Reykjavík Grapevine - 27.07.2007, Blaðsíða 5

08_REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 11_007_ARTICLE/FISHING
Chapter One: Fish Guts
The first thing that strikes you about working
on a fishing boat is the amount of fish gut
stains. Black, brown and purple spots cover
the boats’ walls and floors, inside and out. Fish
guts on the tables, fish guts on the windows.
Crusty fish guts on the rails and on the bottoms
of coffee cups. It’s a fact of life for a fisher-
man that no place is safe from the bladders,
stomachs, and hearts of the sea. You have to
wonder if they dream about fish guts.
It’s the first thing that strikes someone like
me, anyways: anyone who knows next to noth-
ing about fishing – commercial or otherwise.
Fish guts are a shocker when the only thing
you know about cod is that it tastes good
when you fry it in beer batter and serve it with
French fries. That’s exactly how removed I had
been from the process. I had never even seen
a picture of a whole Icelandic cod.
So as I suited up for a day on the trylla
(Icelandic for small cod fishing boat) Happasæll,
fish guts were the last thing I had expected.
I suited up in oversized waders, waterproof
pants, and a waterproof jacket. All of them
covered in dry fish guts. I hesitated to put them
all on, and before it became too exasperating,
I had been breathing through my nose. It was
the kind of thing that made me ashamed to
come from a big city.
Fish guts. Fish guts. Fish Guts.
Chapter Two: Out to Sea.
At 6:30 am I show up at Keflavík Harbour. It’s
the earliest I have been up in three months
without being schnockered at Kaffibarinn. I see
the captain of the boat, Halldór Halldórsson,
is standing on the Happasæll looking out for
me, the scrawny Grapevine journalist who’s
come to work on his boat for a day. Halldór is
young, maybe 29. At first sight, he seems like
the kind of guy you’d expect to see cruising
Laugavegur on Friday night in a blazer, with
an entourage of beautiful girls. You wouldn’t
think that he has been working on fishing
boats since he was 14.
We shake hands and I am introduced to
Guðmundur and Frímann, both of them in
their late 50s, and double my size. We ex-
change very few words aside from a coffee
offer as we head out into Faxaflói, the bay that
stretches from the hallucinatory Snæfellsness
peninsula to Keflavík. I watch Halldór steer the
boat using a GPS system with two computer
screens, one that shows the longitude and
latitude of the Happasæll, and another that
gives a 3D view of the ocean floor. Halldór
switches one of the monitors to a camera
that surveils the engine. I look up and see
that it is a cloudless day. The sky seems to go
on forever.
“We’re going to find our nets,” Hall-
dór says, “And then we’re going to get our
fish.”
Chapter Three: The Coming of the Cod
Happasæll rocks dramatically when the elabo-
rate pulley system reels in the 2 km long net.
Guðmundur stands at the port side, concen-
trating on undoing tangles in the net as a spin-
ning crane rips it through his gloved hands.
He tensely instructs me in busted English to
move to the other side of the boat, where a
knife slides around frantically in a metal bin
intended for the day’s catch.
Knives and a rocking boat. My mother
would shit a brick.
I turn around to see that in a loud splash
of seawater and wriggling net the roaring
pulley has introduced a huge cod to the boat.
The yellow-green monster nearly does a Kobe
Bryant hop into the mound of net on the
table. It is the size of a small child and as it
thrashes violently I see its incredible strength.
Using a small and dull hand-hook to remove
the netting from the creature’s hyperventilat-
ing gills, Frímann quickly loosens the cod and
effortlessly tosses it to Guðmundur.
“You see,” Guðmundur instructs, slitting
the animal’s throat like he’s pouring himself a
glass of water. “You cut the throat here, un-
derneath the gills.” As he cuts, the fish blood
paints his face like a little girl at a birthday
party. He doesn’t flinch, saying: “Then you
slice down the middle.”
One move of his thumb reveals the fish’s
fleeting organ system. I recognize heart, intes-
tine, piss-squirting bladder. The fish’s mouth
is still moving and I can see that its fins are
still shaking. Then, in one simple move, Guð-
mundur rips the animal’s life system right out
of its body and tosses it to the hundreds of
waiting seagulls that have surrounded the
boat.
“Your turn,” Guðmundur says, handing
me the knife.
“Honestly?” I ask. “Maybe I just need a
cigarette first.”
Guðmundur laughs and pulls my ass back
to the metal bin. “I’m serious”.
I lift the fish up but it immediately flops
out of my hands and begins to wriggle on
the floor. I had underestimated the animal’s
40-pound girth. Again I pick it up, but it
thrashes itself out of my slippery gloves. The
seagulls wait. The pulley roars again.
“Look!” I hear Frímann command, “a
demon.”
He emerges from behind machinery with
Rosemary’s freaking baby. “Steinbítur” he
says. “He eats the rrrrrocks.”
The nasty grey fish is enormous, with
rounded, baby finger-like teeth that jut hori-
zontally out of its wrinkled old-man face. He
demonstrates its biting powers by placing a
wooden hook in its jaws. Then he throws it
into the metal bin where my cod is. The ugly
Steinbítur (or Ocean Catfish) throbs around
in the bin before it attaches its jaws to the
crushed head of a small fish and mauls it. Fish
blood is splayed everywhere.
Oh, and by the way, all of this smells like
shit.
The pulley roars again. I lift the cod up
with a yelp and pull its head back to reveal
its throat, which I awkwardly saw through.
Using the backside of the knife, I exert every
bit of my strength to tear the underside of
fish in half. It takes a few tugs and tosses,
but my hands successfully get the guts out.
The final tear sounds like Velcro. I want to
ralph, but I’m too proud of myself.
“Hey, I did it!” I shouted
“Great,” Frímann says. “Now gut the
rest.”
Chapter Four: What a Fisherman Does
What a fisherman does is intense, trying,
and often thankless. It’s about untangling 75
nets a day at four different locations, loading
heavy and slimy sea monsters in and out of
containers. It’s about gutting, head-slicing and
the most brutal of fish murder techniques.
It’s about what you can stomach. It’s about
market prices and salting cod for Spain and
Portugal. It’s about competition for net space.
It’s about net placement – tides, currents,
depths and where the fish will be from one
day to the next. It’s about luck.
Imagine doing this in winter, when the
sun doesn’t give and the North Sea doesn’t
forgive.
At the end of the day, Guðmundur trans-
lates the Icelandic seamen prayers that hang
on the walls of the boat. They are about
humility, god-given strength, and respect for
the harsh Atlantic.
Car provided by Sixt Car Rental
Tel.: 540-2222, www.sixt.is
As he cuts, the fish blood
paints his face like a little
girl at a birthday party.
He doesn’t flinch, saying:
“Then you slice down the
middle.”
Gone Fishing
Text by Chandler Fredrick Photo by Gulli
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