Warren Murphy: White Water

"I wish Esteban could be here to see this," Roberto lamented.

Esteban was his youngest boy. Just in junior high, he would probably never fish, never own a boat except a pleasure craft. He played shortstop for the Innsmouth Crustaceans and often spoke of baseball as a career. But that was a young boy's dream, nothing more.

Roberto was back attacking the ice when Manny-now taking his turn at the sonar scope-called out, "Father, something is happening down there."

Back at the scope, Roberto saw that the school of cod was spreading out. He nodded.

"They are beating the sea floor for prey. Probably capelin." He called up to the pilot house, "Carlos, where are we?"

Carlos consulted a marine chart. "We are approaching the Nose."

Roberto frowned, his sun-weathered face a mask of beef jerkey. The Nose was the easternmost portion of the Grand Banks fishery that Canada lay claim to. Technically the Nose was beyond the two-hundred-nautical-mile limit claimed by Canada. But the Canadians had chased the Spanish, and before them the French, from these waters as if the Nose legally belonged to them. They said the free-ranging cod were Canadian. As if any fish could possess a nationality. They existed to be taken. Nothing more.

Taking up his binoculars, Roberto scanned the skies for Canadian Coast Guard aircraft. These skies were empty of all that and of all promise.

"Stay the course," Roberto said, throwing his luck in with the cod as his ancestors had.

The trawler muttered on, its ice-encrusted bow smashing the ten-foot swells like a stubborn bulldog with a foamy bone in its teeth.

The school did not swim in a straight line, of course. It veered this way and that. With every veer, Roberto signaled the Santo Fado to veer.

Inexorably the cod were taking them into the Nose.

"I don't like this," said Carlos.

"Slow," said Roberto, who did not like it either.

They were not in legal waters. There could be a fine just for suspicion of the intent to take fish from these waters if they crossed the invisible two-hundred-mile limit into Canadian waters.

Still, the temptation was very great. This was their last haul, and the teeming cod moving beneath their aging hull were oh so very tempting.

The trawler reduced speed. The waist of the great saucer of cod, like a gigantic living thing composed of green spots of light, moved on. The trailing edge came into view.

Carlos made a noise of surprise in his throat.

"What is it?" Roberto demanded.

In answer, Carlos laid his finger against the large, elongated blip swimming directly behind the school.

Roberto stared at it in disbelief.

"I have never seen this," he breathed.

"What is it, Father?" Manuel called from the faded white pilothouse.

"It cannot be a codfish. It is too long."

"How long would you say?" asked Manuel.

"As long as a man," Roberto said. "Weighing as much as a man." And his voice trailed off. "A Patriarch," he said under his breath, not daring to believe it himself.

"What?"

Roberto's deep voice shook with a growing excitement. "It swims with the cod. It must be a cod. But it is not a scout. Yet it is larger than the scouts."

"A porpoise?"

"No, a Patriarch cod. A fish not seen in over one hundred years." Drawing a breath that burned with sea cold, Roberto Rezendez spoke the words that doomed himself, his sons, and sealed the fates of many fishermen in the days to come.

"I must have it. I must. This is the dream of my forefathers to catch that magnificent monster. We will bring it back living, as proof that the cod stocks are rebounding. The industry may yet be saved."

Rushing to the wheel, Roberto ordered Carlos back to the sonar scope.

"Both of you guide me. We will follow until the cod stop to feed. Then we will lower our net."

"Where are we?" Carlos asked.

"It does not matter. This is a miracle. It is bigger than one boat or one family or even which nations lay claim to what patch of cold, gray water."

They followed the school deep into the Nose. Here cod fishermen from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were forbidden to practice their livelihoods while boats from other waters were not constrained. Over forty thousand men had been thrown out of work by the edicts of the Canadian Department of Fisheries. Men who watched their nets dry on their docks while other men took what they could not. Roberto knew them to be honest, hardworking men. He understood their plight. He had suffered since the closing of Georges Bank. It was sad.

Until they lowered their net, it would only be a fine. Perhaps not even that. And if the seas were clear when the cod struck their prey, there would be time enough to drag the net twice. And with luck, the great cod would be hauled up from the deep. That one, Roberto and his family would personally consume once the authorities laid their incredulous eyes upon it.

Deep in the Nose, the cod struck a school of capelin. The capelin were lurking on the bottom. Sensing the approaching school, the smeltlike little fish came off the ocean floor like a rising cloud. Predatory arrows, the cod fell upon them, and the gray-green water churned.

"Slow the engines. Drop the net!" Roberto shouted.

They fell to the netting with a grim will. The square-meshed orange otter net-required by the new regulations so they would not catch immature fishes-went over the stern and into the cold water below. They took up the five-hundred-pound steel-framed oak doors and affixed them to the great U-shaped stanchions called gallows. These were dropped into the water, where they sank.

"Full throttle!" Roberto called.

The boat shook and rumbled along.

The great reels paid out cable as the forward motion of the dragger caused the net to bell and open like a great, all-catching spiderweb. The huge net vanished from sight.

Down below, the doors would be forced part, keeping the net wide for the unsuspecting fish.

Ahead a little blood was already rising. And fish flecks. Soon the sea would be alive with churning and consuming. It was the law of the sea. The big fish ate the little fish. And mankind ate the big fish and the little fish both.

Like a meshy mouth, the net was approaching the school when, out of nowhere, a great factory ship appeared.

It was gray. Against the soupy gray of the sea and the dull gray of the sky, it had lain there like stealthy winter's ghost.

A foghorn blew, bringing Roberto's head jerking ahead.

"Madre!" he whispered. Grabbing up his binoculars, he spied the name on the bow.

"Hareng Saur."

"Quebecers!" he muttered. They were not much for high-seas fishing, preferring to crab the familiar waters of the St. Lawrence River. And they were at odds with Ottawa. Perhaps they would leave well enough alone.

But soon the ship-to-shore UHF radio was crackling with an urgent voice.

The call was in French. Only French. The only part Roberto understood was the name of his own boat, which they mispronounced atrociously.

Nervously Roberto grabbed up the mike and said, "Hareng Saur, I do not speak French. Do any of you speak English?"

More excited French garbled out of the radio speaker.

"I repeat, Hareng Saur, I do not speak French. Who among you speaks English?"

It seemed no one did.

The big factory ship came bearing down upon them.

Leaping to the stern, Roberto rejoined his sons.

"Do we cut the net cables?" asked Manny.

Roberto hesitated. This was to be the last haul. But otter nets were expensive. And he was loath to relinquish the Patriarch.

"Wait. There is still time." He rushed back to the sonar scope. Hovering over it, he scanned the blips.

The fish were feeding ferociously. The screen was a frenzy of greenish blips. It was impossible to distinguish cod from capelin. But there was no doubt who were the predators and who the prey.