (and stably)
on the order of .60/kilo (see footnote).
Since much less manual labor is entailed in skrap fishing, and because effective skrap fishing requires large on board storage space, many of the
huge ships which have a hard time keeping a large crew when times are tough,
turn to skrap fishing as a way to
keep the business afloat and profitable.
In turn, the
owners of these ships (often under pressure from gigantic debt burdens) have a
lot of political clout and use it to keep the skrap option open by lobbying government. The government is swayed by this clout and a fear of economic and
political turmoil if many of these huge ships go under (taking with them the
major form of economic livelihood for many coastal communities), and
politicians are not inclined to try and shut down the practice of skrap fishing. Furthermore, the practice is seen as a positive way to assert domestic control over the fate of the
fishing industry in general.[38] As price regulation of consumable fish
becomes more difficult in the world economy, supporting the prices for skrap appears to be the best option for
easing the tough (short term) economic situation of these fishermen.
The smaller
pairs, like the one I was with from Vindö, generally take on board as much
sortable sill (i.e., saleable as one
of the three classes of sill) as they
can, and have a small holding tank down and forward (in the bow of the hull)
for about 25 tons of skrap, in the event their haul contains too
much by-catch to justify sorting.
Providing that one is landing at a port with a facility for extracting skrap from this hold, the skrap binge ("scrap bin"), the skrap can be unloaded along with the
sorted fish when the pair come into port (see Figure 34).[39] Otherwise, a special landing at a skrap unloading facility must be made
later in the week. Under these latter
circumstances, the fish will slam around in the bow of the ship's hull, turning
the whole lot into a viscous liquid—which is less desirable from the standpoint
of the receiving factories (not to mention the crew which must endure the
stench which quickly sets in under these conditions).[40]
The ideal
nights fishing entails first packing the containers (big plastic tubs) and lådor (20 and 40 kilo boxes) with nollor; then anything can be put down into the skrap binge ("scrap bin") to fill the boat to capacity. It is especially undesirable to haul in the trawl with highly mixed fish on the
first draw. Then the decision must be
made to either use up some of the skrap
binge early in the night, or spend the effort to manually sort the
fish—ensuring both that some sorted sill
is caught and that some room remains in the skrap
binge, affording more flexibility in future decision-making. Making the decision to put fish in the skrap binge will be based upon: an
estimation of the quantity and quality of sill in the mix; the current state of
information about market prices; plans for fishing in the remainder of the
week, including what the upcoming weather looks like; the physical and
psychological condition of the crew in general; and, any specific agreements
worked out for purchase of the fish by agents which arrange sales for the fishermen.
If there is
less than 50% sortable sill, or if the sill is of a quality which will not
fetch a good price, then the fish is likely to be dumped below to the skrap binge. This is accomplished by simply opening port holes which lead from
the mid-deck holding and sorting area to the lower-deck's bow holding
tank. On the other hand, if the catch
is to be sorted and ice-packed this begins at once and generally engages all
crew members except the driving captain.
The captain is occupied (together with the companion boat's driving
captain) in deciding where the trawl should be set for the next draw or setting the course for return to port if dawn is
approaching.
A decision is
made to haul the trawl in when: the trawl is estimated to be full; or, there
are no more fish to be seen in the area and hauling will allow the pair to
search and set in a different area; or, the timing warrants hauling such that
another draw can be undertaken or departure for port begun at once. Determining how full the trawl is, is a
non-trivial problem. Fishing in really tätt ("tight" or, densely packed) shoals
can fill the trawl in less than an hour.
Other times, a six hour draw can yield virtually nothing when the trawl
is brought to the surface for unloading.
Although it is
not a usual event, the pair I was with during the week discussed below in the
micro-analysis burst their trawl open one night because—they concluded—the
trawl had too much fish in it.[41] It is possible that this event was
precipitated by a weak net joining (a major seam exists precisely where the net
was severed), or a bad current, or even contact with an obstacle of some
sort. The two crews had decided in
favor of the interpretation that they had left the trawl in the water too long,
had collected a massive quantity of fish and—in conjunction with a faulty net
seam—the captains (particularly the "owning" captain) were careless in the
execution of a turn, causing the trawl to burst. This was a rather traumatic event because the fish were sparse
and it was not a highly productive week, or month for that matter. There was no blame levied, although the
event was attributed to improper handling of a turn in which steps to reduce
speed (and raise the trawl)—in order to reduce unwanted torque on the gear—were
deemed to have been incorrectly executed.[42]
Two different
kinds of procedures, employing very different kinds of resources and
computations, exist for making judgements about how full the trawl is. The newest technology, in use on only a
small number of pairs, is a device which measures the stretch of the trawl's
mesh at certain points along the trawl.
The stretch of the mesh at these points is registered on the bridge in
the form of a panel of lights (thus the term used for the device lamperi, derived from lampa, "lamp" or light). This technology is not completely debugged,
and those who were using it claimed dissatisfaction with it. In trying to make sense of the discourse
about fish in sight and "in the bag"—to use my own expression—I was struck by
the frequency with which lamperi are
a topic of particular interest for information-inquirers and a topic generally
avoided by information-givers.
If we cast the
dialog as an exchange of information, an exchange which calls for reciprocation
on the parts of interlocutors in radio discourse, then the lamperi create an interesting wrinkle in the normal mechanisms for
performing this exchange. The normal
inquiries, as we will see below, are of the form "Where are you?" "Do you see
anything [i.e., fish]?" These speech
acts easily fit the mold for expected exchange since reciprocation is automatic
(reverse the direction of questioning and ask the same question) and the
information is always open to interpretation (affording flexibility in
determining the value of ones contribution).[43] But questions about lamperi—for instance, "Has your lamperi
lit up yet?"—both have no discourse reciprocals (the inquirer is unlikely
to have a lamperi so the question can
not be returned) and are not really negotiable (the answer is either "yes" or
"no"). The respondent can choose to
lie, of course, but he is constrained in a number of ways which make it
unlikely that he will do so.[44] I became quite convinced that fishermen's
voiced dissatisfactions with the lamperi
technology—frequently expressed in these radio dialogs in terms such as "it
doesn't seem to be working very well" or "we have it turned off because it
gives false readings"—were at least partly a product of the social process of
information exchange rather than simply an objective analysis (by the speaker)
of the functioning of the device.
The second
procedure for making judgements about how full the trawl is, relies on
estimates of fish seen on the sonar devices.
It will be recalled that this includes the echo sounders mounted on each
ship—looking straight down—as well as the net sounder (whose signal is
available to one ship of the pair) mounted on the trawl which senses the fish
going into the mouth of the trawl. My
own observations suggest that it is quite difficult to determine the
productivity of the draw from sonar displays.
While conditions at either end of the productivity scale are not
ambiguous—that is, really big schools of herring and no fish at all are two
conditions which are easily recognized—the majority of the circumstances fall
somewhere in between. These
circumstances are generally characterized by scattered fish, encountered over a
long draw, and where the quality (size and species) is very difficult to
determine. In Chapter 5 I attempt to
investigate the distribution and nature of expertise entailed in reading sonar
representations in a small sample of fishermen who, although they use diverse
fishing techniques, all employ sonar images to evaluate the underwater state of
affairs.
Finally, we are
ready to consider the actions required to bring in the trawl, and unload the
catch. Having made the decision to
haul, the two driving captains, in unison, reduce their engine power down to
where the ships' forward motions are barely perceived, and begin winding in the
trawl cables on the big mid-ships winches.
When the huge 500 kg. weights surface and are brought on board, slack in
the svep lines is achieved by backing
slowly toward the trawl. The svep lines are then handed off to the
trawl's host boat, in a fashion identical to (but in the reverse direction of)
that described above for setting the trawl.
One boat is now (at least momentarily) idle, and will lie still nearby
in wait for word about the catch in order to determine what should be done
next.
The catch from
the draw is usually divided between the two boats, in order to put both crews
to work sorting while the next search, draw, or departure for port is
begun. However, this division of the
catch has no economic status as all proceeds from sales and costs incurred are
redistributed evenly between the two boats of the pair. Hauling the fish on board proceeds in two
steps. Step one entails the "owning"
ship (the one which carries the trawl just drawn) hauling some portion of the
catch on board in two-ton increments.
Step two entails the "non-owning" ship coming along side and "taking"
some fish (usually the remainder of the catch) on board in similar two-ton lyft ("lifts," see Figure 35).
A lyft is created by winding the trawl
netting far enough up onto the trawl winch (on board) to force the herring into
the belly or very end of the trawl
which remains in the water. At this
point a line from the foredeck boom which has already been connected to a
"noose" (a line running through a set of rings sewn into the trawl a few meters
from the trawl's end) is pulled taught and used to draw the belly through the water (alongside the
ship) toward the foredeck. (To
accommodate this, the trawl winch is wound out to create some slack in the
trawl itself.) This procedure
effectively creates a sack of fish (approximately two metric tons in weight)
which is lifted out of the water by the boom operator, and swung over to the
foredeck fish hatch for unloading.
While the sack is held in this position another crew member unties the
knot holding the end of the trawl closed.[45] When the end opens the fish spill out
(hopefully) through the fish hatch in the upper-deck and down into a mid-deck
fish sorting area. The deck hand then
reties the trawl end rope and the empty trawl end is lowered back into the
water. The boom line is then spooled
out, so that the procedure can be repeated by winding the trawl back onto the
trawl winch, pushing more fish into the end of the trawl.
Lyft are first taken on board the
"owning" boat (usually half of the catch, as estimated by sight), and then the
exact same procedure is repeated for lyft
taken on board the "non-owning"
boat. In the latter case the boom line
comes from the "non-owning" boat, and requires that the two boats lie in close
proximity and coordinate their respective winch actions.
The catch of
the draw is quantified in terms of two variables: the number of lyfts (or 2 tons times the number of lyfts) and the approximate percentage of
sortable sill. If the decision is made to sort the catch,
the process begins at once. On the
mid-deck stands a machine which does a good portion of this work, but first
certain non-herring species are removed by hand from the catch which has come
through the fish hatch of the upper deck.
A conveyer belt transports the remaining herring from the lowest point
on the mid-deck up to the top of a sloped rack of spaced rails which is the
central component of the sorting machine.
The fish land on the rack such that they line up in the direction of the
rails, effectively falling into the gaps created by the spacing between the
rails. The entire rack shakes
vigorously, under motor power, causing the fish to slide down the slope
dropping into bins as the spacing between the diverging rails increases in the
downward direction. Small fish drop
through first, and are caught in one bin, large fish drop through last and are
caught in another bin. When a bin fills
up, a door opens which spills the contents of the bin onto a conveyer belt
running along near the ceiling of the ice and storage hold on the lower deck.
Below, in the
storage hold, lådor are filled first
with a shovel of ice, then with herring, and topped with another shovel of
ice. The crew member actually loading
the herring has motor control of the conveyer belt speed as well as conveyer
belt location, allowing him to move the fish to the empty boxes eliminating the
need to manually lift any filled boxes. Despite these effective manual labor saving techniques, packing
the herring during rough seas is not an easy chore. Empty lådor are stacked
tight to the ceiling when brought on board, to prevent them from crashing
around during the trip. Now, as the boxes
are pulled from these stacks they become unstable and are the source of chaos
as the ship slams around in the waves.
In the back and forth sway and violent up and down slam of the bow, one
must learn a different physics for tasks as simple as retrieving a shovel full
of crushed ice. A newcomer to this
scene cannot help but notice the subtle (and not-so-subtle) body movements that
have been developed to cope with this challenge by those who are experienced in
this environment.
The captain,
for his part, will often attempt to alleviate the burden of those sorting and
packing by proceeding with low engine speed and heading off the swell in order
to minimize the jolts down below. From
his perspective, however, once the catch is on board, the game is afoot again! The captain is concerned with where the next
draw will take place and (if the sea is calm) will begin to resolve this issue
at once, in consultation with the captain of the companion ship, by beginning
the search for a place to set the trawl again.
The boats which
make up a pair are each owned—as with all fishing boats on Vindö—by two, or
three fishermen who are also the skeppare[46]
("skipper(s)," also "master(s)" in wider usage, what I have been calling "captain(s)"). The structural aspects of being, and reasons
for becoming, a captain or a crew member are generally the same on
pair-trawlers as on other fishing boats, as described in Chapter 2. What is worth considering here in more
detail, following our discussion of the technological means and ecological
context of the practice, is how social organization interacts with these,
simultaneously shaping and being shaped by the nature of the on board
activity. In particular, the discussion
in this section is about specific units of social and cognitive
organization—the two crews of the pair, and the pair-trawler fleet as a whole.
It should be
apparent that the technology of this practice effectively concentrates the
activity of decision-making (at least for the "real time" operation of fishing)
in the hands of the captains driving the boats of the pair. The driving captain has everything he needs
at his finger tips for making decisions and acting upon them. Given the dynamic nature of the activity—e.g.,
deciding where to search for fish, set the trawl, and/or make a turn with the
trawl—there is little time for consulting anyone other than the captain driving
the companion boat. Furthermore, given
the distribution of the cognitive work load across instruments and the two
captains, there is little need for additional crew members to participate in
the gathering or dissemination of information which informs the activity. Radar and navigator screens reveal and
remember boat locations and possibilities for setting and drawing the
trawl. Hydraulics allow arm-chair
actions to control the winches which maintain trawl depth and trim. Radio communications allow the two captains
to coordinate their actions during the draw without any participation by other
crew members.
Fishermen I
spoke with generally attributed this state of affairs to the "rationalization"
of the industry—the effort, in the face of changing markets for their product
and emerging technologies at home and abroad, to make fishing more efficient. Although many lamented the fact that fewer
people can make a living from fishing nowadays, there was a very strong local
perception that the life of a fisherman is much easier today than ever before. This perception is manifest in the stories
and materials (for example, boats) which contrast modern and former practices
and make the conveniences (and images of success) in modern fishing salient.[47]
The crew
authority structure one might expect to result from this state of affairs—where
the power for making decisions lies almost entirely in the hands of the owning
captains—is offset by the fact that there are more owner-captains on pair-trawlers than most other fishing
boats. These ships are larger, and
require more crew and more owning crew, than the smaller fishing boats used in
bottom-trawling along the coast. But
only one owner/captain is really in
charge at any point in time on each ship of the pair. The other, captain(s) of each boat is(are) engaged in the same
tasks as everyone else—sorting fish, cleaning equipment, on deck setting or
hauling the trawl, or they are below trying to get some sleep.[48] This division of labor creates two on board roles for owners: driving
captain and regular crew-member. The
fact that there are men with the status "captain" who also take on the role of
"crew member" is an equalizing factor in the distribution of authority and
rights which normally tends to mark the differences between individuals.
In general, the
differences between captain and crew-member are minimized—or at least
de-emphasized—away from the bridge.
Tasks of responsibility regarding the fishing operation—such as driving
the boom or forklift to unload the boat—are distributed across the crew without
long-term job specialization.
Individuals do take on
specific tasks in the name of efficiency, but do not generally gain any social authority by being specialists
since these roles will rotate quite fluidly—not least of all, because crew
composition itself is fluid, with members getting one week off every two to
four on. Furthermore, given the age
differential possible[49]
between a captain and a regular crew member, there are many crucial tasks which
a younger man can (and is often known to) perform more proficiently. This fact also tends to mitigate the effects
of differences in authority. For
instance, many of the younger crew are capable of (and willing to) tinker with
the modern technology where older fishermen are not. This skill is a valuable commodity—essential to success of the
operation—and serves to highlight the team's dependence upon these more junior
crew members.
This deemphasis
of differences between individuals is pervasive in life on Vindö—both in the
local culture and (I would claim) in national attitudes generally. Ingvesson, reporting on a fishing community
in this same region during the 1960's, remarked upon a general tendency to
de-emphasize authority—both on board and in the community (1978). Captain's on board, she notes, engage in a
kind of communication with crew members that appears to entail joint decision-making but which is in fact a
process of confirming the captain's proposals.
She sees the same pattern in community meetings, where these same
individuals' (captains') inputs carry inordinate weight in spite of the
appearance of strictly democratic decision-making.
While
non-owner/owner differences are de-emphasized, all things to do with the boat
are categorically the domain of boat
owners and therefore serve to mark social and pragmatic differences. Just as boats are a focus of captain/owners'
identities (see Chapter 2), they are boundaries between owners and
non-owners. This is clearly established
in the division of responsibilities along the line separating "fishing
operations" from "boat maintenance."
Thus, a non-owner is not expected to volunteer time to paint the boat
during the 2 to 5 week summer vacation—although he might arrange to be paid to
do so. Likewise, maintenance during the
fishing season is generally the responsibility of a younger owner who has often
received special training to maintain, for example, the boat's engine.
Furthermore,
the financial compensation structure of the operation—while noted in the
literature and in the local culture for it's socialistic tenets (cf. Hasslöf,
1949:208-210; Ingvesson, 1978:76-77)—in fact makes the owner/non-owner
distinction more economically real
than is explicitly acknowledged. All
crew members, regardless of experience and expertise, are paid equal shares of
the return from the catch after direct costs like provisions and fuel have been
removed.[50] This practice goes back as long as fishing
has been collectively conducted on this coast and clearly functions as a status
equalizer—it is an institutionalized deemphasis of the meanings of individual
differences in actual job routines, experience, and skill. However, the sum of crew shares is generally
only 50% of the earnings which remain after direct costs—the other 50% går till båten ("goes to the
boat"). That is, 50% goes to the collective of owners which comprise only
30%-50% of the crew. While much of
this money is often turned back into the collective investment in the
business—and thus is seen to benefit the entire crew[51]—owners
are in fact financially well-established within the community. For instance they have, without exception,
the newest and largest houses and cars on the island. My interpretation of this situation, nicely reflected in the
phrase "goes to the boat," was that this compensation system and ways of talking
about it constitute a set of cultural resources for reconciling inconsistencies
in attitudes which strive to de-emphasize differences yet deal with the
realities of a practice constrained by: technology, large investments, kinship
commitments and real divisions of labor and authority.
It is interesting
to speculate about how changes in the technology of pair-trawling may have
affected the social organization of the crew in terms of members rights,
obligations, authority and power over the years. First of all, it is important to note that non-captain crew
members probably have more free time on their hands now than ever before. Once fish are on board there are intense
periods of work for these men which is centered upon sorting the fish and
getting it ready to land at port.
However, while the draw is underway, non-driving crew members have
virtually nothing to do but prepare meals, eat, sleep, read, watch TV or sit
and chat. Even the crew member assigned
to bridge watch is often found below relaxing or watching TV. It seems, that is, that regular crew members
have fewer demands placed upon them (fewer obligations) now than in the
past. It also seems that, since these
fishermen continue to receive the same economic entitlements (rights) that they
always have had (equal shares in the catch), that regular crewmen have more
power (defined here as rights-to-obligations ratio) in modern pair-trawling
than they have had in the past.
Secondly,
although captains would appear to have acquired more authority by virtue of
having more control over the fishing operation, this authority can only
translate into increased power if it is exercised (in the form of demands which
increase these individuals' rights) in interaction with the rest of the
crew. But since the technology of
fishing has effectively diminished the points of contact between captains and
crew, and since the culture puts a premium on minimizing acts which express individual differences and
authority, the increase in captains authority does not translate into a
commensurate increase in power. That
is, the modernization of fishing—while devastating with regard to the number of
individuals who can participate in the industry—has had the interesting effect
of making the average fisherman's life much better, at least in the narrow
sense given here.[52]
These
speculations about the evolution of social organization based upon the
structural properties of the tasks involved and how they have changed through
the years, are given support by informant reports. Several informants (now older captains) insisted that when they
were young fishermen, the older fishermen in charge (often male relatives of
their father) were quite strict, even tyrannical, authority figures. This picture is in stark contrast to the
relationship between older and younger crew members in evidence now. The current relationship, rather than
characterized by a relation of dominance or subordination, is best
characterized as a relationship of "joking."
Much time may be spent entertaining (and being entertained by) the
youngster's outlook on the world and the way things work, in casual
conversation. Although the tone of this
interaction still entails an asymmetry regarding claims of true knowledge about
the world (the youngster's naive outlook is the source of many laughs and much
kidding), this asymmetry is offset by attitudes which would appear to be
significantly different now than they were in the past. From the older (more authority-holding) crew
member's position, there is a definite awareness that the youth's enthusiasm
should be nurtured rather than squandered.
For both crew members, there is an awareness that the youth's creative
energies are a product of broader (beyond the sphere of fishing) cultural
attitudes which empower him to be bold and to speculate beyond the currently known. The rapid changes older fishermen have
experienced within their own practice render this point particularly salient to
them.
Finally, modern
work routines simply do not involve much interaction between captain and
non-captain crew members—minimizing the opportunities for exchange which make
psychologically salient to crew members the asymmetries in their
positions. In the past, informants told
me, it was categorically the case that the youngest crew member was cook on
board. This position holds one of the
few possibilities, I observed, for truly setting a crew member apart from the
rest, and labelling the position as synonymous with ‘novice crew member' could
only have accentuated this effect. Work
in the kitchen, while symbolically connoting the domestic sphere of life ashore
and thus antithetical to life on board, also had practical implications such
as: working alone preparing meals while others are engaged in collective work
more tangibly connected to the team's productivity; having the responsibility
to serve and clean up after others; having additional responsibilities of
cleaning and preparation (such as supplying the boat) which are above and
beyond work required of one to be a normal crew member.
In modern
times, the job of cook falls much more often upon an individual who enjoys performing this activity, and the
position—if not occupied permanently by such an individual—will rotate quite
fluidly between crew members. In part,
the ability to enjoy this task in modern times stems from the on board attitude
of collective "having it good" on the water, which is part of the conscious
objectives of boat owners and crew generally.[53] By contributing to this objective—that is,
by being an important component in the process of creating the state of "having
it good"—the status of cook appears to be somewhat "elevated" from what it has
been in the past.[54] Finally, it should be noted that many
efforts are made to accommodate the additional burdens of the cook by rotating
cleanup schedules, self bussing and cleaning of dishes, and collective
participation in the selection of menus and discussions of and responsibility
for meals. As in the rest of the
practice, modernization has meant that jobs in the kitchen no longer grant
exclusive rights nor obligations to single individuals. Although vestiges of the old system are
still extant—where youngest on board gets a higher proportion of the unwanted
or menial jobs—the position of cook is not stigmatized as "undesirable," does
not fall regularly to the youngest or least experienced crew member, and is
made less "different" by collective efforts to reduce the isolation and
asymmetries entailed in performing as cook.
It would seem that this "leveling" of the social hierarchy is an
instance of how changes in social organization can be predicated upon
developments in technology and attendant attitudes which have altered the
nature of the practice of fishing.
One major
constraint on a captain's actions during fishing, is that he must coordinate
them with the captain of the other
boat of the pair. All boat and trawl
maneuvers require that actions be taken by both captains—during the draw and in
decision-making about where to set the trawl and where to look for fish. This coordination is facilitated by the
dedicated vhf radio channel—the pair's private channel—as described above. Each pair has such a private channel, and
all boats have radio scanner's to try to listen in to these "private"
channels! The private channel is
justified in terms of the need for immediate, uninterrupted communication
between the two boats. However, it is
also a device for protecting the economic and social interests of their
collective enterprise, and for making the job more interesting.
In general
terms, the pair constitutes a single economic unit. All costs and earnings are shared evenly between the two
boats. Earnings, of course, are a
result of the fish caught and the price received for those fish. Both of these activities then—finding and
catching fish and organizing their sale—constitute the primary economic
cooperation of the pair. Communications
over the private channel entail much discussion about these activities, and are
deemed worth protecting. Although they
travel together with other boats as part of a fleet (see below), if the pair
has some information that will cost them earnings if others were to know about
it, then they are interested in keeping that information to themselves.
Of course, this
paints a picture of pure "economic rationality" that does not, in practice,
exist. Information about a possible state of affairs does not
translate into that state of affairs directly.
Fish can disperse from where they were once seen, prices for and
commitments to buy fish change at the last minute, "a lot" of fish may be less
than what others have found elsewhere, etc.
In reality, there is a much higher degree of uncertainty about maximizing
the "earnings - cost" equation, which requires skillful manipulation of the
cognitive and social variables which are involved.
Some theorists
have utilized "Game Theory" as a way of characterizing this kind of economic
situation. This theory assumes—I think
correctly, and certainly the fishermen hold it to be true—that each "player"
(economic unit) is concerned with maximizing the "earnings - cost" value of
their operation.[55] Where game theory fails is in the way it
casts the actual pragmatics of this activity.
For instance, it is clear that players may choose a strategy which
"looses ground" in the short term yet makes long term gains. Although sophisticated models may attempt to
accommodate this twist, the theory generally fails to relativize what "costs"
and "earnings" may be to the players themselves. That is, without mapping out all of the terrain (the means for
action in the practice) the analyst is left with a very weakly explanatory, and
descriptively misleading model. The
higher-level agent goals which may be reasonably represented by the analyst's
"payoff matrix" (the formula for assigning costs and earnings to players
choices for action) do not directly shed any light on mechanisms operating at
the level of human actions situated in a specific cultural context.[56] One goal of this dissertation is to make
explicit the cultural and cognitive means responsible for the phenomena of
cooperation and competition among boats of the pair-trawler fleet.
The history of
collective effort by the two boats of a pair is usually quite extensive, although
only loosely organized. The pair I was
with had been fishing together for almost twenty years. However, these boats will regularly
(throughout the year as prospects for herring fishing fluctuate) split up to
pursue bottom-trawling for cod, individually, with no lingering commitment
other than an agreement to agree to begin fishing together again when the time
is right. Furthermore, pair composition
is somewhat fluid, as evidenced by arrangements regularly made to team up with
other boats when ones companion boat gets sold or is in for long periods of
repair. Thus the pair's contract
together, while enduring over many years, is flexible throughout each year.
The pair's
mutual dependence during some 50% of the year—as well as their locations of
residence in the same or neighboring communities—does generate a degree of
cooperation throughout the year that
is not extended to all other boats.
Private communications and a free flow of information between the two
boats, even while they are fishing individually as bottom-trawlers, will be
maintained whenever possible. It is
also usual for the two boats to run errands and perform other time- and
cost-saving measures for each other, even during those periods when the boats
are operating as separate economic units.
The most
intense requirements for coordination between the two boats come during the
draw itself. The reasons and means for
this coordination have been discussed above.
The boats must maintain a fixed distance (avstånd) and must take parallel actions on the winches to effect
changes in the trawl depth. To
accommodate this process, there is a division of labor which gives the two
driving captains asymmetric responsibilities.
The ship that carried the trawl which gets set in the water, can be called
the "owner."[57] The "owning" captain is the one in charge of
the draw. He is the one who receives
and views the net sounder signal; he is the one who commands actions for
changing the trawl depth; he is the one who has the ultimate authority about
decisions to change course or to stop and haul in the trawl. The other captain's primary responsibility
is to "hold the distance," that is, to guarantee the maintenance of avståndet. In practice (as we will see in the micro-analysis), decisions are
not made unilaterally. The one
exception here is trawl-depth changes, for which only the "owning" captain has
suitable information—namely a view of whether the trawl is in danger or is
fishing the most productive layer of water.
What I am
calling the "fleet" is a loose collection of pairs, between 3 and 10, which are
fishing the same region of water. All
of these teams are members of Swedens Fishermen's Organization (SFR, Sveriges Fiskares Riksförbund) and
most come from the Göteborg region and are members of the Swedish West Coast
Fishermen's Organization (SVC, Svenska Västkustfiskares Centralförbund). These teams find themselves in the same
region of water on an informal, yet reliably predictable, basis. First of all, their location in the region
follows general knowledge about the migratory patterns of the herring. Second, their membership in a given week is
the result of a dynamic process which begins with membership from the previous
week: boats change gear and move to other waters to pursue something else if
perceived profitability drops (and there is a better alternative); boats leave
for repairs; and boats arrive because they have heard or imagine it to be the
case that success can be found here, fishing with the fleet.
In addition
there are other nations' boats—usually Danish, in the waters between the two
countries—which often follow along. The
Swedish pairs all use a public radio channel, whose frequency is owned by SVC, to communicate with each
other. The functional properties of this
collectivity (the fleet) are complicated (I believe)—although somewhat
transparent to the fishermen themselves.
From their standpoint, this kind of collective (fleet) fishing is a
completely rational basis for pursuing their business. "More boats can catch more fish (per boat)
than the boats can catch fishing alone," the fishermen told me. There is much truth in this claim. The scope of one's instruments for seeing
fish is largely restricted to the one-dimensional trajectory that the boat
takes through the water. Multiple boats
increase the chances of coming across schools of fish, each of which is
generally larger than one or several boats can take on board in one night's
fishing.
But, as with
many cultural activities, both the means and the meaning of this practice are
not adequately described by this claim about rational behavior. First of all, while the teams do flock
together it was not at all clear that the fish we were catching were a product
of collective "effort" on any given night.
The general search strategy was much more one of: (1) hang with the
fleet while privately discussing possible options available by drawing upon
accumulated information; if none of these options are pursued then, (2) when
other boats are making decisions to set their trawls, evaluate the choices of
(a) setting here along with them, or (b) continue on because what is seen here
is not good enough, which might mean (c) setting somewhere else based on
private information. In the
micro-analysis below, we will look at some actual instances of this
decision-making process and elaborate on its form and underlying mechanisms.
Secondly,
"collective action" may be more aptly characteristic of fishermen behavior on
the time scale of weeks and seasons—as channelled through the institutional
means of their political organization—than behavior which is explicit during,
for instance, the search for fish on any given night. The fishermen's organizations provide important (and powerful)
political clout, both on the national policy front and via collective
bargaining with local buyers and their organizations. However, strategies for improving one's business over the long term also include explicit
reciprocation in the form of exchange of information along the way. The forms of this exchange are importantly
shaped by the constraints upon knowing and acting which are inherent in the
activity itself, as the following chapter will demonstrate.
Finally,
face-to-face (or radio mediated) acts of exchange are not valued by
participants solely in economic
terms, but also in terms of benefits to individuals received in the form of
self-confirmation about who one is.
These benefits to individuals are attained via recognition that the
members of these other teams are more like oneself than not. This recognition is brought home every day
by acting the part—including performing according to the conventionalized codes
of conduct which are publicly monitored—and reinforced through collective
rituals sponsored by the fishermen's organization. That is, through common experience (brought about by conducting
the practice so as to create common experience) fishermen identify themselves
by reference to a collectivity, and actions are taken which simultaneously fill
the expectations of others and are self-rewarding. This process yields forms of behavior which are constrained not
only by the potential for catching fish but the potential for achieving success
as defined by what it means to be a fisherman as constructed through
participation in the practice.
[1]In reference to the Spanish pair-trawling fleet.
[2]Grammatically, flyttrål is ambiguous as to whether it is derived from the verb flytta (to move) or the verb flyta (to float). Both verb roots, "float" and "move," can be transitive or intransitive, and both accurately describe the technique. I was always more influenced by the latter etymology, seeing the action of the trawl as caused by the actions of the fishermen, and this "moving" reflected in the sense of the term. However, I was told by one captain in later correspondence that the root "float" is most definitely the correct sense for the term. In retrospect, this meaning is reasonably accounted for by the fact that the practice is defined in contrast with another popular form of trawling, namely bottom trawling, which is the meaning of the unmarked form trålfiske.
[3]It should be noted that by "actions" I mean intentional behaviors—behaviors that are both teleological (driven by expectations about their consequences—they are "intended" behaviors) and sensitive to context. It should also be clear that a micro-analysis requires much more information than just recordings of behaviors—it requires many cultural materials (interviews, written histories, and documentation, knowledge about this and related areas of activity, etc.) in order to translate physical behaviors into meaningful human actions.
[4]This definition of performance is no more question-begging than the competence view's own definition. Both rely on some notion of coherent actions—what I have called "performing appropriately"—as the target which the research is meant to explain.
[5]This rather brief exposition should not give the impression that trawling represents a culmination of this process, nor that this particular evolution is a natural course of affairs predicated upon economic or other laws. Hasslöf (1949) does much more justice to this history than can even be attempted here. For instance, he reports that while the steam engine afforded fishermen an earlier opportunity to go mobile with their practice, it never came to pass because the use of such ships required financing and ownership from outside the sphere of influence of fishermen themselves and was thus never adopted. In contrast, the gas motor made possible a technological adaptation that was easily incorporated into the existing social organization of fishermen and fishing practice.
[6]Thomson (1978:103) reports that some smaller boat pair-trawling techniques (he notes French, Belgian, and Dutch teams) do use a bow line to connect the pair, thus mitigating the chances of straining gear—and possibly altering the nature of the steering task for the captains.
[7]Thousands of these bombs, loaded onto vessels, were intentionally sunk by the allies following WWII as a means of disposal. This activity has only recently "resurfaced" in the context of multi-lateral efforts to rid the seas of sunken environmental time bombs.
[8]As discussed below, this division of labor brought on by the fact that there is only one sonar signal, generates a certain cognitive and social organization whereby one boat (below called the "trawl owning" or "owning" boat) is "in charge" during the set and draw of the trawl. This role generally rotates back and forth between the boats following each draw.
[9]The fishermen themselves seemed a little embarrassed by the terms. Apparently, in their eyes the terms (when consciously examined) do reveal "quaint custom," or at least some were convinced that this would be my perception and it made them uncomfortable, or gave them cause to laugh at themselves.
[10]Svep itself appears to be derived from the role this rope (more precisely, the lower ones or sten svep) play on bottom trawls, viz. they sveper (literally, "sweep") the fish up off the bottom and chase them into the center portion of the trawl mouth.
[11]As a final note, I should mention that in English these same parts of the trawl do indeed relate to bodily experience, or at least representations of the body. Thus, the top of the trawl opening is known as the "headline" and the bottom as the "footrope." There is some evidence that Swedish fishermen also ascribe properties of a biological sort to the trawl. While the catching end of the trawl is called the kalv ("calf," or "veal," perhaps connoting this parts role as the "meat producing" end), I was also told it is called the belly (which I believe comes directly from English, "belly") perhaps connoting this end's role as the place where fish end up once they are "eaten" by the trawl. Unfortunately, I have no additional data for pursuing these speculations.
[12]The terminology of "owner" and "non-owner" is discussed below.
[13]One can imagine the "boat" vectors swinging out toward the reader, and extending (at least momentarily) in length as the boats pull apart.
[14]This discussion assumes the radar is set up in Relative Motion mode, with Heading Up selected. The differences between True and Relative Motion radar are discussed below.
[15]Such would not be the case, for example, if the pairs where company owned and built as pairs, as is the case in the Spanish fleet (cf. Warner, 1977).
[16]This method also accommodates better financial control of the operation.
[17]This is only possible in good weather, and even then can not account for cable sway, unusual currents, etc. which distort the idealized geometry required by this technique for accurately computing the depth of the trawl.
[18]I was told it would cost between $100,000 and $200,000 to have a suitable asdic installed.
[19]The old wheels of these ships, while still extant, are usually built into a corner behind some add-on piece of technology, or often used as a convenient foot rest. I was never really sure whether they functioned at all as backup rudder control, although I noticed many of them did move feebly when the ship was being turned by the other control levers or the auto pilot.
[20]All compass directions in the Swedish system are based on a 360 degree circle swept in the clockwise direction.
[21]Four satellites are needed as follows: one for each spatial dimension plus one to correct for timing errors. Since the fishermen are only interested in two dimensional fixes (latitude and longitude), their receivers are somewhat simplified.
[22]The fishermen enjoyed telling me how their systems were dead accurate during the Persian Gulf War. I have no explanation for why this should have been the case other than that the US military had turned off the "noise" on the commercial system. I did notice the general interest in this phenomenon (and the telling of it) by the fishermen and attributed it to a kind of "vicarious participation" in the technological wizardry that was so (skillfully) promoted during this war. Near the end of my stay, a ground-based Scandinavian "corrector" was coming on-line which significantly increased the accuracy of the GPS system in these waters (called Differential GPS, or DGPS).
[23]All of this "knowing" is accessible to the receiver once the particular DECCA "chain" (the label for a "Master" and 3 "Slaves") has been dialed in (see Figure 28).
[24]The actual distance of a zone is relative to the wavelength of this base waveform, call it µ (µ = 2 * speed of light / f). Thus, the number of zones can be computed from the number of times µ can fit between the two stations, or d/µ, and varies (in general) for every Master/Slave pair since d varies within each chain and µ varies between chains.
[25]Actually, lanes are usually divided into hundredths or "centilanes."
[26]These worked on the principle that a receiver could detect the direction of the sender, by the angle of the receipt of the radio wave from the sender.
[27]It should be briefly mentioned that while boats generally have both a DECCA and a GPS receiver on board, and continually representing the boat's position on the bridge's electronic navigator, the GPS receiver is generally much more accurate. This fact is readily verified on a continual basis by observation of the discrepancy in the displayed position fixes, together with independent evidence for where the boat is (e.g., tied up to the dock). One source of the DECCA system's error is readily seen in the hyperbolic coordinate system. Hyperbola's diverge from each other at distances removed from their common focus. Therefore, any finite resolution (or area of uncertainty) in the fix near the focus will be larger at distances away from the sending stations—even before the practical aspects of this distance (e.g., increased noise in the received signals) is taken into account.
[28]Memory limitations of the computer determined how large a region can be represented at one time and how much overlaid information can be accumulated, since it all must be loaded into memory from tape for use.
[29]Although this experience is also handed down between generations, it appears to be the case that changes in technology and fish markets quickly make the specifics of this information obsolete. This was probably not the case in former times when more slowly changing technologies made the intergenerational transmission of experience more important.
[30]There was only one "pair" from Vindö, while there were more than a half dozen competitive bottom-trawlers from the island. The opportunity (and motivation due to social pressure) to share tapes among pair-trawlers was therefore much lower.
[31]However, from season-to-season fish are known, as reported in a previous section, to return to the same general areas. Therefore experience in specific areas as represented on these tapes do provide a decision-making resource in the most general sense.
[32]Navigators are also able to take inputs from sonar and to generate outputs (automatically) for an autopilot. Neither of these interfaces were functional on any of the boats that I spent time with.
[33]This latter constraint is perhaps best illustrated by an oft-heard expression of concern by Scandinavian fishermen generally for the migration north of Spanish and other Southern European fisherman under the new European Community alliance. This concern expresses a logic whereby the (understood to be) nomadic lifestyles of these other peoples will create an economic imbalance (as far as fishing goes) because Scandinavians—I was told—would not be interested in fishing so far from home so as to exploit Southern European waters.
[34]Through agreements with the EC and other nations which border these waters, Swedes still maintain a few licences for fishing in the North Sea.
[35]When the boats stop to set, they turn on deck lamps which are readily seen at some distance on clear nights.
[36]During my time on board the rear trawler of the pair, we were once called over to tow our companion ship, a side trawler, upstream and clear from her trawl.
[37]These market prices reflect only 1/2 to 2/3 of what the fishermen actually made from the sale during the economic climate of my residence. The difference was made up by government price-supports, which were the subject of contentious debate in the country (Statens Offentliga Utredningar, 1989).
[38]However, as has been pointed out by the advocates of reform, the price supports for skrap fishing seem to benefit only a small proportion of the entire Swedish fleet (cf. Statens Offentliga Utredningar, 1989).
[39]This piece of equipment is a mobile conveyor belt that has a vertical component which can be lowered down into the hull of the docked ship (see Figure 34). More importantly, the receiver of skrap must have a transportation or processing facility for dealing with the fish.
[40]This phenomenon is not only unpleasant, but also dangerous. In the summer of 1993, two cases of death were reported among Danish laborers who unload the ships' skrap binge, due to inhalation of toxic gases which quickly build up under these conditions (Yrkesfiskaren, 1993).
[41]Unfortunately, I was asleep when the event took place and felt, personally, a certain shock or trauma over the incident which did not precipitate the necessary intensity of questioning—on my part—to make complete sense of this rare event.
[42]It was expressed to me by several fishermen that dwelling on past events, mistakes or unfortunate incidents, is a waste of time. There is a general attitude of optimism entailed here, about looking forward to possibilities rather than back on failures. This attitude also fits with a denial of levying fault on individuals—which would foreground them as individuals with certain failings and potentials—which is in line with theme which runs throughout the culture here.
[43]An exception to this is the question "What are your values [latitude and longitude readings from the GPS receiver]?"—which must be answered unambiguously. If the argument I am making here about lamperi introducing a new constraint upon this process, then it may have been the case that the introduction of automated navigation like GPS and DECCA had similar effects in the past.
[44]Here I am thinking of his conscience, social pressure from other crew members who are witness to the public behavior, as well as the chances that his lie will be discovered—either by word of mouth about the behavior, or by deduction once the results of the nights catch are publicly available. Following hauling of the trawls, something which happens more or less in unison across the fleet, there is nearly always a round of radio exchange regarding the catches made by each pair. This "accounting," together with the physical evidence produced in port the following day, appeared to make blatant deception an unworkable option.
[45]It is a non-trivial task in rough seas to time it so that this knot is undone when the swinging sack is stably positioned above the open hatch—all the while avoiding being crushed by two tons of swinging herring and maintaining ones footing on the deck. Furthermore, there is a certain urgency involved since each swing of the lyft, as it crashes into the 3-sided rail surrounding the open hatch—the purpose of which is explicitly to stabilize this pendular motion of the trawl sack—generates forces which crush the catch and reduce it's quality and possibly it's value.
[46]The word skeppare is constructed from the stem "ship," and (from the grammatical application of the productive morpheme -are) implies simply "one who (as a professional) works with (drives) ships."
[47]This local perception is somewhat at odds with Löfgren's (1978) analysis of the evolution of a fishing community on the coast, well south of Göteborg. While Löfgren, like myself, also employs a functional framework for explaining social organization, he seems to limit functionality to a notion of "means of production," leading him to underestimate the role of cultural constructions. Thus, he claims the influence of patrilineality in boat ownership—so dominant throughout fishing societies in the North Atlantic (cf. Andersen and Wadel, 1972)—to be a product of changes in the means of production which entailed the intensification of capital yielding changes in the organization of ownership. My own data suggest that ownership and crew membership have always (at least as far back as the late 19th century) been closely linked with patrilineality, and while modern economies concentrate this relationship they do not create it independent of the cultural constructions through which the practice operates. In my analysis, functionality includes all aspects of practice. Many of these aspects are historical products, some are current or past economic conditions, others are the constraints imposed by the cognitive accomplishment of tasks engendered by the practice.
[48]Actually, the requirement that a non-driving captain be rested when he takes the helm does make his non-driving role a bit different. Since he must be awake during long periods of driving, he has a warrant to catch some winks at a time when others may be required to forgo sleep in order to get fish sorted and packed. In practice, the captain's would tend to join the crew and go sleep-deprived in these cases. (Sometimes, they will stay at the helm where less physical exertion is required until the job requiring manpower is complete and another captain is free to take over.) Thus, while lack of sleep marks a difference between captains and others, it is not a difference that regular crew members particularly envy, nor a difference which captains capitalize upon to assert their higher status. In fact, it seemed to me, in this environment where sleep is a highly valuable commodity, that a captain's fatigue carried a symbolic gesture of sacrifice which—while marking one as captain—served as compensation to the crew for his higher status (cf. Barth, 1966).
[49]Most boats' owners include at least one man who is a generation older than everyone else. This man generally has a son or two who are also part owners.
[50]The one exception to this rule, also reported in the literature to be an old tradition, occurs with first-year fishermen who may—if they are young and financially supported or dependent—only receive a partial share in their first season.
[51]See, for instance, the discussion in Chapter 2 about the short turn-around time for upgrading a ship along this region of the west coast.
[52]It should be noted that not all fishermen find doing less work more desirable. In fact, general attitudes suggest that the prototypical fisherman is quite eager to work, works hard, and never tires. More accurately, perhaps, were individuals' reports of boredom associated with trawling many hours (meaning low returns) and with nothing to do but roll with the swells.
[53]It is also the case that men often cook meals at home on the weekends, I noticed. I do not know whether this feature of the domestic scene has changed under the same time period as the reported changes to cook status on board, but I would predict that it has.
[54]No one wants to suffer the consequences of eating lousy food just to keep a youngster in his place!
[55]Notice that my version leaves open what "costs" and "earnings" for the actor are. They need not be based in currency or political capital. Stated in these general terms, the equation is congruent with the claim that human behavior is goal oriented or teleological at some level of description. The problem, as I will elaborate below, is that these abstract human goals do not determine the organization of human behavior—they are only one input to it.
[56]See Barth (1966) for an attempt to relativize the payoff matrix by grounding the building of reward structures in the dynamics of interaction. The problem with Barth's model is that the relationship between reward structure and means of interaction remains too abstract. Agents are assumed to be consulting a ledger for the maximization of personal gain through interaction, but this process has no (or, at least, has only weakly developed) real-world constraints incorporated into the model. This and the following chapters are meant to address the question, "what are the constraints and resources that inform interaction, and what are the consequences for social organization." This investigation employs a cognitive analysis of the on board practice to instantiate examples of how interaction and social organization are related in this setting.
[57]The terminology they actually use here is to employ the possessive pronoun "his" when talking about the trawl in the water. So while they never talk about the trawl in the water being "owned" in the abstract sense I am using here, the division of labor associated with the event is marked by the possessive pronoun in their language. For instance, in explanation of why the decision to turn around during a draw was made by the other captain, the captain of the boat I was on told me "it is his trawl."