Ep. 753: A Life On The Sea

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Mike Douville, Heather Douville https://www.themeateater.com/people/heather-douville, Janis Putelis https://www.instagram.com/janis_putelis/, Seth Morris https://www.instagram.com/sethmorris_45/?hl=en, and Jimmy Rinella https://www.instagram.com/jimmyrinella/ in Alaska. Topics discussed: Fishing to support the family; building your own boat; herring fisheries; naming a boat after your daughter; forced into boarding schools; sea stars and salmon sharks; long lining for black cod; diminishing quota allowances; recreational catch yields troucing commercial yields; Heather's new show, "Our Way Of Life" launching on September 29th on MeatEater; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Steven Rinella?

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• 2:52Speaker 02

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• 3:26Steven Rinella?

  Welcome everybody. If you're a regular listener to the show, you first met, um, at least from this podcast standpoint, you first met Heather DuVille sitting in this kitchen.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:38Steven Rinella?

  Or whatever you call this, this main area, a year, about a year ago. Heather DuVille on social media, A K Moosey. She came on the show. We talked a bunch about sea otter hunting, her life growing up, sowing fur, all kinds of things.

• 3:54Steven Rinella?

  And now a year later, Heather's back. She came over in her, uh, what she calls a skiff, which we would call a large vessel. And, uh, she's brought her father, Mike. Would you like to introduce your father?

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Sure. This is my dad. His traditional name is Git Wayne. English name is Mike.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  Look up to him in so many ways and I'm so grateful that he's here today. We came over in his skiff, which your kids love, by the way.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Yep, they walk all around.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  They're putting in their order for four ones.

• 4:27Speaker 03

  It's got a little bit of a, uh, like a Navy SEAL undercover. It's all black.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  So he painted it black.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  Why?

• 4:36Speaker 00

  So it blends in, you know, with the beach and yeah. He just put a fresh coat of paint on it this year.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  Not just any black, it's flat black.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Got it. Not gloss black.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Not shiny.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Mike, the thing that surprised me to hear, and I tried to argue out of it when I heard that you knew the guy that built this place.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  And I thought to myself, he must mean that the S A frame, because I hear about the people that built the A frame. I never heard anything about, we only know back two owners.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  But our neighbor, Ron Layton, um, who passed away a year ago, is the one that introduced us to the area. And Ron Layton would talk about, he grew up in Ketchikan.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Ron Layton would talk about the people that we bought from, the people they bought from, and then a guy who was very tough.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  And Ron pays no compliment to anybody.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Might the very tough person be the person you know that raised children here?

• 5:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's Rory Bifos. Uh, he, uh, he grew up, I'm not sure where he grew up, in Myers Chuck, maybe, but I know he built a home here with, uh, this house when he got married. He married Marion and she was from Myers Chuck.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's a pretty stout boy and he's still fishing.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 6:23Speaker 04

  I actually have a picture of his boat in my phone. I took a couple of weeks ago. And I asked him about, just to make sure I knew what I was talking about, but he did build this house, yes.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  In the eighties?

• 6:37Speaker 04

  And I think seventies.

• 6:42Speaker 04

  When I first met him, he had a boat called the Isis. It was a double end wood boat. But now he's got a fiberglass boat, uh, that is also the Isis.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  What's the, what's the word you're saying?

• 6:56Speaker 00

  Isis.

• 6:56Speaker 04

  Isis.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  What does that mean? I mean, I know the meaning.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  It spelled like is is.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  I looked it up. There has a, I sent it to you. I think there's like a mythology tied to it, but.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 7:08Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Um, yeah, he had two daughters.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  See, I had that he had, I had, my recollection from Ron is that he had two sons.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  No, two girls.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Did he? He lived here with those girls?

• 7:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Isn't it?

• 7:25Speaker 04

  Well, for a while and then he eventually moved to, uh, Myers, Chuck, and he built a nice log cabin there. I think he sold it. But, uh, anyway.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  So what was he doing when he lived here?

• 7:39Speaker 04

  He was probably fishing.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  Commercial fishing.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, like a trolling for salmon.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, trolling and long line for. I know he fished black cod for many years, halibut.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 7:54Speaker 04

  Uh, in the winter, uh, troll for king salmon and, uh, long line for yelloweye.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Got it. Oh, long line for yelloweye.

• 8:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  So Ron that I keep talking about, he had a, he had a halibut long line license and did that for a while. He had a troller as well. Then down the beach a little bit was Mel.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Um, Fairbanks.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  He trolled salmon and ran shrimp pots.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  Right.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  For business.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  I know Ron Leighton, uh, you know, he was on our regional advisory council for the federal one. And, uh, he was living in Cassan for a while, then he moved to Saltre Cove.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then moved to Craig. Thorn, sorry Thorn Bay.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you knew Ron?

• 8:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Did you ever, um, did, did you ever have a, uh, any kind of confrontations with Ron?

• 8:57Speaker 04

  No, no, we got along fine.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, us too, but I, but all, but he, um, we got along good through confrontation.

• 9:08Speaker 04

  No, he was,

• 9:11Speaker 04

  he was easy to get along with, you know, uh, we all get along with each other on the, the council.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 9:18Speaker 04

  And we meet twice a year.

• 9:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 9:20Speaker 04

  And they're generally three day meetings. So, no, it's fine.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  He was a, um, he was a dear, dear friend of ours. And, and like I said, uh, we got this, we bought this from being friends of Ron. And he called us one day and told us this was for sale. And when I had been to his place and stayed with him and Joan,

• 9:45Speaker 02

  I never, I mean, if I looked over in this direction, I wasn't paying any particular attention. And when he called and said it was for sale, we just bought it without looking at it. Um, out of being buddies with him. And he was the one that showed us all about anything, right? Like how to do all the kind of stuff up here that you need to do was all taught, was all taught by Ron. And then when his wife passed away, he didn't want to be out here anymore. Um, and, and, and moved out and, and did what's kind of an odd practice here is

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Seth's place was like this, my place is like this, Ron's place is like this, odd practices. When you sell it, um, it seems people don't move out. They just walk away. And you buy their possessions. Like there's no moving out. Ron, Ron didn't move out.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  What did you acquire when you bought it?

• 10:45Speaker 00

  What's the most memorable thing?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  No, I found this on the beach.

• 10:48Speaker 05

  Found the hat. I, when I, when we bought the A-frame, there was like totes of clothes and just like personal items.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, we burned.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  When you came here.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  We burned most of everything, but yeah, everything. And we got rid of most of it. Most of it was just old, moldy and tore up, you know?

• 11:05Speaker 04

  I believe Ron was a policeman in Ketchikan for some time.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  That's right. He was a detective.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  You don't, you don't, that's not true?

• 11:15Speaker 04

  Uh, no, I believe it is. You know, I just didn't know him before.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Oh, he was a door gunner. He was a door gunner in Vietnam.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  He had been shot down two times in Vietnam. Yeah.

• 11:27Speaker 05

  Didn't he say that he had a great time there?

• 11:30Speaker 02

  He always, that was the thing we used to laugh about Ron is he was the only guy we knew that had just like seemed to have nothing but a good time. A good time when he was in Vietnam.

• 11:41Speaker 04

  One of my friends that lives in the cake, uh, was a crew chief on the Huey hole in Vietnam as well.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  When I.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  I asked him, why weren't you a door gunner? He said, well, we had a guy that was better at it than me. So.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Oh, but see, no, cause Ron, I feel like a crew chief is on the, at that time, the crew chief is on the left or right door. I can't remember. I thought it was something like that. Either way, he had a heck of a time. Later I went to Vietnam for a visit. And

• 12:18Speaker 02

  growing up, like my dad was a World War Two guy, but my, most of my buddies dads were Vietnam guys. Um, I went to Vietnam for a visit and it was funny that one of my good friends dads didn't even want to look at me.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Having, couldn't believe.

• 12:38Speaker 05

  Really?

• 12:39Speaker 02

  You would go to Vietnam.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Ron was thrilled and wanted to know how everybody was.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Was his attitude about he was eager for a report, you know, huh, to share notes. But, uh, Mike, how did you spent most of your life commercial fishing? Is that right?

• 13:03Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, all my life, actually.

• 13:07Speaker 04

  This is the first year in sixty five years I did not go trolling, so.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  And how did, how did it come about?

• 13:14Speaker 04

  Actually, I've been a fisherman for, since I was, uh, eleven years old. I've, I've been out fishing and I didn't buy my own boat until nineteen seventy. So since nineteen seventy, this year is the first year I did not fish.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  How did it come about? When you were eleven, how did it come about that you became a fisherman?

• 13:36Speaker 04

  Oh, I had this burning desire to be a fisherman for some reason, and I talked my stepfather into taking me out. And then I became sort of like slave labor, you know? Yeah, so you didn't get paid.

• 13:51Speaker 02

  No.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  And the second year I fished with them, I got, I got paid, uh, my pay was a, uh,

• 14:01Speaker 04

  a Mossberg twenty-two Magnum that cost thirty-five dollars from Sears and Roebuck.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Those you pay for the season?

• 14:09Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  What was the understanding? If you weren't being, if you weren't being compensated at that age, was the understanding that you were learning? A trade that you were learning a discipline like what was, how did you understand the, the arrangement?

• 14:24Speaker 04

  You were helping to support the family.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  There was no personal gain. It was just, uh, something you did, you know? You're expected to.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  And then before you bought your boat, you built one, right?

• 14:44Speaker 04

  Uh, no, I,

• 14:47Speaker 04

  when I was like sixteen years old or fifteen, uh, I could, I didn't have any money.

• 14:55Speaker 04

  And that was about the time the, uh, wild herring spawn on kelp was, uh,

• 15:04Speaker 04

  taking off. And one of the shipwrights there was building boats for that fishery and they built a pretty good little, like a riverboat plywood skiff.

• 15:16Speaker 04

  And, uh,

• 15:20Speaker 04

  Not having any money, uh, my partner and I, my lifelong friend Art Kennedy had a rowboat with a five horse motor on it. We used to go everywhere with it. Before he had the motor, we rode it. It had double set of orlocks and two guys could row and we could, uh,

• 15:40Speaker 04

  we could go anywhere we wanted, pretty fast.

• 15:44Speaker 04

  But anyway, we went to fish egg and it used to be more lumber around, uh, in those days on the beach.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 15:51Speaker 04

  And we salvaged everything we could, um, with more than one trip, two by fours and stuff like that. And, uh, gathered enough so I could build a framework for a boat. And I copied Henry Nelligan's. He was the one that originally built this boat.

• 16:10Speaker 04

  And, uh, made a frame and scraped the money for,

• 16:16Speaker 04

  uh, the plywood to put on the bottom and,

• 16:20Speaker 04

  uh, one of my mentors, Bud Thomas, had this 28 horsepower outboard, which he loaned to me and I put on that and I used that for, well, that was my first boat.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  When you say that the herring fishery was taking off, what, what does that mean? Does it mean that the market was developing or like the, the, the something with the,

• 16:45Speaker 04

  I don't know how it developed.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Fish kind of exploded in population?

• 16:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't know how it developed originally, but you could see these guys picking wild, uh,

• 16:58Speaker 04

  uh, herring on kelp. And we heard they were getting 10 or 15 cents a pound or it wasn't that much.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  The herring roe.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 17:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 04

  Well, it's on microcystis kelp and the herring legs on it, but they were harvesting it and they were selling it. So the next year, ooh, you know, it started to develop and, uh,

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Seemed like when I first picked, picked, uh,

• 17:30Speaker 04

  did the wild harvest, it was like 50 cents a pound, or I can't remember, 25 and then 50 and then it went to a dollar a pound.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:40Speaker 04

  And there was so much interest

• 17:44Speaker 04

  that

• 17:46Speaker 04

  the participation grew just out of control.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 17:51Speaker 04

  Uh, people were flying from different places, landing their plane and harvesting and putting it on the pontoons, uh, I mean, all kinds of. So it,

• 18:04Speaker 04

  the last harvest I did, the season was 20 minutes. And the quota for the Fish Egg Island area was 100 tons.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  What?

• 18:17Speaker 04

  So it took, uh, 20 minutes to harvest 100 tons.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  Jeez. That's, you're saying 100 tons of eggs removed, not from the fish, but removed from the kelp?

• 18:31Speaker 04

  With the kelp.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  With, oh, oh, on, okay, so not scraped from the leaf?

• 18:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  I got you.

• 18:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  And then that fishery switched over eventually to where they, they sane the herring for the roe? Or is that a different?

• 18:46Speaker 04

  That's a Sitka fishery, where I live, around Fish Egg, they never did do that, but there was a sane bait fishery.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Oh.

• 18:55Speaker 04

  So

• 18:58Speaker 04

  the fishery went away. Uh, Sitka was a 50-ton wild roe on kelp harvest. Heidelberg was 50-ton. I think they opened Sitka a second time. Craig was 100.

• 19:15Speaker 04

  And years later, I asked one of the biologists, John Valentine, I said, why did that fishery go away? He said it was decimating the herring.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 19:25Speaker 04

  And to this day, Heideberg doesn't have a spawn.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  It literally wiped it out. It wasn't that big to begin with.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  And Craig was decimated for, it still is compared to what I remember when I was growing up. It would spawn for a couple of weeks there, here, there, and they continue spawning. Now it lasts about three days. And if you don't get your branches, which we put in the water for herring to spawn on. If you don't get there the first day, you're not going to get good eggs. So it's that quick and oh.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  I think it's just beat down and it

• 20:10Speaker 04

  oh will not recover.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Will not recover.

• 20:14Speaker 04

  No, because they uh several years back, they developed this uh what they call pounding. Where they capture the herring and put the kelp in there.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  And then they add herring and uh for like, they can hold them like for five days. And they come out with a real thick product. And a lot of times that

• 20:41Speaker 04

  is uh a lot of times they harvest a hundred tons or more.

• 20:48Speaker 04

  And the herring are considered dead by the department, but you know, they do release them, but they're in pretty bad shape.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  So this pounding started in Prince William Sound. And they came down and gave lessons to the boys down in southeast here about how to do it and you know, and they were selling it to the mostly Japanese and making pretty good money.

• 21:17Speaker 04

  But in Prince William Sound, the herring went away as well. And the biologist there had a chance at one of our regional advisory council meetings to ask him, what happened to the herring? Did the oil spill kill them? And he said, no, he said the pounding did. So I don't think it's recovered yet. But they actually used to send airplanes down here, harvest microcystis kelp because it didn't grow there or not good enough quality in any case and fly it up to, Cordova, wherever they're basing from and use that in their pounds. Wow. Geez, it's extreme value to this stuff. Yeah.

• 22:00Speaker 04

  Someone to do that. So you guys still harvest it now and sell it commercially? No, I had a license and I got rid of it. I never could make any money out of it, but there are a couple of groups that probably do okay on it. But you guys, you said you are still harvesting it now for personal use?

• 22:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, traditional harvest. So our, one of our episodes covers traditional harvest of herring eggs.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Cutting down a young hemlock tree and we submerged it in the spawn, the herring spawn on the boughs and then we harvest it later. So we, that was.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  But we do personal harvest on the wild kelp, which does not get as thick as what the pounds would where they capture these herring and hold them and force them to spawn on, you know, and it gets pretty thick.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  You know, we keep talking about, or I keep talking about Ron Layton. Ron Layton was always very upset

• 23:04Speaker 02

  about the herring fishery.

• 23:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, well.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, he, he didn't, he, he was always thought that it was ill-advised.

• 23:14Speaker 04

  It is.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  The herring.

• 23:15Speaker 04

  Because it is a forage fish.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:19Speaker 04

  I mean, everything, well, cohoes, king salmon,

• 23:25Speaker 04

  are, are dependent on herring. And I think they've been massacred. It started off back in.

• 23:35Speaker 04

  Early nineteen hundreds, if you will, I'm not sure of the date, but they had big herring reduction plants in Chatham Straits where they'd catch all the herring and run them through the reduction plant. I don't know if they saved any of it for animal feed or what, but they wanted the herring oil.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  And all those stocks has never recovered. So we just have a few small places. Sitka Duiya seems to be doing better than anywhere else, but every place they've had a

• 24:08Speaker 04

  pound fishery, or a heavy gill net fishery like Keshakes, the gill net fishery, that's all gone. Erna Sound, Hunna Sound, Cordova, all of Seymour Canal, all of those have gone away. They don't have a commercial fishery there anymore.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  When, what was the, what was, when you were younger and starting out fishing, what was the first time that you were fishing for your own money? Like that you were in charge catching fish, selling the fish and using it to support yourself and not using it to support, like not doing it as an employee, but doing it as your own, as your own boss?

• 24:56Speaker 04

  Well, I crewed on boats, trolling and sailing later in my later teens and did the halibut fishing, but nineteen seventy I was able to save enough money to buy my own boat.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  And then you did, what, like what activities did you do out of your own boat?

• 25:19Speaker 04

  I trolled for salmon primarily. Yeah, I had that boat for eight years. The last two of the eight years, I guess I, I did

• 25:32Speaker 04

  fish for halibut, but I wasn't really good at it. And then I bought a, a bigger boat and started

• 25:43Speaker 04

  after a couple of years owning that, I can, I changed it over so I could fish blackfin and halibut.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  Tell them about the name, the name your boat dad and.

• 25:55Speaker 04

  Well, I made this deal to buy this boat and this guy lived in Tacoma.

• 26:03Speaker 04

  Um, okay, we agreed twelve thousand.

• 26:09Speaker 04

  So. I quit my job so I could go get the boat and then he decided, well, I'm not going to sell it. And I said, why not? Well, this guy offered me more money and my wife's giving me a hard time. And so I wound up paying him fourteen thousand.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 26:25Speaker 04

  Then I went to Tacoma and brought the boat home.

• 26:29Speaker 04

  Uh. I can't remember what else you asked me.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  The name.

• 26:33Speaker 04

  Oh, oh, the name of it was Frango.

• 26:38Speaker 04

  The, it just so happened that I, my younger sister was, uh, Joanie and my older sister, I had two sisters, was, uh, Frances and they thought, my, my sister, Joanie, thought I named it after them, but I didn't, and I never did tell her any different.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  It came with that name.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  It came.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Are you serious?

• 27:00Speaker 00

  And they were all, oh, he named the boat after.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  What a coincidence.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  Wow. I love that story because when dad got his newest troller, I thought for sure, cause I saw, oh, all the, the dads had named their boats after their daughters. So when he got this boat, I thought, thought for sure he's going to name it after me. So I'm telling everyone. Well, he had a different name picked out, but then he heard that I was so excited. They named it after me and I didn't find out till like fifteen years later that he had a different.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  That you were his second choice.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  I was like, oh my gosh. So I think about that and it reminds me of his first boat and how, and that name and.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  I wonder where that came from. Cause yeah, Jennifer has an uncle and his boat is named after his daughter. Oldest daughter.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  It's tradition.

• 28:00Steven Rinella?

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• 28:42Steven Rinella?

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• 29:24Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you've got dogs, you've got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our little fleet of vehicles that have in my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you've got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're going to be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. You guys have heard me talk all about Montana Knife Company for a few years now on

• 30:07Steven Rinella?

  the podcast. Hands down, these are my absolute favorite hunting knives. Every blade they make is a high-performance durable tool that you can rely on whether you're butchering, hunting, working on the farm, out in the field, doing chores, whatever. And I've got a massive update for you. People have been asking for this forever. MKC finally did it. I've been asking it forever. The wait is over. They're launching their very first folding knife. It's called the Montana. It's going to be dropping very soon. I'm telling you right now, these things are going to sell out fast. If you aren't ready the moment they go live, you're probably going to miss out. So here's what you need to do. Get over to MKC.com right now. Make

• 30:47Steven Rinella?

  sure you sign up for their email and text message notifications. So you get the alert the exact second the knife drops. Montana Knife Company, working knives for working people. Head to MKC.com today. That's MKC.com. I can't wait to check out one of these folders. Mike, can I see, can I see the tattoo on your hand? Heather explained tattoos on her hands before. Can I see your left hand? You have the same right, or you have the same hook, correct?

• 31:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:21Speaker 00

  You should, so he's teaching the crew how to say "nuck." It's in fling it, it's "nuck." That's a wood hook.

• 31:28Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Well, Garrett's calling it "nocks." So all last week, Mike, can I see the "nocks" in my test? Like, what are you talking about? And so we had lessons, but this is the only "nuck" we've ever retired. Sea Monster, he carved it in like 1992.

• 31:53Steven Rinella?

  And so you share that one. And then Mike, what is your left hand?

• 31:58Speaker 04

  That's a beaver raven tail.

• 32:03Speaker 04

  That is my clan.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Heather Heather was telling me that. I can't remember if we talked about this before. But um yeah, we did talk about this a year ago. And maybe you have recollections of it as well. That. I don't know what years this would have been. That. Um. And I don't even know how it came to be, but like.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Tribal people were discouraged from any kind of. Um markings.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Permanent regalia, yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, where like where did that like? Who did like how?

• 32:43Speaker 00

  The government.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Like according to who and how is it enforced and how is that expressed?

• 32:50Speaker 00

  I don't know all the answers to those questions, but for about a hundred years it was illegal to practice. Um like cultural tattooing, so it would normally um. Take place during like a couick, which is like also known as a potlatch, so. It was illegal to even have a potlatch, practice your culture ceremonies or. You know, there's different words used in English or, you know, our traditional language. And so um a lot of this went away because it wasn't legal to do so. Um.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  So then you see a lot of like jewelry cuffs, carved earrings and. And that way people could wear their clan crest and remove it when required to. But this is permanent regalia. This was. Um traditionally, you know, during a couick or potlatch, you'd get tattooed. And so dad and I. Got our clan crest tattooed, you know, kind of as as a way to reclaim what's ours.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  Um. We're opposite, so.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Um.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  You follow your mother's lineage, so I'm an eagle and he's a raven.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 34:13Speaker 00

  So we're opposite clans. And I see a lot of this coming back. So there is a like a revitalization of

• 34:23Speaker 00

  the cultural tattooing and even uh like the hand hand poke tattoos.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 04

  So most of that was imposed by what's referred to as missionaries.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 34:37Speaker 04

  And uh they didn't want to speak your own native language. So even when I was growing up, my mother did not teach us. So I know some, but uh she was very fluent, you know?

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Your mother was.

• 34:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. My grandmother and my aunts, but they didn't teach kids because it really wasn't okay. So

• 35:04Speaker 04

  they were taught that it wasn't okay.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  A lot of the kids uh were

• 35:14Speaker 04

  uh forced to go to boarding schools in the lower forty eight. Uh, my mother did not go there, but she did go to uh

• 35:25Speaker 04

  Rankle Institute.

• 35:29Speaker 04

  But they forbade them to speak their own language there and you know, just basically destroyed a lot of culture. So you didn't see new totem poles for many, many years.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  They did start during the three C days and the depression days, they had the three C program. Uh, I can't.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Civilian, you mean the civilian conservation?

• 35:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Core?

• 35:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. So they did build some poles during that and they paid them under that program. So that's where the original totem poles came from in Kaua.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 36:10Speaker 04

  And they've been re-carved since then, but that's where those poles came from. So there was uh thirty or forty years where probably not many poles were carved at all.

• 36:24Speaker 04

  It just made a mess out of the culture, really, you know, so I think.

• 36:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, the effort is made now to

• 36:38Speaker 04

  try to restore some of it, but you know, these are modern times, it's all different, you know?

• 36:47Speaker 04

  But, you know, it is working a little bit. I can see

• 36:55Speaker 04

  some pride restoration in the people themselves.

• 37:00Speaker 04

  And I think that's important.

• 37:04Speaker 04

  When I was growing up, it really wasn't okay to be native, so I've seen a change in my lifetime.

• 37:15Speaker 04

  That as may be, but that's the attitude even natives had that were better off.

• 37:22Speaker 04

  Treated natives that weren't so well off, you know?

• 37:26Speaker 02

  I don't understand.

• 37:28Speaker 00

  It's like lateral violence.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm sorry. I do. Yeah, I got what you're saying. You mean that well off, like natives that were well off?

• 37:37Speaker 00

  Treated other natives.

• 37:39Speaker 04

  Looked down on the ones that weren't so well off, you know? You know, and I felt that when I was growing up, so I'm glad to see that.

• 37:50Speaker 04

  Not so much anymore.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  You guys had showed me when we were boating around, there was a couple of interesting things you showed me over by your place. Maybe you could speak to them. One, I'll just go in the order in which we saw them. One was, you showed me a location where there had been a a smokehouse.

• 38:13Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  And I believe that once they did the once they kind of parcel Alaska out, being like Forest Service gets this, tribe gets this, whatever, BLM gets this, however they divided it. They went around and would kind of destroy some relics. What they regarded as relics, but what were actually like active.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  Smoke houses. Is my understanding of this correct?

• 38:43Speaker 04

  That's correct, but that didn't happen till geez.

• 38:48Speaker 00

  Between the 30s and.

• 38:49Speaker 04

  Right after statehood, I guess that.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 38:52Speaker 04

  The forest service, you know, owned X amount, most of the land.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 38:57Speaker 04

  Um, for some reason, they decided to clean up all the old smoke houses and stuff like that. They were on federal land.

• 39:09Speaker 04

  Not village. Well, they didn't care about village sites, so.

• 39:15Speaker 04

  My great grandfather was chief of Tuxican, um.

• 39:21Speaker 04

  It was when I was a young kid, there was a lot of poles and, uh, houses that you could tell were all there and everything, uh. When we went by, I remember seeing it.

• 39:34Speaker 04

  On our way to Sarkar.

• 39:38Speaker 04

  But they logged shortly after that, logged right through the old village site, you know? In fact, today you can see cables still laying on the ground there and you also garden mounds, uh, remnants of, uh,

• 39:53Speaker 04

  uh, house posts, the corner posts, you know, there's a few of those left. But there was numerous totem poles when I was a kid.

• 40:05Speaker 04

  But, you know, they're floating logging camps and the loggers cut sections out of those and had them as ornaments on there.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 40:15Speaker 04

  Floating caps.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Really? Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, but no one cared, you know? Uh, today, if you did that, they'd put you in jail, I suppose. But they're, they're more protected now, but no one cared. They, they got rid of all this. One of the smoke houses was on the island. We used to go there when we were kids with that little out, uh, rowboat with the five horse. We'd go out there and we'd hang out there. And it was big enough to where you could actually stay in there, you know? Everybody had pretty good sized smoke houses than today. Like as big as this room.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Were the smoke houses positioned to be close to a spawning run?

• 41:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  So you could stay there, fish and smoke fish?

• 41:04Speaker 04

  Well, there was old village sites there, or at least

• 41:10Speaker 04

  of summertime fish camps. And that's a real protected place where I showed showed you that there's numerous fish traps there.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Yep. That was the second thing that I was gonna ask you about.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  When we were out, we went, you you pointed out some things that I would never ever have noticed. But once you pointed them out, it was so obvious what I was looking at, but um, and I meant to go investigate the creeks around here and look for the same clues. You pointed out canoe landings at Creek Miles where the large, the rocks are cleared away. And there's actually like a little concave groove going way up the beach. Never you would, you could live there your whole life. If someone didn't say like, you see, look, line up and look that way, you'd live there your whole life and not realize what you were looking at.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  That it was a place to drag a canoe, a boat up.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  And then the remnants of the fish traps that you could also live there your whole life.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  And just think that that's the rocks, how God laid them down.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  And then you show me and like, oh, like, once you see it, you're like, oh, my God, it's like

• 42:36Speaker 02

  they're arranged like weers, you know? That was uh, very surprising to me and I, and I haven't looked here for that.

• 42:44Speaker 04

  Almost all the creeks have those and the ones that didn't have a good supply of rock.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  Uh, they drove stakes in the ground uh, to make the fish trap. So, you know, it's if there's no rock supply to do that.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 43:03Speaker 04

  Uh, then they used uh, wooden stakes and uh,

• 43:09Speaker 04

  like up in Clark Lake, there's wooden stakes up in the lake that are uh, they've even been carbon dated, I can't remember the dates, but my uh, good friend, Steve Langdon is a professor of anthropology. He did a lot of studying and uh, pulled some of those up and had them dated.

• 43:32Speaker 04

  What? Let's see, uh, oh.

• 43:38Speaker 04

  There's a couple places where I could show you where there's actually what you call clam gardens. Where the rocks were laid out, it's filled with the proper substrate, if you will. Uh, for a clam garden.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  And they're still visible and still clams of them today and the otter been digging at them.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 43:59Speaker 04

  But they actually, um, practiced mariculture hundreds of years back. And a lot of the villages were close to a good clam bed.

• 44:15Speaker 04

  Like the one John Darrow, they, he referred to it as, uh, Empty Clam Shell Village. At, uh,

• 44:25Speaker 04

  Ignis where we, we've, we've found artifacts there.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:29Speaker 04

  And the only things left is stone, you know, but,

• 44:33Speaker 04

  uh,

• 44:35Speaker 04

  because in the wintertime, dark and the days are short, but you could always go get clams, you know? Uh, bad weather, whatever, there was always something you could harvest.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Do you remember from, uh, do you remember from your relatives? Or, or maybe things you've heard? How people dealt with the risk of paralytic shellfish poisoning? When there was no government funded testing?

• 45:10Speaker 00

  They'd put, I was told they'd put them in their mouth.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  And see if it.

• 45:18Speaker 04

  Turn your mouth, lips them.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  That's what Ron.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  They'd spit them out, but that's what all the elders told me.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Ron, rub it on his lip.

• 45:25Speaker 00

  They'd rub it on their lips and then wait just a little bit.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  But on the other hand, we had colder weather, uh, colder water, you know?

• 45:35Speaker 04

  Then we do have today, which is spawning a lot of these things.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:41Speaker 04

  But there are some places where there just seem to be hot all the time. Um, it could be in the, the gravel they grow in, I guess.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  You mean hot with the al, with the algae?

• 45:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  We call them hot clams, you know, like.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  But you know, do you know a sea otter won't eat a hot clam? They can tell.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  They know?

• 46:03Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 46:05Speaker 00

  They have like a mechanism where they.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Really?

• 46:09Speaker 05

  That's why we don't eat them out of the cove, right?

• 46:12Speaker 05

  Or is that something else?

• 46:12Speaker 02

  No, we, when we used to eat clams, before I got too scared of shellfish poisoning. When we used to eat clams, we didn't eat clams in the cove because back then people would run these very

• 46:26Speaker 02

  not well functioning sewage systems into the cove.

• 46:29Speaker 00

  Jimmy, you wanna go get one and we'll rub it on his lip and see?

• 46:34Speaker 05

  I think the tide's too high to find one, but we'll try it when it goes down.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, would you now eat, like, not now, but let's say, like, are you comfortable eating clams in the winter or no?

• 46:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  What do you do?

• 46:48Speaker 00

  Well, so the testing, they test.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  I mean, what do I do?

• 46:52Speaker 02

  Rub it on your lips?

• 46:53Speaker 04

  No, I eat part of one.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  You do?

• 46:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  And wait how long?

• 46:58Speaker 04

  If it doesn't make your lips tingle or anything, they're fine, you know? But on the other hand, we have a clam fishery that goes on.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:08Speaker 04

  A gooey duck fishery. And they're right next door and they're harvesting those and they pass the test, so I see no reason why. Normal butter clams, when I could get them, which are all gone now.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  Would be fine to eat.

• 47:26Speaker 04

  They're, they're filtering the same water.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you're com- like, if I took you over yonder, right here, and it was January, February, and we dug some clams, you would eat a bar- part of one?

• 47:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 02

  And if your lips didn't get numb, you'd dig in?

• 47:45Speaker 04

  Yeah. If it was a good clam, you know, I'm particular about where I dig them. I don't dig them out of the mud. I like to dig them out of a. A mixture of clam shell or clam shell, uh, where they're nice and white and.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 04

  Good color and healthy, you know, fat clams. That's the preferred places I would dig them.

• 48:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you ever use like clams as halibut bait? Do those work or do you?

• 48:16Speaker 04

  The gooey ducks do, but uh, you know, I had never used them, but a friend of mine did. They had a bunch that were, I don't know what was wrong with them, but he used halibut bait and they worked fine.

• 48:29Speaker 04

  But we're using that type of thing or putting clams in your crab pot to catch crab. We used to have a lot of these, uh, sunfish, you call them.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 04

  They all got killed by a bacteria, not a virus of that bacteria killed them, but those things would run as fast as they could to get those clams.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Oh, is that right?

• 48:53Speaker 04

  It wasn't the best bait.

• 48:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, a few years ago, um, there's still so many down like, uh, I mean, they're all over the place down off Washington. The oceanic sunfish. A few years ago, there was a giant right out here in the arm. And people got video of it. Uh, they had no idea what they're looking at.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  The mola?

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, not around. Aren't there some species of those that are like targeted in different parts of the world?

• 49:21Speaker 04

  What are you talking about sunfish? I'm talking about these starfish that are.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  Oh, sea stars.

• 49:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:27Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought you meant that big, you know, that oceanic sunfish that like lays on the surface?

• 49:31Speaker 04

  I've seen those too.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  That's what you're talking, oh, so the sea, yeah, the sea stars. Yeah, they're all gone. I always thought, I always heard it was a virus. It's a bacteria.

• 49:39Speaker 04

  Bacteria.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're gone. I mean, those things are gone, gone.

• 49:42Speaker 04

  They just discovered it was a bacteria. That, that, that's new news.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, okay. I was confused because.

• 49:49Speaker 04

  So if you put clams in a crab pot, all these, uh, sea stars, you get a crab pot full of those instead of crab.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Like they like it better than they like fish or whatever.

• 49:59Speaker 04

  Clams, that's one of the mainstays that they eat.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Okay, okay. When you said that about, you know, you know that fish I'm talking about, right?

• 50:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  Cause they, they make it up here sometimes. I thought, I thought you meant that there was more before. Like somehow there was more of those fish around that lay on their side and.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  Give him the

• 50:20Speaker 02

  Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 50:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know exactly because

• 50:23Speaker 02

  You can rub them with a brush, you can rub them with a scrub brush and they like it that it's a crazy fish. I'm not joking.

• 50:30Speaker 04

  I was fishing out Muzan once and um, one day a sunfish was on the kind of sea's fin and stuff and I thought it was a big shark. And before I saw it, it was coming right by my trolling lines. And I thought, oh crap, I'm gonna hit that shark, you know, but it went right by his hide and nothing touched. And it was one of those big sunfish.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Okay, alright.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Gosh.

• 50:54Speaker 04

  I thought it was, I thought I was gonna run right into it, but actually it wasn't the shark. It was a

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:02Speaker 04

  A sunfish.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Swimming around his fin out of the water.

• 51:04Speaker 04

  They don't have no tail on them, you know, so.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Do you um, like, do you target salmon sharks or do you know people that do?

• 51:11Speaker 04

  No. He's very interested in salmon sharks.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  I love salmon sharks.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  As am I.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:16Speaker 04

  I've seen them jump out of water down at head off for whatever reason, just like, I don't know what they were doing, but salmon shark.

• 51:26Speaker 04

  And we'd catch one once in a while trolling.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  I've heard they taste amazing.

• 51:31Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 51:34Speaker 04

  They might be, but I don't eat sharks.

• 51:38Speaker 04

  I've caught a lot of blue sharks and um,

• 51:42Speaker 04

  dogfish. And I just can't, uh, they have a, you know, urea to them, you know, and I don't know how to deal with that.

• 51:53Speaker 04

  I've cut steaks and soaked it in salt water and

• 52:00Speaker 02

  No good.

• 52:00Speaker 04

  No. But people do eat them, you know?

• 52:04Speaker 02

  When you were in the black cod, in the black cod fishing business, were you, were you longlining black cod or did you?

• 52:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  You, okay, uh, what, what was that, what was that like as a, you know, what was that like as a business? Was that like a profitable business to be in?

• 52:20Speaker 04

  It was very good for me. I started in like eighty-four, I think.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  Um, it turned into a derby.

• 52:32Speaker 04

  Everybody, well. What happened was the Megs and Stevens Act. Uh, kind of opened the door for that.

• 52:44Speaker 04

  Uh, before that, the foreign long liners would come across Japanese Koreans. And fish black cod and the market was really poor.

• 52:56Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 52:57Speaker 04

  Two bits a pound or whatever. If you couldn't do anything else, you could go fish black cod, but the market wasn't that great.

• 53:07Speaker 04

  So when the 200 mile limit came in, uh, it allowed the American fishermen to participate more. Yeah, they claimed you're never going to catch all those cod, but Yankee ingenuity, we figured out how to catch them. I mean, way better than they did. Uh, so as we took more of the quota, they got less. And then pretty soon they were just moved completely out because we could harvest it all.

• 53:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was actually pretty good fishery, but.

• 53:41Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 53:43Speaker 04

  The, because everybody wanted to jump in on the halibut and black cod fishery, they turned into derbies. And the fleet was increasing at 20% a year.

• 53:53Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 53:54Speaker 04

  So then the IFQ program was finally, uh, put in place to, uh.

• 54:02Speaker 04

  Save lives, if you will, because people are literally killing themselves to get out and get their share of the, the quote, the, uh, quota.

• 54:11Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 54:12Speaker 04

  I mean.

• 54:14Speaker 04

  Uh.

• 54:17Speaker 04

  Boats shouldn't have been out there in bad weather, you know, but they would do it and, you know, it was costing.

• 54:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 54:26Speaker 04

  So then the IFQ program would, now we have, uh.

• 54:32Speaker 04

  It did stabilize things, but I have less quota than I used to catch, you know.

• 54:39Speaker 04

  Like I started off with thirty-two thousand pounds of, uh, qualified for thirty-two thousand pounds of halibut. And I think I'm just under nine thousand now because of conservation cuts and so on.

• 54:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a pretty bad hit, too.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:56Speaker 04

  What's that stand for, the IFQ? Uh, individual fish quota.

• 55:02Speaker 04

  So you actually own the quota?

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  You can sell it, you can fish it.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  And you can catch it when you want and not have to participate in that opening win- opening day window.

• 55:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, you have a, from March till December or almost, you know, to catch your halibut or cod. So it, it's a better fishery in that respect.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  Do you mostly fish alone?

• 55:32Speaker 04

  I used to do all my fishing alone except for halibut. Uh, black cod I had a crew, but halibut I, uh, Raymond, my boy, and I used to do that ourselves. But now I'm old and creaky, so I go out with him and, uh,

• 55:51Speaker 04

  can't say I didn't fish this year because I did, I just didn't fish salmon, but I did go get the halibut.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  Do you like fishing with your boy?

• 56:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was fun, it was tough, you know.

• 56:04Speaker 04

  He's a fisherman, which I'd never encouraged him to be one, but he is, so. He's pretty good at it.

• 56:13Speaker 02

  Wha- what was, if you would, if you were going to discourage someone from it, on what grounds would you discourage it?

• 56:20Speaker 04

  It's really an unstable, uh, way to make a living.

• 56:25Speaker 04

  Uh, we've taken a lot of cuts and, you know, everybody wants a piece of the pie, a bigger piece. Uh.

• 56:37Speaker 04

  Like the sport charter group?

• 56:38Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 56:41Speaker 04

  Oh, you can't have unlimited effort on a limited resource. And that's what we're seeing with that group. There's still no restriction. Anybody can get licensed up and start the charter business, you know?

• 56:56Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 56:57Speaker 04

  But it is a limited resource.

• 57:03Speaker 04

  So the last couple of years, prior to this, they had virtually unlimited season where there was no in-season management. They, okay, you get 20%, but we're not going to manage you in season. So they got more than their 20%. So they took it out of the commercial trailers.

• 57:25Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 57:26Speaker 04

  So we didn't get a second opening.

• 57:28Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 57:30Speaker 04

  So this year, they've changed that to where there isn't season management. So, uh,

• 57:39Speaker 04

  they got shut down on Kings in June sometime and then, uh, they decided that they had 4,000 fish more coming and so they could keep one. The non-residents keep one.

• 57:54Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 57:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's an annual limit.

• 57:57Steven Rinella?

  Yep, we're well aware.

• 58:00Speaker 04

  But that's what happened this year. That's why the restriction for the last two years, two or three years prior to that,

• 58:08Speaker 04

  there was no in-season management, which was really unfair to the commercial fleet.

• 58:14Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 58:16Speaker 04

  Because they, um, just, uh, took the fish away from them to make up the difference.

• 58:23Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean? A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. Cause that way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're going to be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weather tech.com.

• 59:03Steven Rinella?

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• 59:46Steven Rinella?

  This is a rock solid clip. It's not the kind of clip that you're going to use a couple of times and it bends and get all loose. The blade goes back into the mill after heat treatment for its most critical surfaces. That's the kind of step nobody else takes. That same standard applies to every part of the Montana. That's the name of the folder, the Montana, from start to finish. The wait is over and I've been waiting a long time to get one of these suckers. MKC launching their first folding knife. It's dropping extremely soon, so make sure you sign up for email and SMS to be the first to know. These are going to sell out quick. Head to MKC.com today. That's MKC.com. In military families, service is more than a job. It's a legacy.

• 1:00:29Steven Rinella?

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• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  In Resource Management.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  You often find that different user groups

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  always blame.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  User groups always blame other user groups.

• 1:01:11Speaker 04

  I don't blame those guys, but my suggestion at our AC meetings is you guys should try to do a limited entry on yourselves. So you have some stability in what you're doing. And your licenses would be worth a fortune.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:01:32Speaker 04

  But you gotta curb this growth somehow, just like uh, the individual fish quota on the federal side. And the limited entry on the state side for commercial, uh, seining and trolling. There's a limit of how many boats.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:52Speaker 04

  But right now, the sport commercial is totally unlimited.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  And it's a limited amount of fish. So everybody's scrapping for a bigger piece of the pie all the time. Or at least they are. They're always lobbying for

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Speaker 04

  more.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  The, the point I was gonna make about that, the way different user groups. And this goes across the board. Different user groups look to other user groups as the problem. But I was shocked when I was reading some a, a report that the state put out.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  I would have thought just by guessing. I would have thought in Southeast Alaska. You would see that commercial harvest on like these key species, the commercial harvest. Uh, in my mind, I would have been like, it's gotta be 90%.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Compared to recreational harvest. But for a lot of the, a lot of the main target species.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  Recreational harvest surpasses commercial harvest.

• 1:02:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  I had no idea. Cause we always blame

• 1:02:58Speaker 04

  Particularly on

• 1:02:59Speaker 02

  the commercial guys caught them all.

• 1:03:01Speaker 04

  I know one lodge that lands more fish, uh, than the commercial fleet in Craig. So.

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 04

  They don't talk about it anymore, but they made the brag they caught a million pounds or shipped out a million pounds of, you know, processed fish like you did. That doesn't count the, all the waste stuff that.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  That's a million pounds of filet.

• 1:03:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  Skinless, boneless.

• 1:03:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:03:34Speaker 05

  That's a lot.

• 1:03:35Speaker 04

  And that's more than.

• 1:03:36Speaker 05

  More than I thought.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  It's probably four million in actual fish bodies.

• 1:03:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:40Speaker 04

  That's more than the, uh, the troll fleet and Craig catches. And lands and sells commercially.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:03:51Speaker 04

  So it's significant.

• 1:03:54Speaker 04

  But without that hatchery and claw, which is licensed for five million eggs. They'd probably all go broke there. And it's funded by fishermen, you know, for the most part, three percent off the top goes into hatchery enhancement.

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  And that's.

• 1:04:16Speaker 00

  What fish are commercial fishermen?

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  What fish are they hatching?

• 1:04:21Speaker 04

  Cohoas.

• 1:04:23Speaker 04

  In that hatchery, it's five million, uh, five million eggs of, uh, Coho eggs. And it's been fairly successful. This year is kind of,

• 1:04:36Speaker 04

  we're seeing, uh, for a fifty-three million prediction, I'm not seeing the fish. I see a few out here. It doesn't look too bad. There's a few scattered jumps, uh, coming inside Cassan Bay. But on the other side, it's not very good. Also.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  I, I don't. This is just observational. I, I don't know what, um, this year is, appears, this year appears to be very different. On a salmon situation. I didn't know if there was just a very poor hatch a few years ago.

• 1:05:09Speaker 04

  I don't know. They're saying humpies, but some of the Cohoas aren't showing like I think they should.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:05:16Speaker 04

  There's, there's king salmon.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's plenty of king salmon. I mean, you know, it's, it's pretty good. We can't keep, keep or catch them, you know? Uh, I think on the second opening, the, uh, my share is seventeen fish.

• 1:05:37Speaker 04

  For the second opening.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  For as a commercial fisherman.

• 1:05:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  Seventeen?

• 1:05:41Speaker 04

  Seventeen. When I started fishing in nineteen seventy, I could fish on the odd on the ocean.

• 1:05:50Speaker 04

  From April fifteenth till September twentieth, and I could keep king salmon the whole time. And now, uh, the king salmon season lasted, what, four or five days?

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  Huh.

• 1:06:04Speaker 04

  So I've seen some change.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  What what's those seventeen fish? What's one of those fish worth?

• 1:06:10Speaker 04

  Uh, I don't even know. I didn't land a king salmon commercially this year yet.

• 1:06:17Speaker 04

  I think they're six and a quarter pounds, so, uh.

• 1:06:22Speaker 04

  Oh, I think that's the first opening. They were paying six and a quarter a pound.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  That's gutted and gilled.

• 1:06:28Speaker 04

  So a twenty pound fish is is, uh, you know, is okay.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  Hmm hmm. What has it been like? For you guys together as you've been working on? The show you're working on?

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  Um.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  What's that been like?

• 1:06:50Speaker 04

  I don't work on the show, but, um.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  You participate.

• 1:06:54Speaker 04

  I've been. In just kind of enjoying life this year, taking Heather out a lot, uh, fish king salmon, fish halibut, uh, hunt a otter, uh. Get greens, uh, this.

• 1:07:09Speaker 04

  Go after sock eyes and stuff like that.

• 1:07:12Speaker 00

  There's a common like recurring thing that I hear dad saying, and he goes, I'm just the driver. So he's. Any anytime we, um, give him a little responsibility, he's like, I'm just the driver.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 1:07:27Speaker 04

  So this is the first time in my whole life, if you will, that I've just. Done what I wanted for the summer, not worry about fishing.

• 1:07:35Speaker 00

  This is the first time I've had my dad. Been able to spend summer with my dad in my whole life. So this is a special time, being able to do the show. We have an incredible group, you know, that has joined us to capture all of these moments from, you know, Meat Eater, but we couldn't have asked for a better group. Dad and Garrett totally hit it off and the girls are great. And this is my first summer with dad, so he's been gone, you know, from spring till fall fishing my whole life.

• 1:08:15Speaker 00

  So if we could catch king salmon together, you know, just like going out in the skiff and catching king salmon, we'd get them in like before the middle of June. So in years past, I would catch one or two king salmon total.

• 1:08:36Speaker 00

  Because he'd go commercial fishing for that. So in June, I'm like, oh, I got my king for the year and that's it, you know? So this has been great and

• 1:08:48Speaker 00

  yeah, thank you dad, because it is a lot. It's a lot.

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  It's a lot, but being able to capture some of these moments that we just wouldn't have otherwise been able to. And with my niece joined us this last round with Halibut and

• 1:09:08Speaker 00

  just being able to take up space for our, you know, our culture and indigenous people. And we represent such a large group of people, but you know, each tribe and each individual within their own community deserves to be uplifted and celebrated in their own right. And so this is just, this show is an opportunity to just get a kind of like a peek in through that window of our view.

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  And I'm thankful that we get to capture some of it.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  What, can you name the, the episodes for people so they know what to look for?

• 1:09:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I, I'm, I believe we're going to kick off with the sea otter episode. And then we have the herring eggs, so.

• 1:10:05Speaker 00

  We have the herring spawn, harvesting herring eggs, and then we have a seal hunt. We process the seal and make seal oil in the cracklings, which you've tried.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:10:15Speaker 00

  And then we're fishing with the noch, so the wood hooks. And then the last two episodes will be, I think, two parts, which is going to be fish camp. So dried fish, making the cold smoked.

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  Strips, jarring the fish and um

• 1:10:38Speaker 00

  fermenting coho eggs. So in September, when the cohos, you know, come in, we're gonna do coho fish camp and ferment some skeins and I'm worried about Samantha because she walks around my property like this.

• 1:10:52Speaker 02

  Plugging her nose?

• 1:10:53Speaker 00

  And I'm like, what's wrong? And she's like, there's just a lot of smells in Alaska that I've become nose blind to. And I forget everything smells.

• 1:11:03Speaker 04

  Her crop post pile is what it is.

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  And Mike, were you making appear? Are you in all of them or are you just driving? Like, do you talk in all of them?

• 1:11:14Speaker 00

  Oh, he's, he's a highlight. I said.

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  I don't think so. I don't know. I just do what I do, but.

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  I told them, you know, my dad, the reason why I'm able to do all this stuff and know the things that I know is because my, my dad, um, you know, through all the stuff we mentioned earlier here, um, he was able to still learn about, you know, our culture and, and practice that even through all of those attempts to make us not anymore. And um, that's the greatest gift I could have ever received. And so I told, you know, the team that I really want to highlight and uplift my dad and um, he, he deserves all of that recognition.

• 1:11:59Speaker 00

  So I do think you're going to see a lot of him and anytime I post anything anyway on social media, they're like, we don't want this. We want your dad, more videos of your dad. So he deserves it. He, he's awesome and he's so funny. And this little subtle, dry humors, you know, there throughout. So I'm excited to see.

• 1:12:24Speaker 04

  It's kind of nice. I didn't have a chance to. Heather wasn't a hunter and went out so much of this Raymond did a lot of it. Then she moved away and came back and.

• 1:12:39Speaker 04

  She goes out with me every opportunity. She's learned considerable amount. Much more than Raymond, actually.

• 1:12:53Speaker 04

  Paying attention to the cultural part of it.

• 1:12:58Speaker 04

  And I was gonna say, I was gonna go King Salmon fishing. It wasn't my intention just not to go. But I got COVID just days before the season opener. It just knocked me totally out of the game. So, once I missed that part of it. I don't care about COHOS. That's too much work for the amount of pay you get. And now with seventeen King Salmon, this doesn't get my heart started.

• 1:13:22Speaker 04

  So, I'm just. Uh, having a good time.

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. How, if you did go to get the seventeen. How long would you expect to fish to catch the seventeen?

• 1:13:34Speaker 04

  One day.

• 1:13:36Speaker 04

  Or not even a day.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  A one day season.

• 1:13:38Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, the last time we had a one day fishery, which was three years ago, I got over a hundred.

• 1:13:47Speaker 00

  Dad was out there, two old guys. I think his crew is what in his seventies too? And they were. They did so good. I think they got the most or second most out of the fleet. Dad comes back, I. You know, I helped dad with all his healthcare stuff, appointments and everything. So, I've learned. The older he gets. Seventy-six now. But to always book. An appointment for, because he comes back with like a broken back or needing back surgery. So, he does all his maintenance in the winter, all his repairs.

• 1:14:24Speaker 02

  On himself.

• 1:14:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, or what steroid injections in his hands and everything to keep him going.

• 1:14:33Speaker 04

  Lots of repair work. The older you get.

• 1:14:38Speaker 04

  Everything hurts, so. I fish for many, many years. This is.

• 1:14:44Speaker 04

  Like 24 hour openings on a halibut and you spend it all at the roller hauling in fish, you know. I got some good video of doing exactly that, but yeah, you come home and for two or three days your hounds are, but yeah, you loaded the boat and did really well, you know.

• 1:15:05Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 1:15:06Speaker 00

  I didn't learn how to hunt until I was like 28.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 1:15:11Speaker 00

  I'd ever

• 1:15:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:13Speaker 00

  hunted at all. Never shot a rifle. Um, so that was last year. I'm just kidding. I'm 39, but I'm gonna be 29 forever.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:24Speaker 00

  But anyway, when we went, when I started hunting with my dad, I would take one of my best friends, guy friends with me and we'd go with him and he packed two deer out at a time till he was 69 years old. We looked at each other, I'm like, we just have to be able to pack one deer out until we're that old. So he's a badass and

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:15:45Speaker 00

  he's, yeah, tough and it's hard to believe.

• 1:15:50Speaker 04

  I'm gonna mess her up though.

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  Well, man, I appreciate that you came to talk to us and tell, tell, tell people, tell, tell everybody where, like, when, when can they come watch? When would they be able to watch all the stuff?

• 1:16:04Speaker 00

  This fall, um, this, I believe in September. I, I, am I allowed to say?

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, just go and say it.

• 1:16:12Speaker 00

  I think September. I don't have a date actually, but this September, this next month.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  And is it gonna be called Our Way of Life for real?

• 1:16:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  Or is that a working title?

• 1:16:20Speaker 00

  So it's called Our Way of Life. In our language, it's Hakustei, so, um, yeah, look for it. I'm excited.

• 1:16:29Speaker 05

  It's, uh, September 29th.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  Good job, Seth.

• 1:16:33Speaker 00

  Perfect. Thank you.

• 1:16:34Speaker 05

  And media YouTube channel and outdoor channel. So there you go. 8pm.

• 1:16:42Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:16:43Speaker 05

  Eastern time.

• 1:16:44Speaker 00

  That is my first time learning this as well.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  Now you know. There you go.

• 1:16:47Speaker 00

  Thank you, Seth.

• 1:16:48Speaker 05

  How, how fluent are you?

• 1:16:51Speaker 00

  We're not fluent.

• 1:16:52Speaker 05

  You're not?

• 1:16:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, so we know some words. Dad's, you know, my grandma was fluent, but then wasn't.

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:17:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, a lot of that was lost for

• 1:17:02Speaker 05

  Generation was skipped there.

• 1:17:04Speaker 00

  Boarding school.

• 1:17:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm too old. I forget everything I learned, so.

• 1:17:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, I teach my nephew, you know, what I know and he picks it up right away. So we try to use a lot of traditional place names and words is and learn new words all the time.

• 1:17:22Speaker 00

  And that's something I really would like to do is learn our traditional language.

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  Oh, that'd be great.

• 1:17:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, but you know.

• 1:17:31Speaker 03

  Is there anybody that kicks around in the village, like just speak in the tongue, someone else?

• 1:17:36Speaker 04

  There's a few.

• 1:17:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:38Speaker 04

  Some of the older ladies. Can, uh, are fluent, yeah.

• 1:17:43Speaker 00

  There's classes offered too through.

• 1:17:47Speaker 00

  UA, I think it's UAS, the University of Alaska, and then.

• 1:17:55Speaker 00

  Through the tribe, our regional tribe.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  Mike, do you call Garrett Garrett or do you call him Dirt?

• 1:18:05Speaker 00

  He calls him fat ass.

• 1:18:08Speaker 00

  Because, because when we're on the boat. You know, Garrett's amazing, incredible. You know, he's right there with the camera, but we all can't be on the same side of the boat at once. But when Garrett takes one step on the boat, the whole boat tips.

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  He's dense.

• 1:18:26Speaker 00

  He is, and he's not a big dude. I mean, he's fit, but. Finally, after we got, we were filming the first time we all met, we filmed for three weeks straight. For twenty one days. It was a lot and it forced us to get very comfortable with each other.

• 1:18:43Speaker 00

  So after a few days, my dad just started calling him a fat ass because.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  Sure, I understand.

• 1:18:49Speaker 00

  But he lost weight. So when he came back this time, we're like, hey, you're not as fat anymore.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  Well, I know, but I noticed he's, he's got a little tin of dip there. So I thought maybe him and Dirt formed a little.

• 1:19:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, I heard about the dip in Africa.

• 1:19:04Speaker 02

  Partnership. Yeah, we call it diplomacy.

• 1:19:06Speaker 00

  It was like, he, he gave us a detailed description and was telling my dad about how awesome.

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  Yep, diplomacy with Dirt Miff.

• 1:19:16Speaker 00

  We call him, I call him Garrett, but. We couldn't have asked for better people to work with. They're, they're a lot fun. Dad. Dad's a, got his own way of communicating. So the last day goes. I'm thinking about going fishing tomorrow. And that's like his way of inviting you. And.

• 1:19:39Speaker 00

  Dirt goes, oh, yeah, I'll go and Samantha goes, yeah, I want to go too. And dad just ignores her and she goes, actually, never mind. I'm going to go to the coffee shop. I guess I'll cream puffs tomorrow morning instead. Cause we could tell they just wanted to go out and hang out together.

• 1:19:56Speaker 04

  That was crappy and I think she changed her mind. Anyway.

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:01Speaker 04

  So we were, what were we doing? Oh, we were waiting for the last set of hooks. It took us a while to catch a fish. Yeah. While we're waiting, I cruised over and uh, we're gonna see if there's any coho's here. So we did catch coho's and uh, I'd never seen anybody get so excited as uh Garrett.

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  Have you ever eaten dinner with them?

• 1:20:25Speaker 04

  Total. I knew you were gonna bring that up. You talked about that last night.

• 1:20:28Speaker 00

  Everything's like a brand new experience. I go, wow, look at this. Oh, the sunset, you know? Like, look at the sky. So pretty night. Yeah.

• 1:20:38Speaker 04

  But I'd never seen anybody get so excited over catching a few coho's, you know?

• 1:20:42Speaker 00

  Uh huh. Yes.

• 1:20:44Speaker 04

  So the girls were in a, the other boat and they were fishing as well. And uh, anyway.

• 1:20:52Speaker 00

  It was a good time.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  He's a good guy.

• 1:20:54Speaker 00

  He is.

• 1:20:56Speaker 02

  Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about what you guys got coming up and I appreciate you participating in it.

• 1:21:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  With Heather. I appreciate you coming to discuss it with us.

• 1:21:08Speaker 04

  And for you,

• 1:21:10Speaker 04

  one of the most fun things I do in my life is get in that boat and go cruising. And you have the right idea. Thank you.

• 1:21:20Speaker 04

  There you go, Jimmy.

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:23Speaker 04

  That is, I'd spend a lot of time in there. I've had it since 91 and that's the number six outboard on it. So. Huh. You're that bad?

• 1:21:33Speaker 00

  I just found, finally, I searched Craigslist for years trying to find a boat like that. And I found the same boat, 91, exact same boat.

• 1:21:43Speaker 02

  It's the year of

• 1:21:43Speaker 00

  There's one, there's one for sale in my town right now.

• 1:21:46Speaker 02

  Alright, I just gotta see if they got flat black paint.

• 1:21:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, you gotta have flat black.

• 1:21:52Speaker 00

  But when dad, when we tried to mic them up, now they learned to give me the mic to give to him. And um, I tried to do it and he said, I'll put this on when I'm ready. So we're like, okay, we just set it at the dash now.

• 1:22:08Speaker 04

  We're not doing anything yet. You don't need this on for an hour before your, you know.

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:22:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's okay.

• 1:22:18Speaker 04

  Okay, we're done?

• 1:22:19Speaker 00

  We just, yeah. He goes.

• 1:22:24Speaker 04

  You never know what I might say, so.

• 1:22:27Speaker 02

  I understand.

• 1:22:28Speaker 04

  Uh, are we gonna skid, skid a sea otter now?

• 1:22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're gonna do it as a separate thing.

• 1:22:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. I'm worried. On the cruise over here, we saw a bunch moving in here on you, so.

• 1:22:38Speaker 02

  They're coming. I've seen more this year than. It's been amazing, man. Yeah, I've never seen, like, it's just so recently. It's just like, they were just here. It was the first one, maybe five years ago. Now it's the first time you ever see where you can look and there's like a group of a dozen, then there's a group of six. It used to be like, people would be like, I saw one. And everybody like, no, you did not.

• 1:22:57Speaker 00

  We saw ten.

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  We'd argue about it.

• 1:22:59Speaker 04

  We could have seen those when we first came here, but they must have moved out in the middle of the bay or something.

• 1:23:05Speaker 02

  They lay out deep. I don't understand it.

• 1:23:07Speaker 00

  It's different than on our side. You go to the same spots and they're there. Big pods of them. But here, you know, I marked, I marked on my onyx where they were in the depth and how many. Try to collect data as much as I can on sea otter. But then we went back out, what, half hour later and they're all gone.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:23:27Speaker 00

  Whereas on our side, they just all stay. And if, if you scare them away, they'll come right back to that same spot.

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  These are nomads, man.

• 1:23:35Speaker 04

  As a general rule, when you spook them bad, they try to get to open water. I think that's what those did.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  Got it. We're gonna skin one on camera, just so people can see. And it'll be released as a, as a flop episode. Flop!

• 1:23:50Speaker 00

  Okay, we're ready.

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  Good. Thanks, thanks again for coming on. I can't wait to see it. I think people are gonna love it, man.

• 1:23:57Speaker 00

  Hope so.

• 1:23:57Speaker 02

  I think it's gonna be such, cause I, I like, uh, one of the time I've had to hang out with you guys, I thought was great.

• 1:24:02Speaker 00

  Thank you. Yeah, I think it's gonna be a little different. About the same, same soft voice. I think I'm talking fast. You know, and I'm, I listen to myself, I'm like, what? Is that how slow I talk? So it's gonna be a little different pace, I think.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  Talk just fine. You're good. You'll get used to it. You'll be in good shape. Thank you again.

• 1:24:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

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• 1:27:01Speaker 00

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