| The weather forecast was for two-foot westerly swells with a five-knot wind out of the southwest, signaling a perfectly gentle, lazy kind of day. Pretty hard to believe for the north Pacific Ocean when the norm this time of year was an eight-to-twelve-foot roller-coaster, cross hatched by slam bam, bone jarring wind waves, sharp and cold off the Bearing Sea. Spring weather off the Oregon coast in the northwestern U.S. is not for the faint of heart or foolish. “I dare you to come out here” seas usually taunted our annual halibut quest. This year, at least today anyway, was supposed to be different. I was skeptical, but that didn't keep me from getting up to help launch the boat at O dark thirty with dozens of other hopeful fishermen.
My brother's 26-foot Bayliner Trophy had barely cleared the rocky Yaquina Bay jetty when the landside morning breeze abruptly changed to a stiff 20-knot wind out of the southwest blowing the tops off seven-foot swells rolling in from the northwest. First light was just beginning to reveal what this ocean really had planned for the day. All eyes were forward, probing the darkness for stray crab pot floats that could wrap their nylon braided tails around the propellers or out drive—crippling the boat and sending it to the rocks.
Each day of the six-day halibut season about 200 boats travel offshore 34 miles in relative isolation; guided by global positioning system (GPS) technology and side band VHF radios, to converge on about one square mile of fairly ordinary ocean. Technology has definitely shifted the advantage to the fisherman. A few feet off the bottom, 640 feet down, were halibut the size of barn doors. The trick was getting them off the bottom and into the boat and then filleted and onto the barbeque. That was the real reason for being out of sight of terra firma in a fiberglass boat that, when scale was taken into account, was smaller than a bottle cap in a big lake. It was best not to focus on scale but instead on the huge flounder-like brutes.
White on the bottom and mottled grayish brown on top, halibut start out life swimming upright with one eye on each side of their heads like normal fish. Slowly over a year they transform as one eye migrates to join the other and their tail motions change from side-to-side to up-and-down. I knew an engineer like this once.
The chatter on the radio had already started as riggings that included three pound lead balls and hooks as big as your hand were lowered to the bottom. Some called out that the cut herring bait was getting hits, others piped back that fresh salmon heads or shad were working. As the big fish began to bite, the radio buzz became an endless barrage of GPS coordinates and advice for novice fisherman.
As our bottle cap plunged and dipped in the endless assault of waves, I focused on hauling my own big fish off the bottom. I focused on the smell of the barbeque smoke and seasoning—anything but how small the boat was and how cold and deep the water was. I even focused on the upcoming meeting in Washington DC of PAN coordinators. You know, the Practice Area Network people who act as information matchmakers, problem solvers and promoters of professional development, training, and communication.
Formed in 1995, the PB Practice Area Networks, or PANs, are affiliations of bridge engineers, or traffic planners, or information technology experts, or transit designers, port specialists, construction managers, or any of over 50 other areas of professional practice. PANs link together professionals from more than 200 PB offices around the world who are involved in a common type of project, like a transit tunnel or transportation plan or sustainable development—each PAN member being willing to share their unique knowledge and project experiences with other members. PANs provide depth and dimension and a synergy that is contagious. PAN coordinators put the person with the question in touch with the people with possible answers; they encourage junior staff to get licensed, to get published, and to get involved with the sharing of information. Communication technology has definitely shifted the advantage to the PAN member.
In a moment of clarity, I realized that all these fishing boats, gathered from dozens of ports up and down the Oregon Coast , and their crews, talking to each other with a common interest, are all members of a great Halibut PAN. We were all working together to help solve the complex technical problem of getting a huge halibut fillet on top of my barbeque. Right in the middle of all these wonderful networking thoughts, comes a bump, then another, then a rock solid jerk. One of those great big ugly delicious barn doors is knocking...I better answer. |
