CW: animal death.
We pull in the first wrong thing at two a.m., under a choppy wind and reddening moon. It’s not discovered until two fifty-five a.m, after the great nets have been poured through the processing machines and seas of pelagic fish spill over the lip of the conveyor belt. It’s an apprentice who spots it—the quality master is sleeping off his day shift in a brandy haze. The belt grinds to a stop. The fish gape with little mouths. The ring lies rusted and green before the waiting blade.
A different sailor recognizes the ring as the quality master’s wedding band and runs through the decks to wake him. The quality master didn’t realize it was missing. It must have slipped overboard, he says, and flexes his hairy knuckles to prove it to us.
There are no marks on his ring finger.
The apprentice notices, but says nothing, hoping for a bonus. All he gets is a squeeze on his shoulder (too hard, it hurts) and a grunt of “good job.” The quality master shuffles off to bed. Someone presses a button, and the machines grind awake again. If they are dead for too long, the fish will rot, and our hours of trawling will be wasted. We stay at sea until our quotas are met.
Elsewhere, gulls circle over low water. They avoid our ship and do not eat any remains.
We pull in the second wrong thing three days later. On the factory deck, sailors sort fish by hand. Three conveyor belts roll in tandem. Everything ends up desiccated in a Styrofoam box, stuffed in the freezer for the rest of the voyage. Not even the guts are wasted: They’ll become briny fertilizer. The ship is terribly efficient. We make good use of every body, human or otherwise.
Today, the fish are wrong. They are small and bony and blue with squarish faces, bulbous eyes. Their scales are covered in a thin grey film. Sometimes, it seems like the machine’s electric charge failed to stun them: They squirm and writhe. Their translucent tails lash against the belt like they are trying to escape. But it is only the body’s last gasp.
It is the thin grey film that bothers us. It is sticky and refuses to be removed. It makes for a bad product, and a bad product means no quota. A sailor at the end of the factory line alerts the quality master. The quality master is not wearing his ring.
He pulls a mackerel from the line and holds it high, as if he is about to tilt his head back and swallow it whole. He lets the grey film catch the light. He declares it to be harmless—only brine. Such small variations in product are to be expected as the ship churns across different currents.
The sailor who called in the report knows this is wrong, but she is one of the few women aboard and won’t be believed. The apprentice considers speaking up, but he is miffed about his missed bonus. He scratches at a mole on his wrist and avoids eye contact. The rest of us keep our heads down. It’s easier not to put up a fuss. Just stay silent and bear it out.
Time passes; we still haven’t realized something is wrong. The nets rise from the deep like tangled fingers, cupped palms. The moon follows their trajectory. It’s red again. The rain creates a fine mist, like the film over the fish. A chill blows through the lower decks. We, the ship, spin unsteady on the sea.
The sailor who called in the report remains unsettled. It’s her third year as a crewmate, her first voyage on this ship. She doesn’t enjoy it, but student loans stack up like mackerel. She does her job well enough. Quotas remain out of reach. Bad fish means the company will lose money on returns, spoiled stock, lawsuits. If she raises the issue now, before the stock reaches land, she will save them hundreds of thousands of potentially lost profit. Perhaps that will earn her a bonus, or mercy against her unmet quotas.
She finds the team boss and tells him about the grey film on the fish. The team boss tells the first officer. The first officer tells the captain. The captain does not care. The company promised him that this time—this time, unlike the last time, or any other time—when the voyage ends, he can retire. He is grateful: He will not last much longer. Arthritis swells his hands and stiffens his knees. But the journey is not done. They are paid when the ship reaches land, before the boxes are opened. Only the number of boxes matters. Not what’s inside.
Therefore, the captain conveys to the first officer that there is no need to alarm the company. It’s best to stay silent and bear it out.
The first officer—ex-military—does not question the order, but the sailor seethes. She slips up to the ship’s office when the captain is asleep, finds the computer password on a laminated Post-It note, and composes a message to the company. Black words blink on white backdrop. She hits send.
The response is instant: KEEP TRAWLING.
Then the connection goes out, so the sailor has no choice but to accept the answer.
Elsewhere, gulls migrate long miles and understand the sky reflects the sea. The clouds are tumultuous, bloated. Storms circle, threaten a deluge, then dissipate.
The quality master learns of the sailor’s sabotage attempt. He asks her to meet him in his office; she goes with reluctance. We hear thumps, thrashing. Like fish bodies slapping against the conveyor belt. Then silence.
The sailor’s marks fade. Then her calluses, her scars. Her skin peels away, and underneath it is pale and taut.
She meets the quality master again and again: door locked, muffled silence. She can’t refuse. We don’t say anything. In such close quarters, we cannot escape each other. It’s best to stay silent and bear it out.
In the mess hall, we eat the same fish that we catch. The sailor’s plate is full, and she finishes all of it, even though she loathes the stripes of soft pink flesh. She shouldn’t eat, she thinks, if it’s the bad mackerel they’ve been finding, but there are no other options. She feels like she’s starving even as her fork scrapes an empty plate. The meal leaves an oily taste in her mouth.
The third wrong thing is a sickness that sweeps through the boat. A thick mucus fills our throats; the ship is wracked with a chorus of coughs. Our skin is sticky, greyish. We and our prey look the same.
The quality master is the only one who seems to avoid the sickness. The apprentice has been keeping an eye on him ever since the ring was found. His eyes are round and bulbous. He licks his lips often. He eats messily, crunching through fish bones with no care for what might get caught in his throat. He asks for seconds and thirds at the mess hall. His hunger makes up for all of our nausea.
The apprentice remembers the quality master as a shy, fastidious man, living up to his title. But the sea changes people. We know it well: We’ve returned to our families after weeks, months, and seen ourselves as strangers in their eyes. Spend too long among the motion of the waves and you’ll be unsteady even on dry land.
Our bodies revolt. Everything is hot and clammy and cold all at the same time. The sailor who called in the report prays she isn’t pregnant. The captain sends a message asking for medical supplies to be delivered.
The company’s response is the same as before: KEEP TRAWLING.
Elsewhere, another factory ship greets the nearest dock. City smokestacks churn out a perpetual black. The gulls squawk out an unheeded warning as stacks of Styrofoam boxes are sent inland.
The next day, the rain finally blooms into a storm, and the internet goes out for good. The ship is an island against the dark wall of the sea. Even in the violent weather, the nets plunge down, then up. Our quotas have been raised again.
Trawling is not a blind process. We have sonar to find shoals, screens to search the deep. We know how to find fish. The industry relies on it. And yet we—collectively—feel as if the fish are not enough. We are looking for something else. Or we are being kept away from land.
The sickness stretches on. A grey slime slicks the floor. Our footsteps leave little indents in the grease. The ship is as smothering as a cocoon. The sailor who called in the report takes her illness particularly poorly: Her skin sallows and flakes, her lips crack and dry, and she eats each plateful of fillet like it might be her last. We do not know what to make of her, but we do not know what to make of ourselves, either. At this point, we feel more brine than human.
For the next week, the nets pull up mackerel draped in pearly secretion, like birthing sacs. The apprentice takes his inspection duties seriously, as the quality master is often absent. He suspects that the fish have been bad for a while now. During his shift, when he is certain the quality master is in his cabin, he ducks into the deep wells of the freezer.
The cold makes his hazmat suit stick to his skin. Everything is clean and processed, stacked in an interlocking herringbone pattern. The Styrofoam boxes are marked by date in neat blue ink. When did it begin, the apprentice wonders, but none of us are sure.
The apprentice finds the boxes from the day before the quality master’s ring was found. That was the first wrong thing, he thinks. The ring, then the fish, then the sickness. He draws a fillet knife from his belt and severs the seal on the packaging.
Here are two things we all know, though none of us will speak them.
First: The quality master does not have an indentation on his finger, though he wore his wedding ring for twenty years.
Second: Every fish on this ship has gone bad.
The freezer door cracks open, letting in a burst of hot air. The shriek of machinery gets louder. The quality master stands in the doorway, hazmat suit shiny and taut. The mask makes his face unreadable.
The apprentice looks up; the quality master moves forward; the freezer door seals hermetically shut. We do not see what happens in that cold white room, but we know, intimately, how it feels.
Far above the freezer, the boat’s forecastle deck is deserted. A single black gull clings to the railing. Its webbed feet dance along the line that ties the lifeboats to the ledge of the ship. It hops back and forth, shrieking. Its throat throbs in panic.
A sailor emerges from the wheelhouse and waves it off. We are relieved. The noise gave us all a headache. These days, we prefer silence.
The apprentice stumbles up to the forecastle deck. He does not notice the gull leaving. He is nauseous. He is shaking. He leans over the railing and vomits up a waterfall of fish bones and thick bile.
Purged, the apprentice studies his reflection in the choppy water: silver and shifting, unstable against the current. A shoal of sardines ripples underneath.
The apprentice licks his chapped lips. Suddenly he is hungry. It feels like there are not enough mackerel in the world to satisfy him. He heads down to the mess hall. The mole on his wrist has disappeared.
Elsewhere, the gulls have abandoned us.
We know now: These were not the first, second, third wrong things. That was only when we began to notice, and now it is too late.
This is how it is. All of us are sallow, bulbous-eyed. We talk as we and not as I. Sometimes, one of us will miss a shift, then reappear—nearly the same, but without scars or indents or freckles, little details missed in mimicry. But we do not have to be so careful now. All of us have flaking skin, a perpetual dry mouth. We smell of dark brine, something brought up from the deep sea. Hadalpelagic. We tilt our heads back and swallow mackerel raw. The fish are coated in viscous grey, but we don’t mind the taste. We are hungry.
And still that message remains: KEEP TRAWLING.
So we do.
