1st July 2009

South Georgia is notorious for its bad weather, particularly in winter. We have been fishing along the North and South West coasts of the island for the last 7 days and still haven’t laid eyes on its rugged mountain rangers. We can see the island on radar just 25nm to the north but fog, sleet and low cloud have kept it hidden from view. During the last 4 days have we have had classic bad weather conditions with 60kt SW storms bringing with it huge seas freezing and conditions about the ship. But life is relatively comfortable aboard with the hatchers well dodged down in these severe conditions. Only occasionally will the crew have to venture out on deck to bring fishing gear back aft to the shelter deck for setting.

Mat on deck taking floats back to the shelter deck ready for setting lines.

A few days before we arrived at the fishing grounds one of the other long liners, ( also licensed to fish in South Georgia waters ), accidentally caught fire. Eventually the fire was brought under control by the crew but too much damage had been done for them to make repairs or continue fishing. A large Korean trawler was diverted to tow the damaged vessel to Montevideo, while doing this they were caught in that same storm we were in a few days ago. By all accounts, the tow line broke, the fire took hold again, and the vessel eventually sank around 200nm North of South Georgia. We believe there was no loss of life, all crew are safe and well.

2nd Mate Shane on the left with the Chief Engineer Greg, checking BA gear and fire fighting equipment.

This was just another reminder to us that accidents do happen and the need for us to be self sufficient and deal with our own problems is vital, it is no use waiting for help to arrive out here.

Rgds: John B.

30th January 2009

Yesterday we set 3 lines on an isolated hill that we haven’t fished before. The first line is up and the results look encouraging. It’s good to be away from that sea ice and in open clear water for a change. Hopefully we can keep fishing for another 2 or 3 weeks before this area is also closed, then we can head for home.

Mike, the cook, reports the ships stores are holding up well. We have a reasonable stock of apples and oranges that still taste good but the remaining fruit is well past its best.

We finished the fresh vegetables about 2 weeks ago so its all frozen veg from here on. No problem though, it is good quality Talley’s frozen products and plenty of it. We are keeping an eye on the long life milk supply, we ma run low there (heaps of coffee though) and we’re almost out of cheese otherwise we’re in good shape in the stores department and meal time is, by far, the highlight of our day.

The evenings are starting to dim now with the sun dipping below the southern horizon. In another week we’ll need the light on over the chart table at midnight to see properly. From then on conditions will get colder and darker at night very quickly.  

Every ship has a mascot, we have 2. Monkey and Mr Gudni Olifsson. Both are better looking than most of my crew I reckon.

Rgds: John B.

27th January 2009

Now that the Ross Sea fishing grounds are closed its time to head for the next fishing spot. We have decided to go north-east to an area called the Amundsen Ridges. Last season the fishing was good in that area and on one line several fish came up in tatters when they had been attacked by colossal squids. Maybe we’ll catch another one this season. If so, we intend spending more time with the camera getting as many good live images as we can before letting it go.

In the meantime, our crew finally get a chance to sleep in or just chill out for a day or so before we get there. We have already been steaming for two days; if the grounds we’re heading for are ice-free we should be fishing again tomorrow.

This morning we had 56 icebergs on the 12nm range of our radar, so there is plenty to look at on the way.

Steve the factory manager on watch

Steaming past another iceberg

Karl making the coffee

Rgds: John B.

24th January 2009

We are now hauling our last lines from the Ross Sea grounds then this area will be closed at midnight on the 25th Jan until next season. Even at this stage of the season we still have scattered floes of ice work in.

Grover is driving while Tangi gives some advice as we ease past a large slab of ice that has drifted up from the south during the last 24 hours.

Chevy and Noel hauling and pushing ice away from the line as it comes aboard. This photo was taken just before midnight last night with the sun still well above the horizon. That water is now -1.5 degrees C and it doesn’t take very long to freeze the fish once they are processed and put in the blast freezers.

Rgds: John B.

22nd January 2009

The heart of any longliner is in the hook room. Antarctic Chieftain has 45,000 hooks stowed on 40 magazines. The hooks hang on the mags and the lead-impregnated backbone (the lead helps the line sink faster) is connected to the snooded hooks every 1.4m.

When the line is hauled it comes aboard through the hauling room at the front of the ship and is then pulled all the way to the hook room in the stern by the Combi hauler where the bent hooks are reshaped and the lost ones replaced. The line is then stowed and made ready for setting again. This area of the ship is a hive of activity 24hrs a day, seven days a week, with either hauling or setting the lines. The baiting machine is located on the port side of the hook room and the Combi hauler is on the starboard side.

The Combi is a cunning machine that pulls the main line, with hooks still attached, from the hauling room to the hook room and automatically stows the hooks on the magazines.  On a perfect day all runs well, but down here, with the conditions we work – deep water, foul ground and sea ice – it can take up to six crew on the Combi rail to keep up with the hooks coming aboard. On a bad line with lots of tangles the crew could replace 1000 hooks on an eight-hour shift as well as splicing, stowing and stacking the lines.

The Combi operator controls the machine and untangles the snoods that bind tight on the main line and the Combi doesn’t pick up. He can also see the crew in the hauling room on the closed circuit TV at the other end of the ship. Lots of coordination and skill is required for this job and everyone is required to do it.

Frodo on the Combi with the closed circuit TV showing hauling room on the bulkhead in front.

Shand, Aaron, Nole and Ren in the hook room. Shand is working the combi and watching the screen, see the hooks behind him.

Nole, Aaron and Shand working the hooks.

Rgds. John B

18th January 2009

More colossal encounters. This time we have found a squid beak inside one of the toothfish. We think the beak must have been inside the fish for some time as there was no sign of a struggle with tentacle marks on any of the fish we’ve caught in this area and there was no squid, other than our bait, in any of the stomachs the observers had sampled for the last few days.

We wonder how long it would take for a toothfish to digest a beak like that… probably some time we imagine.

Check out the kina with attitude: they are not toothpicks, it was walking about on those stalks when I took its photo. We think the other beast is a copepod of some kind. We’ll take it home for proper identification by people who know more about these fellers than we do.

Rgds: John B.

15th January 2009

Work goes on in the factory.

Nick is cutting collars off the toothfish heads; these are packed separately. The cheeks are also removed from the head and the only parts sent to the offal tanks are the head itself and the guts; all the rest is processed and stowed in the hold.

Josh, Frodo and Aaron taking a large processed fish from the holding tank to the wash bin where the blood will be scrubbed from the gut cavity before going into the blast freezers.

Pete, the CCAMLR observer, holds up a large starfish that came off the last line. We don't often catch much other than toothfish (our target species), grenadier and skate. So when something different comes up on a line, it is recorded and retained as a specimen to be analysed by the experts at home.

Occasionally we find something different, usually from the stomach contents of a toothfish that has been examined by the observers while doing their biological sampling. More about that later.

Rgds: John B.

12th January 2009

Even though the ship’s air conditioning system keeps the accommodation areas warm throughout the season it gets very cold in the factory. We have to use a large diesel heater to blow warm air over the frozen blocks of squid bait to thaw them out for setting. The heater also warms the factory deck a little but not enough to be comfortable.

Throughout most of the season, and more so from the end of January on, there is ice accumulated over the main deck and halfway up the ship’s sides, inside the factory.

The factory is a continual hive of activity with fish processing, packing, freezing, glazing then stowing the product down in the main holds.

There is also biological sampling done on the first 25 fish off each line we haul. The official observers, with the help of the crew, gather all sorts of information and samples from the catch. These samples must also be packed, frozen and carefully stowed in the hold and later shipped off to scientists to be analyzed.

Marli and Bull sampling the first 25 toothfish off each line.

Ren with a good-sized fish; that one was about 75kg.

Rgds: John B.

7th January 2009

Tangled lines are a common problem for all that go fishing with hooks.  Some of them are huge.

This tangle was a beauty with about 500 hooks, 700 meters of 11.5mm backbone (line), all made a little more difficult with 120kg of chain and anchors along with 1,700 meters of downline leading out to the 3 large windy buoys or floats on the end of this line.   It took the boys an extra couple of hours to sort this lot out before we could set another line back.

It’s cold on the hands working in the hauling room, more so if you’re unlucky enough to get wet too early in your shift. The only way to sort a tangle like this one is to whip your gloves off and get stuck in.
Sea temp is -1.5 and air temp -2,…….Roll on the end of that 8-hour shift !

Ren, Matt, Bull and Josh in the hauling room as they man handle the nightmare aboard around the main hauler.

The Hiab (deck crane or winch) is always handy at times like this.

Matt, Josh and Bull hauling a good sized fish aboard, this one was about 60kg.

Rgds: John B.

4th January 2009

All four New Zealand licensed and registered long liners,   ( Antarctic
Chieftain, Janas, San Aotea II and San Aspiring)  have now made it through the ice bridge and into the Ross Sea. There are also two British, one Spanish and one Korean vessel fishing inside the Polynya. ( A Polynya is the term used when relatively warm ocean currents sweep under the ice sheet and thaw the pack ice from the inside out. This happens in several areas of Antarctica but the largest by far is the Ross Sea Polynya. Right now the open, or ice free, water consists of around 180,000sq miles and its rapidly expanding north every day).

Our vessels all have Mustad automated long line systems aboard. We can set and haul around 20,000 hooks per day from depths between 1,000 and 2,000m and up to 35,000 hooks a day in shallow water around 600m.
The automatic baiting machine can bait up to 4 hooks per second and it takes a skilled operator to keep the squid bait feeding onto the bait conveyor so that the baiting average is kept at around 95% on the hooks.
Hooks are spaced at 1.4 m and each line usually has between 6,000 and 10,000 hooks. The Antarctic Chieftain can hold around 40,000 hooks on 1,000 hook magazines in the hook room at the stern of the ship.
It takes about 7 hours to set all the lines once we’re in a good fishing
area.   

Frodo is the master baiter. It's a good job for him while his knee is still recovering the dislocation he suffered a few days back.

In the hook room, the hooks must be swept and separated before being pulled through the baiting machine and out through the setting chute in the stern of the ship.

The setting chute is yet another piece of clever Kiwi initiative that is designed to keep the baited hooks away from foraging seabirds. 

Remember,  not 1 seabird has been killed or injured by any New Zealand vessel in the Ross Sea fishery since the fishery started 10 years ago.  And, to the best of our knowledge, this record applies to all CCAMLR approved vessels in this Ross Sea fishery.

As a fleet, we are proud of that record.

Rgds: John B.