Protein

Brother Stephen, with a large mahi-mahi

After some 150 days and nights of use, our two fishing reels were showing signs of wear.  The drag controls were difficult to adjust, so that big fish might easily swim off with all of the line, and the clutch buttons, which control whether the line goes out or in, were cantankerous.  We had caught a lot of fish on the two reels, starting in the Bahamas, and with my brother Stephen leading the way, we managed to keep our freezers stocked with fish for a good part of the first leg of our Pacific crossing.  It was time for some repairs, so while in Cairns I had the reels serviced, and now they work as good as new.  Also, we replenished our supply of fishing line, with another 400 yards of 80 pound test monofilament on board. 

We left Cairns with just a small amount of frozen chicken in our freezer and a dozen cans of black beans, so we need to fish to supplement our protein stocks.  We don’t fish for sport; we fish for food.  Thus, the 80 pound test line – no need for the thrill of working a fish to the boat on light tackle, letting it run and reeling when the fish turns to the boat or tires.  No, for us, it’s just a question of how efficiently we can haul dinner to the back edge of the boat.

Nonetheless, there’s a certain thrill in hearing the buzzed clicking made when the line starts to run out, the hook on the end embedded in an unknown fish’s mouth.  We can’t easily and don’t often try to slow the boat down when we have a fish on the line, and our routine is just that by now.  I strip down, Jennifer gets the gaff ready (a semi-circular sharp hook on the end of a sturdy rod that is used to grab – impale is the more accurate description – the fish when it is alongside the boat), and I reel the fish in, often requiring considerable strength and endurance to overcome the fish’s natural reluctance to be pulled against its will.

Once aboard, I get intimate with our future meals in a way that forces me to appreciate the essential “fishness” of the fish.  Lately, we’ve been catching tuna; for awhile it was mahi-mahi.  The tuna is all muscle, and resembles in no small way a torpedo with a slim head, narrow tail, and a massive hunk of deep red muscle meat in between.  The one we caught the other day was a full 3 feet long, and its strength, first in resisting being reeled in, and then in fighting our efforts to land it onto the stern, was a reminder that these fish we catch for food are, however motivated, driven to live.

Tuna steaks and filets,from a small tuna

So it is with some misgiving that, once landed, I attend to our protein needs (and desires, I suppose, since it is possible to be a vegetarian ocean sailor).   I kill, gut, and fillet the fish for subsequent consumption.  We don’t catch and release on ile de Grace for the simple reason that we don’t fish unless we need the meat.  So every catch requires a kill, and it’s an action worth reflecting on, this taking of an animal’s life.

They say that anyone who ever visits a meatpacking plant becomes an immediate vegetarian, and that anyone who contemplates seriously the oneness of the universe, and appreciates the connectedness of all things with beating hearts cannot, in good and complete conscience, kill an animal for any purpose.  To me, I think the lines we draw between plant and animal, between mammal and insect, between the one-celled organism and a complex life form can, from the perspective of an unseeing life force (or God if you will), who gives life to all of these entities, can seem a bit presumptuous and self-serving. So if we have an imperative to sustain ourselves, it may be that the moral distinctions we draw as humans ... between vegetable and animal, between fish and meat, between dairy and non-dairy ... are perhaps less meaningful than might meet an all-seeing eye.   (Of course, I am well aware of the efficiency arguments against meats, which required many times the energy and protein to create a mass of animal protein -- that strikes me as a more compelling rationale to favor more efficiently-produced forms of protein.)

The concept of sentience as a discriminating characteristic seems amorphous; who are we to understand the “thought processes” of non-human life forms?  For me, here, on this boat sailing around the world, attuned closely to the daily rhythms of nature, I try to behave with a sense of profound respect, self-aware purpose,  and gratitude for the gifts of these millennia of evolution.  In matters large and small, we make judgments as to how we treat the ecosystem around us. We pass sea water through our watermaker, and strain out microorganisms.  We fish only until our protein needs are met.  We rely on the wind as much as possible for our propulsion.  We anchor over sand, and avoid fragile coral.  We collect only washed-up sea shells.  We support local vendors.

One of my favorite authors, David Quammen, writes of his own ambivalent feelings when he was a trout fishing guide in Montana, and writes that as often as he practiced “catch-and-release,” he feels an obligation to kill a fish now and then. In his words:  “(o)therwise, he can too easily delude himself that fly fishing is merely a game, a dance of love, played in mutual volition and mutual empathy by the fisherman and the trout. … For them it not a game, and certainly not a dance.”  I don’t fish for sport – even if I could justify it intellectually, the thought of fishing makes me tremble with prospective boredom. 

But fishing for food – that’s a vocation I try to undertake with self-awareness as to its purpose and effect, and with respect.   But achieving an intimate awareness of the ecological and moral cost of our need and desire for animal protein does not come easily.  Quammen recalls a scene from an early Faulkner short story, "The Old People," where the blood from a fresh-killed deer is smeared on the hunter's face, and the hunter later reflects:“I slew you; my bearing must not shame your quitting life.  My conduct for ever onward must become your death.”

Powerful words, and words I recalled today as we pulled up to the dock here at Thursday Island alongside a Torres Strait Islander whose forefathers have lived and fished these waters for millennia.  As part of their cultural prerogatives, they are exempt from fishery regulations that otherwise forbid the capture and killing of the magnificent green sea turtles that breed here by the thousands.  In the foredeck of his Boston Whaler, freshly captured, lay a sea turtle, trussed and secured to the floor, easily five feet long and three feet wide.  I spent some time with them – Alex, Gordon, and their mates, and learned that the turtle was caught a few hours earlier, on their trip over from their traditional village on the mainland, and would, once killed and dressed, feed three families for a week.  In the words of one, “When we need more food, we go and catch more turtles.”  Considering my response to this turtle's plight, I was forced to juxtapose the morality of their capture of a robust but ecologically vulnerable species – the green turtle -- and my capture of a robust but (less) ecologically vulnerable species – the tuna.

Even if the shrimp fishermen of the Great Barrier Reef kill thousands of turtles by accident in their nets, the proximity and immediacy of this act of protein capture was a bit unsettling, and led to me reflect further on my own practices when it comes to food.  For the most part, these descendents of the original inhabitants of these waters exercise their rights and privileges to harvest food from the sea in a responsible fashion, and their traditional practices recall other native peoples from other parts of the world harpooning whales, killing seals, and catching salmon – both in substance and in resulting controversy. 

I can only hope and expect that in catching and killing these paddling creatures, each to my mind no more or less amazing than a 3 foot tuna caught off the back of my modern sailing boat, that they too resolve that my bearing must not shame your quitting life.  My conduct for ever onward must become your death.

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For more reading, try any of David Quammen’s books, especially Monster of God, a detailed examination of mankind’s hostile and ecologically perilous infatuation with the largest man-attacking predators on earth, the tiger, the crocodile, the bear, and the lion.  The essay referenced above comes from Quammen’s book, Wild Thoughts from Wild Places.  For a sobering assessment of the impact of our need for, and efforts to expand the supply of, sea-based protein, see Paul Greenberg's mesmerizing Four Fish.