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Bering Sea Blues: A Crabber's Tale of FEAR in the Icy North
Current price:
$19.95
Publication Date: June 1st, 2011
Publisher:
Epicenter Press (WA)
ISBN:
9781935347118
Pages:
330
Usually Ships in 1 to 5 Days
Description
This a gripping memoir of a winter season of crab-fishing in the Bering Sea, filled with scary moments, killer ice, dangerous work, and-for the lucky ones-financial rewards. For others, survival was their reward. Just 25, Joe Upton was the youngest guy aboard when the 104-foot Flood Tide pulled out of Seattle in March 1971 headed for Dutch Harbor with 700-pound crab pots stacked three deep on her deck. The top-heavy load caused some anxious moments later when the vessel iced up. The crew went to work with hammers and baseball bats as howling winds roughed up the seas and the Flood Tide rolled from side to side, threatening to capsize while everyone held their breath. Bering Sea Blues is a thinking-man's book version of the TV series Deadliest Catch, because Joe Upton did a lot of thinking that winter working 12- to 14-hour days in weather that would scare most mariners away. He figured if he challenged fate in the Bering Sea crab fishery too long he would wind up either rich or dead, or both.
Praise for Bering Sea Blues: A Crabber's Tale of FEAR in the Icy North
Joe Upton “describes in vivid detail the drama and hair-raising adventures of life aboard a crab vessel.”—Fisherman’s News
"Joe Upton's fascinating account of the history, geography, and lore of the dramatic boom years of the king crab fishery blends insight, beguiling honesty, and high adventure." --Leslie Leyland Fields, author of Surviving the Island of Grace
“If you had ever told me, in the years I lived on Unalaska Island, that the fishing life would become the stuff of prime time TV, I would have laughed all the way to the Elbow Room. Who, other than those who lived with fishermen could ever understand, or ever care to understand, that life?
“Bering Sea Blues is a fine addition to the literature of the crab fishery. How it really is, is one thing. How it really was, well, that’s another. And for how hairy and scary it used to be, Bering Sea Blues is your book!”
--Rebecca Goodrich, Alaska Cabin Bookshelf
