Chapter 3-A    Different techniques for landing

(Been there, done that;

been there, done that;

oh, yawn….!  Boring, boring….

been there…………………….OOPS!?????)

In slowly putting together this manual, I have spent some long hours up on the helideck, armed with binoculars, watching the helicopter ‘goings on’ on nearby ships.  Ninety nine point nine per cent of the many hundreds and hundreds of landings I’ve seen were routine, professional, smooth, nice looking jobs, often in really adverse conditions, that had all the hallmarks of a ‘good tunahead’.

That point one per cent….

I’ve had my heart in my mouth, and to this day it’s probably still got the teeth imprints on it to prove it!

Boy!  I’ve seen one full-blooded crash.  And, many times,  I’ve seen ‘em bounce crazily, yawing sickeningly left-right-left, somehow right themselves, and stumble into a go-around for another attempt at crashing! By the time the pilot admits to you afterwards that he got the cyclic shoved hard and painfully into his stomach… that’s a hard landing. I’ve seen downwind approaches, where the guy looks like he’s lost translational lift, lost rotor RPM (Nr), dipped below the edge of the helideck on short finals, hauled around away from the deck… looking at it from a few hundred yards away on the other side, you just see parts of the disc, the mechanic or deck helper leaping to his feet and running, and then, mercifully, a few seconds later, one little Bell struggling back into the sky!

It’s left me shaking,  watching across from another boat, and I don’t know about the mechanic with a close up view! I have heard some good mechanic’s stories afterwards though…

Oddly enough, you will hear some guys telling you that helicopters rarely crash on landings on tuna boats.

I don’t know where these guys get their information, but this statement is not correct. It is true that they mostly get away with it, in the sense that they walk (or stagger) away from it! They tear great gouges in the helideck, knock out aerials and radar domes (John Walker told me his gang were averaging one -expensive- Immarsat dome a year), and re-adjust their helicopters in ways not pleasing to the helicopter owner! Astonishingly few get killed during the landing however, despite trying hard sometimes.

So it is fruitful to look hard at the techniques associated with landing our beast on this pitching, rolling, heaving deck, with spray lashing about, and nasty, hungry waves seemingly waiting eagerly for you as you approach nervously on your first few rough weather tunaboat landings!

I’ve written this particularly with low time pilots in mind.  The 200 to 500 hour fresh Robbie graduate with his brand spanking new Commercial License. And with the intention of getting you to think things through for yourself. I will list five different approach techniques, all of which I have seen out there, and ask you to read up on each of them. Then I will ask you to mull it over, arrive at your own conclusions, and take a break. Have a cup of tea. Then come back, with some definite ideas of your own about how you feel about each of these five approaches I have described. THEN read my opinion on each of these approach techniques…

And feel free to entirely disagree with me. My intention is to get YOU thinking about the issues. Not to portray myself as some wise old guru who knows everything, because, believe me, I don’t….

First,  we’ll talk about a day with a calm sea. No real swell, no real pitch, roll or heave to think about. A nice day to be a tuna pilot! (and a tuna mechanic, if you’re carefully watching your brand new pilot).

To make the conversation easier, I will loosely categorize approaches this way:

1. Low approach

2.     Super low approach

3.     more or less level (with the helideck) approach; maybe a slight, slow descent going on

4.     high approach

5.    ‘very high’ (steep) approach

Comments:

1. A ‘low approach’ is an approach just under the level of the helideck, maybe 15 to 25 feet above the water, requiring a small but definite ‘lift’ of a few feet towards the end to get up onto the helideck. You will see a lot of those.

2. A ’super low approach’ is just what it says. Almost a high hover taxi towards the ship,maybe 6 to 12 feet above the water.

3. A ‘more or less level approach’ comes in at or slightly above the height of the helideck. No climb is necessary, and if anything a slight descent is taking place along the approach path. If the helideck is at, say, 25 feet, then this approach  might start out at, say, 40 feet above the water, and very, very slowly come down to the helideck. The approach angle is very, very shallow however. You will see a lot of these.

4. A ‘high approach’  has a definite, constant,  stabilized approach angle. It might start out at 200 feet, 300 feet or more,  and reduces smoothly, constant rate of descent, no more than 300 to 500 feet per minute.

5.  A ‘vertical approach’.  You arrive exactly over the helideck at, say 200 to 300 foot, and do a steady vertical descent.

So, young sailor, what do you think? For now, why don’t you STOP reading right at the end of this paragraph,  think about these five methods, and see what you think of each. It really is well worth having a break, making yourself a cuppa tea, and see if you can guess what I think of each method.   Remember, opinions vary, many people may well disagree with me, and this is where you are encouraged to start thinking these scenarios through beforehand, from the comfort of your favorite easy chair, BEFORE you go flying off a REAL tuna boat, with maybe 200hours helicopter time, and learning-as-you-go about things you have never even thought about, because nobody has bothered to tell you about them….

PAUSE. THINK!

Hmmmmmm……….!

Welcome back, my friend.

Well, here’s another question for you: What different factors can you list that should come into your consideration?

Avoid area, you say?  Good.

Direction of the wind? Yes, absolutely.

Strength of the wind?  Yes.

Size and shape of the helideck?   Yes….

If you got all those, you’re doing good. But there are more….!

Remember, now you are faced with something you never experienced in your basic Robinson helicopter in your primary training. We will return to this. But first,  let’s say something about those five different ways of making the approach.

All of which I have seen, for real, many times. Let me give you some ‘food for thought’ and the chance to chew things over again. Remember, form your own opinion. This is not ‘the gospel according to Moggy’….

(Remember also, right now, for the moment, it’s a reasonable day, with no significant pitch, roll, or heave to talk into consideration.)

1. low approach

Brrr!!!  I don’t like it at all! Talk about living in the avoid area! Remember that sudden ‘partial’ loss of power (reduced power available) is much more common than sudden ‘total’ loss of power. You’re putting yourself in a situation where even the slightest loss of power may wipe out your chances of making the helideck. You’re also heading straight for the side of the ship, with lots of solid steel just waiting to readjust your rotorblades. You’re also making a go-around more difficult, because there’s a damn ship in the way…

a. If you fly a ‘low approach’ slowly into the bargain… you are really in no position to deal with an engine failure. You are going to crash into the water! Pure and simple.

b. If you fly a ‘low approach’ more rapidly, sure, you may have some air speed, but you’re still going to be in the avoid area. You might spend less time there, but… And also, your judgement when to ‘lift up’ onto the helideck had better be right on, with all that nasty steel rushing towards you!

Note that I spent most of a whole night up with one pilot, discussing this one. He was a high time pilot, with 8,000 hours.

He was also very vocal, and influenced many new tuna pilots with his strong and dogmatic views. He tended to get rather angry with me, when I dared to disagree…

In a nutshell, he always flew his approaches ‘low and fast’. And that is what he strongly advocated. In his words; “If there is any problem, I am going into the water!” He meant “under control”.

I have my -serious- doubts, and I really did not agree with him. Low and fast? Split second reaction time? But you will still not have enough speed/energy to be able to carry out a cyclic flare, like you do at the bottom of an autorotation. I wonder very much if you have the time to react correctly. So,your engine fails. What are you going to do, now you are low and fast? HOW are you going to go into the water? Try a flare? Ouch! If you have not got the speed, you will not have the required energy. You will most likely ‘fall through’ the flare, and crash heavily. I imagine you would hit hard, tail rotor first, and crash heavily. Will you try a “constant attitude splash-in”?  Level the skids, and pull everything you’ve got just before you hit? Yeah, right! I’d like to see you get away with a 30 knot ‘constant attitude’ ’splash-in’. Good theory.

Perhaps…

2.  Super low approach

Double ‘Brrrrrrrr!’   What on earth are you doing down there? Looking for tuna?

Why? You’re going to be pulling lots of power, you may well lose translational lift a long way off, you’re practically ‘camping out’ in the avoid area.And if you do have an engine failure, it’s not going to be any fun from a height above the sea of 6 to 12 feet. Your reaction time will be almost nil. Added to this, if you’re not experienced, (and even if you are experienced), you should be aware of the various optical illusions that come into play over water. People ‘fly into the water’ all over the world, remarkably often, with no engine failure at all. Just pilot failure. More on this later.

What are you doing down there? Come up!

If you’re flying a Bell 47, or an R-22, two up, on a hot, humid day, start thinking about your density altitude.

You may simply not have the power available to hoist yourself ponderously up to the level of the helideck.

Even if you DO have enough power, this approach method will extend your “deck edge crossing time” (DECT).

That is that critical time during which your disc is beginning to cross the deck edge, so now you are committed, BUT you are not yet over the deck, and therefore unable to rescue an engine failure,or loss of power…

By the way, DECT is a term I made up for the purpose of this manual, you will not find it in any other text book.

In general, the shorter your DECT, the better, both on take off and landing! You don’t want that to last for half an hour, when you can get it over with in a few seconds.

Conclusion for the ‘Super Low approach’?

Double and quadruple ‘Brrrrrrrr!’

3. More or less level (with the helideck) approach

Maybe now we are getting somewhere. Maybe you even think that this is the way to go? If you do, you have a lot of company. So do a great many tuna helicopter pilots out there. Remember I explained above that I include a shallow approach (a slight, slow, descent) in this category.

Hmmmmm….. Don’t like it….!

You may wonder what I have against it. Broadly speaking, a lot of the points I made above still hold true.

Remember, you can always give up height. Surrender it. But you can’t always get it back, if you need it!

The more reaction time you can give yourself, the better. Using this method 3), you are still poorly placed to handle any sudden power problems or other mechanical problems. You are still using more power than you need. Your chances of making the deck with sudden problems are reduced. Your ‘go around’ -if you suddenly have to make one – is going to be much more of a handful. You will likely need to pull a lot of power…

Also, if you use this method,  (remember, we are talking about a reasonably calm sort of day) you will likely lose translational lift while you are still unable to reach the deck. You may suddenly just not have any more power.

Rats!

Now what are you going to do?

You’re still twenty feet from the deck edge, only four feet above it, but suddenly going down rapidly…

You -just- can’t – make – the – deck…!!

Double rats!!!

4. High approach

Go Up, my friend, go UP!  A better name for this would be “Normal Approach“, but if I had called it that earlier, I would have given the game away! And I really wanted you to think about it yourself…

Make your final approach a definite, smooth, ‘constant angle’ descent down to the deck.

You do not want a sideways hover landing with a high power setting!

We are looking for a stabilized approach, no big changes in attitude, with a gentle, smooth, but positive  rate of descent of 300 to 500 feet per minute. You should not be using a whole lot of power at all. That’s good, it means you have a whole bunch in reserve, just in case you should need it!

You starting point can be where ever you fancy, but personally, I like to be up there!  300 feet, 400 feet, 500!

I am in no hurry to come in for a landing, dragging a whole armpit full of power, with very low airspeed, and starting my approach at forty feet above the water. You will see me draw alongside at a height of hundreds of feet, not dozens, and shush down the approach smoothly and briskly. Plenty of airspeed, nowhere near losing translational lift. A very moderate power setting, nowhere near pulling everything I’ve got. A nice, constant attitude. A minimum amount of time spent crossing the deck edge. (Minimum DECT) . No flare. Nothing dramatic. A nice approach and landing is a most ordinary, hum-drum easy going affair.

Any pilot reading this who has experience in, say, the offshore Gulf of Mexico Oil and Gas environment, will have no prioblem recognizing this approach. We fly it here all the time. To platform as well as to boats.

On the North Sea, even when flying a big old bus like the Super Puma AS332L, this was the way the approaches were flown. The Pumas don’t do a HOGE high power setting approach. And they have two engines. So why should you, in a single engine?  On the North Sea, we would start our approach from well up, 500 feet or higher. We had a ‘Landing Decision Point’ (LDP) which was 100 feet (above the helideck) and 40 knots. The distance out horizontally from the deck depended on wind direction and strength.  Once you flew though your ‘LDP’ you were ‘committed’ to the landing.  Sudden loud noises (or loud silence…!) , warning lights, bells, etc, were to be ignored! You just had to concentrate on making the deck. Training on the three axis simulator, in Stavanger, Norway, was of course a riot!

On the ‘tuna fields’ you can actually adopt a similar method. What should your LDP be? It depends on you, but 100 feet above the height of the helideck is a pretty good point. Speed depends on type, but 40 knots is not bad for a Hughes 500.Maybe 30 for a Bell 47. Whatever you are comfortable with. It should be well above 20 knots (nowhere near loss of translational lift), but not so fast as to require a horrendous flare at the bottom. In the Super Puma, we would verbally announce ‘LDP’ to the other guy, meaning ‘committed’. Mentally, even flying a small ship, I still click off my own ‘LDP’!

Hang on,you may say, I can still comfortably perform a ‘go around’ at lower than 100 feet.

True, but why should you? If you are coming down, and something starts making nasty noises,vibrating horribly, or generally scaring you, is your first instinct to climb back into the sky?? To see if it is really going to try and kill you?

That sure isn’t my first thought! I’d rather be coming in comfortably high over the deck edge, knowing that even if the donkey quits completely, I can still more than likely ’shush it on’ somehow.  Get down! Then ask questions!

Do you see what I’m trying to get at? Failures often occur when you start pulling power. That extra demand is what does it, and some part says: “Okay, I’ve had enough!”     It follows that ‘where and when’ you start pulling power is important interms of the relative position of the helicopter to the helideck. The helideck… that lovely place called ‘home’ where you can walk around, all nice and dry, and look at broken bits of helicopter, and say “By Jove! It’s broken!”

Another way… of looking at it is this way: imagine the worst possible place and the worst possible moment for your engine to quit partially or totally. Now ask yourself, IF that worst-case-scenario were actually to happen to you, where would you prefer to be?  Then plan your approach accordingly.

Most tuna helicopter landings you will see, come in too low, often FAR too low, pulling too much power, and putting themselves into a situation that is virtually irrecoverable if something quits working.

Go UP, my friend, go UP!

And there is yet another reason to come in higher, in a smooth, stabilized descent, and not come in level with the helideck, pulling lots of power. It’s a very good reason. It’s also a real good reason to think “steady approach” and not a “hot dog approach”.  This reason is called: “smacking your tailboom off the edge of the deck spoils your whole day“.

In the Gulf of Mexico, over the years, dozens, and dozens, and dozens of pilots have smacked their tail rotor and/or tail boom off the edge of the deck, usually by coming in too fast (’hot-dogging’) and too low (not in a stabilized approach-descent mode). I have seen plenty of photos, where they have dragged their tail rotor right through the horizontal safety fence, (it sticks out around the deck), or otherwise re-adjusted their tailboom, lower fin, not to mention driveshaft and couplings, in a variety of ways not approved by the manufacturer. It’s amazing how often it has happened, how often it continues to happen, and how expensive it is when it happens.

You may wonder how stupid.  If that’s what you’re thinking, then you need to have a serious chat with yourself. These guys weren’t stupid. They made a mistake. And if so many young men can make that mistake on approach to a permanently moored oil and gas platform, then you and I, my friend, being simple, fallible members of the same human race, we can do it as well, especially on approach to a ‘bucking bronco’ tuna tub in the middle of a horrible day on the Pacific Ocean.

You have to remember at all times where your tail rotor is, not just in the horizontal dimension, but also vertically.

If you you get into the bad habit of flaring like a son-of-a-(unmarried lady) as you come over the deck… then I suspect you’re putting yourself on a ’slippery slope’. You will maybe tend to get lower, and lower. And not realize it. And the clearance vertically of your tail rotor and the edge of the deck may slowly be becoming less. And less. Until one day….

Humility is a great virtue, especially for a helicopter pilot. It has often annoyed me how judgmental, unkind, snotty and plain ignorant some of the comments in the forum on “www.Justhelicopters.com” are. Especially when some poor bastard has gone and gotten himself killed. I know of a company (which shall remain a ‘nony mouse’) that employs a sizeable and very expensive fleet of French built, twin turbine, bells-and-whistles, computer controlled, lah-di-dah, (and where-is-the-toaster-in-this-fukn-thing??)  helicopters.  Over a period of about two years, no less than NINE different pilots managed to fry a very expensive engine, by trying to take off with one engine not spooled up all the way. That immediately toasted the live engine.

Each time the company, understandably, jumped up and down, and various people in management got the Big Boss breathing down their necks in a manner not conducive to low cholesterol levels. Stress!

Apparently you have to skip the checklist in five or six different places to achieve this neat little trick.

I always remember the one case, which occurred whilst a bunch of us were having a very leisurely and pleasant lunch on a major Gulf of Mexico platform. Behind my customers (who indirectly pay my mortgage) was a massive, widescreen TV. About the biggest I think you can get. We were talking about safety as it happened, and I, a loyal little company foot soldier, was saying nice things about safety, helicopters, and the like.

The next thing… there, in glorious technicolor, splashed across National News, LIVE, REAL-TIME, I watched, (with a gulp), teeter-tottering on the very edge of the top story helipad roof of a major hospital, one fine example of this great French built (”I’ll do all your thinking for you, Mister pilot”) helicopter.  The honorable driver had tried to take off with one engine not spooled all the way up, and was a very lucky chappie to have gotten away with it. Another fried engine.

2)

5. ‘Very High’ (steep) approach.

Until you’ve seen it for yourself, you won’t believe this. But there are some pilots out there, who will arrive over the helideck on their boat at 150 to 200 feet. And then just slowly hover on down! It doesn’t get much steeper than that.

The problem is that they are so far into the ‘avoid area’ that if something fails, recovery is likely completely impossible.

We had one Korean gentleman who did that a lot. He crashed eventually, but not using that method. He made another mistake, and I will talk about that later.

In some ways this section is crying out for some YouTube video recordings. What may be perceived by a new tuna pilot as being a ‘very steep approach’ may in fact be quite a ‘normal’ approach for an experienced offshore pilot.

Again: most tuna pilots come in too low, too slow, with too high a power setting.  If something fails, the chances are they are not going to make the helideck.  The trick on your approach is to come in higher (go UP!) , with a relatively low power setting, with a positive rate of DESCENT, and with airspeed comfortably above 20 knots.  And always ASSUME your engine is going to fail at the worst possible moment. (And know what you will do if it does).

*      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *

So now we have covered some basics. Hopefully it makes sense to you, and you are now in your mind trying to imagine what it’s like to land on a tuna boat. Hopefully I have given you some food for thought.

How-ever… here comes a BIG caution. If you remember,  in a paragraph above, I previously asked you:

What different factors can you list that should come into your consideration?

And straight off, you came up with:

Avoid area

Direction of the wind

Strength of the wind

Size and shape of the helideck

All valid considerations. But here is something that you likely may not have ever encountered before in your basic Commercial  Pilot training: the ship is moving. The ship is generating ‘its own wind’ as it moves forward. Many will do up to 16 or 18 knots. That’s a respectable breeze for a new tuna pilot. But hold on: the Ocean wind is blowing as well!

We have two different winds mixing it together here. One is being produced by Mother Nature. The other is being produced by the motion of your ship moving forward.  More than likely, you have not encountered this before. (Even if you are not a new Commercial Pilot, and even if you a few thousand hours, you may still have never landed on a ship underway. It would really not be a good thing, to be coming in for your first landing on a tuna boat, without having thought this one through. It really is a matter of playing it all through in your mind, before you try the real thing on your own.)

The two winds will combine, and there will be a resultant wind over the helideck. A ‘net effective wind’ if you like.

For the purpose of this discussion, I prefer the phrase:  RELATIVE WIND.

And this ‘relative wind’ may be quite remarkably different in direction and strength of the Ocean wind.

We are now homing in on an area where accidents happen. For reasons I will explain carefully as we go along.

You will also see another, very important reason later on, why we try and fly an approach with a low power setting, and why we try and avoid coming over the edge of the deck pulling a whole armpit full of collective.

That reason – which we shall go into- is tied up with the problem of  ‘relative wind’.

For now, just take a moment to really absorb these two important tunaboat truths:

*   we are concerned about the RELATIVE WIND over the helideck. (as per the windsock)

*   the relative wind is the nett result of two winds, the free Ocean Wind, and the wind the boat generates by moving

Accidents have occurred in this area, and (as I shall relate later), some pilots (even after crashing!) failed to understand the forces at work…

(Cockroaches or Carpets?)
Let’s face it, you’re young perhaps, anxious for your first job, and maybe in debt up to your eyeballs for training costs to get your magic Helicopter Commercial Pilot’s License. You’re anxious to get going, right?

I surmise some pilots are and mechanics are so excited to be even offered a job, that some real basic questions simply do not occur to them – until it’s too late to ‘negotiate’!

Tajke the issue of your cabin. Are you a non-smoker? How do you feel about being cooped up in a small room with one or two chainsmokers who are ‘lit up’ every waking moment? I’ve seen guys swimming from the skiffboat to the mother ship with a cigarette clenched between their teeth! (I was going to call it a ‘fag’ and not a cigarette, but then I remembered that the statement “I am going outside to smoke a fag” will have very different interpretations depending on where you are in this world of ours…)

Will you have working airconditioning? Very likkely, but beware:some systems are good, and some are really poor. I am a non-smoker, and I would not even entertain the thought of sharing a room, for months on end, with a heavy smoker.

How about bathroom facilities? Do you have your own private ‘head’ and shower, like many do, or will you have to share? It may colour your bubble when you discover that the John is a long walk up and down stairs, and that you may have to walk to the other end of the ship to wash your hands.

Especially at three o’clock in the morning.

Who exactly are you going to share with? Your mechanic? Your pilot? Only? That may not be so bad. But I would think long and hard before sharing with any crew members. Am I a racist? A snob? No, not at all, quite the opposite. I see us all as part of the human family. But I am a realist, born of some tough experience. Think, for instance, of the different duty hours. I’ve heard many a story about pilots getting tired out -and grumpy- from constantly interrupted sleep. The crew will be getting up at all sorts of weird hours. Anybody in the engine room, or on watch, can be setting his alarm clock for all sorts of ungodly hours! . The deckhands will be up at three or four in the morning maybe, hours before first light. People go ‘on watch’ on the bridge around the clock. How are they going to feel about the lucky pilot who can sleep on for a few more hours? Some will be considerate. The odd one though will be jealous, and go out of his way to be a thundering pest.

Switching all the lights on, coughing and banging around, etc. That was the unfortunate experience of one pilot ‘tunahead’, who was totally demoralized (and exhausted) in less than three weeks. Remember there are also simply cultural differences.

You may like to ’sit’ on the John. Don’t be too surprised when your foreign room mate likes to ’squat’ on it. Hopefully, he’s a good shot! If the weather is rough, and the ship is rolling, will he clean up after himself? Don’t bank on it.

This may sound awful, but believe you me…

Let me tell you one story, that says it all. I was invited onto an American ship out of San Diego, by an older pilot, recently divorced, and a little lonely. He was a charming, mountain of a fellow, who comes under the heading of a ‘gentle giant’. We chatted, and he told me his story. He was in a small, cramped cabin, sharing with two foreign gentlemen, who never smiled. They were surly and suspicious. Both smoked incessantly, and refused point blank to go outside. They both liked violent pornographic videos. He didn’t. They especially liked one video showing young Amsterdam girls having it off with dogs and other animals. That upset him. They shared a bathroom, which was a smelly mess. But here’s the rub of the story: after a few days at sea he noticed a small sign on another cabin door. It said: “helo pilot”. He peeked in. It was a nice, single room with a private head and shower! Occupied! By the second engineer. Our pilot went to the captain, and inquired if that should not have been his room! He reckons there was ’some considerable embarrassment’. No specific reply was made to his question, but a while later he noticed the sign had been removed…

That seems to me to be both unfair and short sighted. How boats like that expect to keep their helo crews is anybody’s guess. Perhaps they just like to see a contuous stream of new faces!

This story was especially interesting for me. I had applied to them a year or two earlier!

I’m so glad they turned me down…

I would ask if it’s possible to speak to the outgoing crew. Can you have his/their phone number or email please. That is a perfectly reasonable request.If asked why, well, you want to check on the helicopter, equipment needed, state of the helideck, etc, etc. The previous incumbent will tell you a lot, hopefully before you even set foot on board.

Many boats have very nice helo cabins, and some are downright palatial. Carpets, nice stained wood, large fridge, sink, cooker. Everything except a chamber maid. (and, seriously, I was offered one of those for a vacation in Taiwan!)

The odd boat expects you to rough it. Or hopes you will be too naive to object to a broom cupboard. It’s your choice. Do you need sleep, or do you function perfectly well having been woken up several times during the night?

If you go out there, amongst the endless wild and outrageous stories, you will hear the one about some helo guys who had a large hole in their cabin floor. It became a bit of a joke. No, it’s not an ‘Ocean Myth’. They did!

I once went onto a boat, after I already had a year or two out there, and I was a known commodity to the Taiwanese captains. I was shown to my cabin, with a big smile, and it really was a poky little place. About two feet of floor between the bunk and the wall. No shower, no head. I looked at it, and pulled a face.

Captain Alan, who was with me, and was retiring (he came back later!) took one look at it, and turned around and spoke fluently in Chinese! The next thing I knew I was being shown into a much, much nicer cabin!

You can’t be too demanding when you’re brand new. But there are limits. Once you are a known, and welcome commodity, a tuna pilot who gets on well with the crew, then it gets easier to -politely- state your conditions.

Ha! Cockroaches!

Being woken up by a humongous sized cockroach walking over your face is not conducive to restrained language, and feelings of cosmic peace and happiness! It’s happened to me more than once. Or you swing your feet out of bed, and stand on one… The secret there, believe me, is to invest in a caulking gun, like you would use in your bathroom, around the tiles, to stop water leaking past. Then you spend two days and plug up every conceivable gap and access route for the little darlings. Invest in a few cans of insecticide, and you will have very little trouble. The odd invader is quickly repelled.

I leave my rubbish bin outside the door, so no food scraps lie around to attract them. Some roach traps in the cupboards, and you’re set. Once in a while you will get an outbreak, and then it’s a matter of tracking down the source. On two separate occasions I found the source to be a nest in a packet of ‘Quaker Oatmeal’. Plastic bins with sturdy lids is the answer there.

The cockroaches find a plentiful food supply from the scraps and remnants of fish. They infest the net when the ship is in port. The first time the ship makes a set, an entire universe of cockroach cities goes over the side.

Even if a ship was to be really clean, the next time in port, it would soon be infested again.

Some pilots have really been ‘grossed out’ by the cockroaches climbing all over the galley, and all over the bags of rice stored outside the door. It depends a lot on which boat you are on. I was invited onto the ‘JM Martinac” for supper a few times. The chef would lay out white table cloths, silver and and wine glasses! It was like a luxury cruise liner.

Only problem was that they paid basic plus tonnage, and they did not catch much fish….!

Will you have a microwave? Kind of essential, don’t you think? Hot water maker? Running water? Plenty of cupboard space? Decent sized fridge? You’re going to really miss a decent fridge.

In conclusion, there are two words that apply here: ask beforehand!

Francis ‘Moggy’ Meyrick (c)

Previous Chapter: Other Duties? Humping fish? Taking the watch? Next Chapter: Different techniques for landing

(You want me to do….WHAT?????)

So there you are, young sailor, three days at sea, on your first tuna trip.

The pilot has just departed off for a flight, and you, the mechanic, are back in your cabin making a cup of coffee and wondering why the damn generator light keeps flickering. A knock comes on the door.

A crew member tells you that you are wanted aft. Bemused, you follow, and you are thrown a working overall and some gloves. You are directed to a pile of fish. Suddenly you realize that you are expected to start humping fish for the next few hours. Oh. You didn’t know that…

Farfetched? Oh, no! It’s happened.

Either that or you get knocked up at two in the morning to take your turn on the bridge ‘on watch’.

Again,it’s up to you. You may like moving fish. Or staring out over a dark and empty Ocean at three in the morning. Or operating a winch. But consider this carefully. Of the handful of really outstandingly critical warnings I want to give you in this manual, this is one of them:

The lower working deck is a highly, highly dangerous place to be. Especially if you are a foreigner.

Basically, please believe me, there are several ways you can get killed or injured. Exaggeration? Oh, no!

A ship I was on lost two men dead from the ‘powerblock’ crashing down. That’s that big pulley-block-thing that weighs a ton and is right up there, above you. Serious shit! That’s happened several times on different boats.

I was standing on the upper deck one day, watching the net come in, and a pulley came crashing down. It was heavy, but it was also under tremendous strain. When it let go, it didn’t just fall. It HURTLED down. It crashed into a hatch, eighteen inches behind an old, weather beaten, wrinkled Chinese sailor. He was looking over the side of the ship at the net coming up. Everybody, I mean everybody, jumped six inches in the air. I jumped six inches. The captain jumped six inches.

It was a case of: “Holy Crap!” There was a huge dent in the hatch.

Everybody jumped. Except that craggy old sailor…

I watched him in awe. With the flegmatic wisdom of five decades on fishing boats, he looked around at the hole in the hatch, looked up at where the pulley had fallen from, SHRUGGED, and went back to looking over the side!

He had seen it all before. He had seen death on fishing boats before. He knew he had narrowly escaped – this time.

He didn’t even cast a glance at anybody else! Just looked back over the side at the incoming net, and went right on fishing…

Awesome! That pulley would have passed straight through him.

I was walking about five yards away from one incident. The ship had just released the skiff. They were launching the speedboat and the two netboats, when a davit failed. That’s a heavy steel fitting that supports the boat. There was a loud crash, and it knocked a crew member violently overboard. I was horrified. Everybody saw it. There he was in the water, crying. Obviously alive, but also clearly in a lot of pain. It turned out he had really hurt his back. Yes, they sent a netboat for him, AFTER they had finished making the set! I was flabbergasted, standing at the rail, sort of helplessly pointing to this guy in the water, while the ship steamed right on in the usual big circle, nets playing out! More important things to do than worry about a guy who has just been violently bounced overboard!

Why do you think everybody on the working deck wears a helmet?

Listen to me,guys. For you to start mixing it there, untrained, wide eyed and innocent… well, good luck.

I avoid the lower working deck (where it all happens) like the plague. You see the old “Molly’s ladle” (my phrase) they haul the fish in with? It looks like a huge scoop. There’s a heavy steel ring that supports that ‘basket’, and that alone weights a ton. Try shift it even an inch while it’s lying on the deck. You won’t budge it. Now imagine this huge scoop bulging with four tons of fish. It gets hauled all over the place. In a hurry. Everybody is always in a hurry. The captain is on the public address, yelling and yelling. Watch closely when a few fish get stuck, and refuse to slide out the bottom into the chute that leads down to the storage area. The operator will then ‘jiggle’the cables so the whole thing shakes around. All the while you’ll see brave little souls darting around. If that ring hits your skull even a glancing blow, well….

Once I was walking around the lower deckwhile they were transferring fish from the ‘wet cell’ (filled with sea water) to the ‘dry cell’ (once the fish are frozen solid). There was no set going on, or fish being hauled in. It was just a transfer going on. Suddenly, an excited babble of Chinese broke out. Everybody seemed to be jabbering at me at the same instant. I had time to sort of stupidly say: “Duh?”

The runaway hook on a chain that sailed eighteen inches or so past my face wouldn’t have killed me, but, boy! It sure would have spoiled my whole day.

I asked my boss about it. He phrased it rather eloquently I thought. What, he said, was the minor benefot to the ship of one extra unskilled laborer, comapred with the risk of physical injury of the pilot or mechanic, and the resultant downtime of the helicopter? What indeed?

He also suggested that sometimes there can be a bit of jealousy at work here. The slogan “We are all members of the ship’s crew” sounds fine, and it gets to be used to justify putting the pilot and the mechanic to meanial work. But does it really maybe also mean”: “We’re going to bring the helicopter crew down a few pegs?”

Most helo crew will never be asked to perform additional duties. However, it does happen,especially, it seems on American ships. I was forever arriving in some port, looking forward to the usual meet up of all the crews in the various bars, and there were the boys on some American ships…. hauling fish. Rough….

Maybe those two words again, eh? Ask beforehand!

Francis ‘Moggy’ Meyrick (c)

Previous Chapter:  How much and when.. Next Chapter: Your Cabin and your roommate (s)

Chapter 2 -B Your Job Offer:

(Will you be an employee or a sub-contractor?)
There are two different pay structures: 1) straight salary, and 2) pay per tonnage caught.
Or a combination of both.

1) Straight salary is exactly that: $3,500 per month. Or $7,000 per month.

If the ship breaks down: sad, but not really your problem. If the captain can’t fish to save his life, oh well, too bad, it doesn’t affect you.

2) Tonnage. This is usually combined with some basic pay. You might be offered, say, $4 per ton caught, or $8 per ton, plus basic pay.

Personally, given a choice, I’d go for straight salary every time. You know exactly where you stand. Tonnage is fraught with problems. In the old days, the eighties, tonnage was great. Catches were more plentiful, there were fewer ships, and helicopter pilots on tonnage could make a bomb. These days, it’s not so good. More ships, keen competition, reduced profit margins… Just not so good.

If you have a choice, go for straight salary. A pilot or mechanic in US Dollars in as far back as 1995 to 1997 was making $3,500 to $4,000 per month. The lowest in those days I heard was $3,000. Highest was $5,000. There was not a lot of variation across the board for pilots and mechanics. If anything, pilots were and are quite a bit easier to find than mechanics. Sorry, pilots, but it takes a lot longer to train a decent helicopter mechanic than it does to train a driver!

I always sorted the incoming mail into two piles: pilot resumes and mechanic resumes. The first was often a stack. The second pile was never a stack, and often enough consisted of one miserable letter. I soon learned to really appreciate experienced mechanics.

The situation was rather more varied for dual rated pilot-mechanics. As of January 1997, tops I knew of was $7,000 to $7,500 per month. Steve Hoffman paid his pilots the best. With a generous bonus if you stayed a year. One pilot-mechanic I knew was making $8,500 per month! And his machines were flawless. I understand Hansen still work a bonus system as well.

Today, July 2009, when I look at various bulletin boards and websites, I’m rather surprised.

It seems to me the money has not changed. Despite inflation. Indeed, the pilot-mechanic pay appears to have gone down.

I see $5,600 per month being offered.

This trend probably reflects diminished profits. Or more competition for the available jobs?

Note that ‘cabin-fever’ has had a result that many of the captains much prefer having a pilot-mechanic. If you have two guys sharing a cabin on a foreign boat, for long months, and they just don’t get along, you can imagine the tension. Occasionally, this boils over into heated arguments, even the occasional fist fight…. Captains know this, and hence often will prefer a pilot-mechanic. This arrangement will also save one airfare. One hotel bill, etc.

I have never worked for tonnage. It follows that I am probably biased, and you should bear that fact in mind as I struggle to give you an accurate presentation below!

Problems:

1. What happens if the ship fails to catch fish through no fault of the helicopter crew? Maybe something breaks down. Then what? You earn little or nothing? Is that fair? You’re still sitting out on the Big Pond scratching your… chin.

2. There often tends to be a delay in payment, whilst the tonnage is being ‘calculated’. Mostly, it seems to many, pure nonsense. Just an excuse to delay payment, maybe by several months.

3. If I have heard it once, I’ve heard it a dozen times: angry crews who discover much less in their pay packet than expected. Why? Because of so-called “Undersize Fish”…. Needless to say, this is only discovered many months later, when it gets hard to do much about it.

4. What really annoyes me a few times was this: the companies who make you a complex offer of salary plus tonnage, and then, when you politely say “Thanks but no thanks!”, they change the offer to straight salary!

This is exactly what happened to me. It was an American ship. I declined both offers. The impression I got was that when you have NO tuna flying experience, it’s real hard to get taken seriously. Once you are experienced, however, especially after a year at sea, then you went straight to the top of the list. Now they want to hire you, because you are much less of an unknown, much less of a liability. But first they will make you a dubious offer and see if you will take it! Like I said, I didn’t like them, and declined both offers. Many months later I visited a pilot on one of their ships. What an eye opener that was! The disgruntled pilot told me he was on ‘basic plus tonnage’, and not doing very well. (That was the offer I had refused!) What had subsequently really annoyed him was that he had discovered that other pilots working for the same company, on other boats, were being paid straight salary! That is simply not fair. That smacks of trying to pull the wool over a guy’s eyes. If you are mug enough to take a lousy deal, well, they’ll give you one! Real nice.

5. Some of these guys appeal straight to your greed. “Tonnage is great! It’s the way all our guys go! If the ship catches a thousand tons a month, you can earn x billion zillion dollars…..etc, etc.”

Bull. Manure. The only answer is: “Yes, and if we catch a mermaid I’ll marry her and make lots of little mermaids.”

The most a ship I was on on ever made in one single month was 1250 tons. That was part of a really good year on the Hsieh Feng 707, during which we averaged 700 tons per month. Today, that is good going. More ships, less fish.

I have seen ships take three months to fill up. Nice, big, modern ships. That’s maybe 250 tons per month.

So if anybody starts giving you the 1,000 tons per month story, just laugh.

Don’t get me wrong. There may well be still some good ‘basic plus tonnage deals’out there, and I’m not saying that everybody who offers you ‘basic plus tonnage’ is a lousy, stinking crook.

But… too many variables. I would suggest ‘forget it’ unless you are really desperate for work.Shop around. If you already have tuna flying and maintenance experience, you should have no problem finding work for straight salary.

If you are an experienced mechanic, boy!, there should be lots of openings.

As for the question “when’. When do you get paid. Promptly monthly please! Check it! Get your girlfriend or wife or mistress or mother to fax you or email if it’s overdue. You need to know. You need to be asking for it.

Perfectly respectable and honest companies can have cash-flow problems.That’s okay. But tell me! Explain to me beforehand that my momey will be two weeks late. That’s okay. But rest assured that i will start screaming merry hell otherwise!

Going back to the example I quoted above. My unhappy friend on ‘basic plus tonnage’ had already discovered that his pay was much later than that of the other pilots who were on straight pay! Surprise, surprise.

Remember how lucky you are when you find a decent employer who treats you well. Your only response is to work as hard as you can to satisfy the customer. INvariably that may mean putting up with some creature discomfort, and swallowing some ‘guff’. But for the money you can earn, maybe tax-free…

I’ve said it before: Love your boss! Baby that helicopter! Be nice to the captain!

One argument you might come across goes like this. They will tell you that you are not an employee, but a sub contractor. And that therefore you cannot be expected to be paid straight away, because in the real world, subcontractors everywhere are always waiting for their money! There is some truth in that, but I would answer that that is all fine and dandy, but I need my money. And I’m not staying if it’s going to be slow!

Finally, be sure you ask about trips home. Who pays the round trip airfare! Do you have to work a minimum time period? Not everybody automatically picks up the tab. If you get laid off after a few months, what will happen then?

How often will they let you go home? I liked to think of a minimum of six months out on the boat in one go, followed by three months off without pay. But that has stretched to nine months on the boat.

On one occasion, I was out straight for one year.

I met one pilot, working off an American boat out of Samoa, who worked a trip, maybe four to six weeks, and then got an airfare home. It sounded great, he said, but by the time he had recovered from the jet lag, mowed the lawn and paid the bills, it was time to urn around and fly back to the ship! He didn’t sound too impressed with his lot in life.

Personally, at the time I liked a minimum of six months on. After that, I worked a month at a time, until I got fed up and decided I needed a holiday. I don’t think employers are going to like it much if you stay less than six months. They don’t like the turnover. There is one exception to this: if you can find a good friend to team up with, and relieve each other. As long as you both hit it off with the captain!! In that manner, you could each work three or four months, and then take off the same amount of time. Not a bad life style.

I have also worked 28 days on and 28 days off, flying in Africa. That was fun for two years. Of course, by the time you fly from the USA over there, and back, you are actually working 31 days on for 25 off.

Here in the Gulf of Mexico, in Oil and Gas, most people work 7 days on and 7 days off, or 14 days on and 14 days off.

To work tuna boats and do six months on and three months off falls into the peculiar life style of the commercial helicopter pilot.

We are the modern equivalent of the ancient Nomads…

Francis ‘Moggy’ Meyrick (c)

Previous chapter: Your Job Offer… Next Chapter: Other duties? Humping fish?

So, having read Part 1 of this manual, and seen some interesting articles, in a moment of weakness you decided to apply for a job as a tuna pilot or mechanic. Maybe you’d had a beer or two too many. I know how that goes. Somewhat to your horror, you have had a letter back telling you that they are interested, and suggesting you give them a call.

Oh boy! Decision time.

There are a number of questions that are perfectly legitimate and reasonable for you to ask.

Even if you don’t ask your potential employer all the questions that follow, you should at least ask yourself all of them!

Some are pretty obvious: what’s the pay? How much? Some questions are not so obvious to the tuna newcomer. Those questions that are not obvious at first, have a horrible habit of answering themselves… when it’s all a bit too late. Many a time I have spoken to sadder but wiser chaps who have had a raw deal somewhere along the line.

So what I have tried to do is to list sensible questions. I have also tried to present a fair picture of what you can expect. As in any industry, anywhere in the world, there are good jobs and not-so-good jobs. There are excellent jobs, competed for, even fought over, whose lucky holders (like me!) feel they had won the crown jewels.

There are…. also some rough, dangerous, borderline suicidal job openings!

Many employers are really good people. They are eager, borderline desperate for good crews, reliable, honest, skilled…. who can get along comfortably with the captain and the crew. Remember they will be sending you out with a very valuable asset: their helicopter. Many employers will treat you well, in the hope that you will reciprocate.

But beware, in any industry, there are always some cowboys.

Back in the nineties’ (it seems like a century ago now) we had a spate in Guam of guys running around owed thirty thousand dollars or more. When ‘the Big Z’ went down, with as many boats as they owned, it crashed the hopes of a lot of guys who had worked long and hard.

I well remember one discussion I had in a late night bar, with a very depressed, borderline suicidal pilot. His plight was that he was divorced (I know how that feels), he needed the money to send home for alimony/child support, and now he had been rooked out of six months of pay. He felt it was six months of life wasted.

“How in hell did you let it run up so much?”, I asked as gently as I could.

“But it was such a good boat, Moggy. Free beer anytime you wanted it. You could go to the freezer and take out anything you wanted, anytime. It was like a luxury cruise ship…”

The answer of course(I didn’t give it!) was that his beer had not been free! By virtue of his forfeited wages, he had in effect ‘paid’ for every bottle and can he drank. And every steak he devoured. Probably at the rate of fifty dollars per can of Budweiser!

I would much rather work on a rough old tub and get paid, than work on the “Queen Mary” for nothing and drink ‘free beer’…

In this respect, I am going to give the Taiwanese a big positive plug: sure, some of their boats in those days were pretty rough. But they were hard-working people who understood ‘pay’ and the need for dollars!

Or else ‘the show can’t go on’.

So rule number One is: Check your pay!

Confirm beforehand that you may occasionally use the ship’s fax or satellite phone to correspond with your bank.

In the nineties, Satellite fax cost $10. It’s probably way cheaper now, plus most vessels now have email. If anybody grumbles, I’d offer to pay the costs, but you must be given the opportunity to check on bank payments. Never mind ‘assurances’ from your employer, your captain, or the Pope in Rome. You want to see it in your bank, confirmed by your Bank, black-on-white. With a pink ribbon around it! THEN you can be happy.

Again, most employers are excellent when it comes to money. They want you to be happy. If you are good at your job, they will want you to stay forever. Turnover is not good, and fraught with uncertainty and risk. Captains do not like a stream of rookies. If an employer finally…

• has a pilot he likes and trusts…
• has a mechanic who really knows his stuff…
• and the pilot and the mechanic hit it off together well…
• and the captain likes the helicopter crew…
• and the crew like the captain…

Man! He’s in seventh heaven! Such an employer will bend over backwards to keep you!

You can pity your employer in a way. Some pilots and mechanics treat THEM appallingly.

I’ve seen some really stupid stuff, and if you go tuna fishing, you will too.

Be on guard, but also do see it from your employer’s point of view. Johnny Walker, the boss at Hansen Helicopters, is not liked by everybody, but he told me some interesting stories about some of the insane, perfectly asinine things he has had his employees do! Giving unauthorized joy rides whilst smoking pot, and then flying into a palm tree?!!

Punching a captain over the guard rail into the Ocean… ??

Yes, he’s had more than a few headaches with his pilots and mechanics!

Victor Regis ran ‘Heliguam’ for a few years, until their demise through bankruptcy. They had the Sajo contract. I watched him painstakingly rebuild a Bell 47 helicopter. I thought he did a beautiful job. It looked great, and I can testify to the amount of work and skill that went into that helicopter. I would have flown it in a heart beat. It took some moron pilot only days to fly it (on a nice, sunny day) straight into the water. I heard about it. I never worked for Victor, but I could feel sorry for him.

I happened to be there the day when the sad remains were delivered back to his shop. What was left fit neatly on one single wooden pallet!

It took months, and cost a lot of money in terms of parts and man hours.

So it’s all a two way street. Not all employers are angels. But neither are all employees.

Over the years, there have been numerous cases where pilots, or mechanics, or both together, have stepped (or flown!) off a ship in some foreign port, and faxed their employers: Money NOW into my account, please! When faced with stalling manoeuvres, promises later, etc, the next fax or phone call has stated words to the effect of:

“I have with me in my hotel room the tail rotor assembly. If you like, confirm we trade: my outstanding wages for one Hughes 500 tail rotor assembly in full and final settlement!”

It’s amazing then how quickly companies find funds to cover outstanding arrears!

This is all pretty sad though.It should never- ever- have to go that far. The hassle for the crews is no fun, and by the time we start stripping down helicopters…. what kind of job is that?

Everybody stands to lose really. The disgruntled crew may well get their money, but they are getting into reall hassles, with potentially severe legal consequences. The helicopter company is going to really lose face in front of their customer.

The captain is going to do his proverbial nut. The image of the tuna helicopter industry as a whole is also going to take a right old knock: what are we? – professionals or fly-by-night con artists?

Crews should check their payments. No matter how anxious you were to get a job, maybe starting out in your helicopter career, with student loans to pay, you still need to get PAID! I have said a few times to my bosses: if you ever have a problem – let me know. Tell me. Say: “Sorry, Moggy, it’s going to be two weeks late.” Okay, no problem.

“But don’t feed me any blarney!”

I was lucky, and I never had much problems, until the very end, when my employer started getting into more and more severe financial difficulties. Even then, my Taiwanese captain assured me (and I liked him and believed him), that if it came to it, the fishing company would pay me, and deduct that amount from what they owed the helicopter company.

I was being paid $7,000 a month as Hughes 500 pilot/mechanic. Great money for the nineties’. You can imagine though how quickly that can run up. It’s really not too hard to be owed -and loose- $28,000 to $35,000 (or more) in the tuna industry.

You have to stay on top of it.

Pilots in those days made $3,500. Mechanics made the same. Oddly enough, today, ten years later, it seems those wages have not gone up, despite inflation.

To give you an idea how angry unpaid crews can get.

1. I was in Tarawa when an unpaid, extremely drunk, fighting mad helicopter pilot was chasing his employer around the island. The pilot had a bottle of whiskey in one hand, from which he took frequent -neat- nips, and he was telling everybody (at the top of his voice) about how much he was owed. It really was ugly. I wonder what the locals thought about it.
2. One of the many, many ‘urban legends’ (we call them ‘Ocean Myths’ or ‘Tuna Tales’) concerns an alleged ugly incident that occurred in South America. The story goes that the American pilot and his mechanic both felt they had no choice but to hold the helicopter to ransom. They were owed a lot of money. They had flown it off the ship, and were determined. They finally got most of their money in their home bank accounts, but not before they had been threatened with a gun! Even after they had received their money, they were still so angry and upset, they resolved to fly home at their own expense.

The helicopter operator flew out a replacement crew, who discovered -according to this Tuna Tale- that the departing crew had left a souvenir. They had cold-bloodedly ‘torched’ and incinerated the turbine by means of a deliberate hot start!

You will hear this one feature in many a bar story, and you will hear crews say: “Good for them!”

I don’t agree at all.

Think of the tragedy of it all. If – a big IF- this story is true, this would be an example of the ultimate breakdown in trust between a helicopter operator and crew. Any employer that sends a crew out with a machine as valuable as a helicopter, is taking the first step in trust. Would YOU be happy sending complete strangers off -after a cursory interview and review of their resume- in your $250,000 Porsche? In which you had invested a lot of money, and hundreds of hours of expensive labor? Would you? For months on end? With no real way of checking if they ARE really taking care of it?

I know I wouldn’t…

Sometimes I think we flying dudes have a much better deal than the owner of the helicopter. WE sleep better! For what we were making, certainly in the nineties’, with no commercial risk, no financial investment….we did really well. Our bosses were brave. They would interview us, leaf through our logbooks, fly an hour with us (once!), and turn us loose with their toys! Talk about a sprinkle of Holy Water, an invocation, and…. Good Luck!

If that was me… with what I’ve seen of SOME pilots and ‘mechanics’… I wouldn’t sleep a wink!

Don’t get me wrong: there were -and are- many very fine crews out there, with excellent attitudes. Often people will start out in their helicopter careers on tuna boats, and go on to bigger and better things, with a lot of hard earned experience.

Their sincerity and willingness is unsurpassed.

But people are people. Good people. Not-so-good people. And the odd certifiable head-banger, who should be locked up.

I don’t know if that is still taught, but in the nineties’ it was regarded as paramount that you spray “Triflow” all over your strap packs and rotorheads. Every night. To protect against corrosion and lubricate.My boss sent me out with cases and cases of the stuff, and I loyally did as I was told. You are talking about fifteen minutes a day, climbing up a ladder, and going round the machine. That would be normally something you would do at the end of the day. I washed my machine every night, I waxed the rotor blades regularly, and I washed the engine. I worried about corrosion. No, I was no saint, but I really tried -to the best of my abilities – to respond to the trust invested in me. And I really liked my boss as well.

Regardless of weather, wind, waves… Spraying Triflow was regarded as an essential item. Well, I didn’t believe the stories I heard about guys who never -ever- bothered. With any of that stuff. Until I heard them laughing about it in a bar! Apparently John Walker had fired some guys when he noticed they were not using any Triflow! So the solution to that problem? You guessed it: Just throw full cans of Triflow over the side into the water, so that the lack of Triflow turnover doesn’t get noticed! It’s hard to believe…

Love your employer. If he is willing to give you a job, pay you regularly, and buy you the odd beer: look after that man! Baby his machine! Treat it like your own, and lavish attention on it. Long may he buy helicopters and employ characters like us! I hope he makes a vast profit! He deserves every last penny of it, taking the risks that he does!

This is probably a good point in the narrative to give some honest ‘plugs’ and say some nice things about some employers. Disclaimer: I have no commercial connection to anybody out there, no commission, no incentive to lie through my teeth. I have been out of the tuna helicopter game for ten years, still flying helicopters, but nothing to do with Tuna.

I can’t help you with any personal knowledge of South American operators. Maybe we shall get contributions from pilots and mechanics who do have such experience. Now, GUAM I can tell you something about.

You will read a lot of nasty comments about tuna helicopter operators on various websites. www.justhelicopters.com is always good for the latest gossip and scandal. But let me tell you this for an absolute fact:

In the nineties’, Hansen Helicopters were absolutely SUPERB at paying their pilots and mechanics. They were referred to by some as “The Bank of Hansen”. Payments to accounts were made as regular as clockwork. I have no personal knowledge of what it has been like since, and for that you will need to consult the various websites, or talk with a current Hansen pilot. But I suspect that it will be exactly the same. They took great pride in their payments. If you did a good job with them, they were most anxious to keep you. And keep you happy.

If you are looking for a company to send a resume to, then this will be one.

The ‘Big Z‘ went bust, it was a huge company, and cleaned out a lot of guys for a lot of money. A long, sad saga. Somebody with more knowledge than I needs to write that one up. For the Tuna history books. We can include it later in this manual!

Poor old Heliguam went bust, and owed many long time employees a lot of money. There was a lot of bitterness about it, and many people were furious with Victor Regis. I never worked for him, but he was always charming to me. I could see that there were two sides to that bankruptcy story as well. I told you about the investment of money and time and energy that went into that Bell 47 that was promptly flown into the water. That was just one example. There were others. All of which lost the company a lot of money. Another was problems with collecting payments from a customer. Huge payments. It was a mess. Many pilots and mechanics lost a lot of money.

Hoffman Helicopters is now defunct, and the owner, Steve Hoffman, an old friend of mine, died some years ago.

Steve would rather have committed ritual hara-kiri than swindle any pilot of his. Great human being, sorely missed.

Fabulous helicopters in fantastic shape. I worked for Steve.

Big Eye Helicopters went bust, but everybody got honorably paid out their money. Very fair, very ‘above board’, despite what you will hear! Great helicopters, but troubled by a constant turnover of Managers. Great shame. I flew for them, and loved it.

Tropic Helicopters is still going today.

I want to say more about this company, as you might be considering sending them a resume, if you are looking at getting into tuna helicopter flying. Disclaimer: I worked for Tropic, and I was their Chief Pilot for a while. However, I moved on, and I have no connection with that company now, or any financial incentive from them to say nice things!

My tenure there taught me a lot.

Firstly, the sheer cost of maintaining helicopters. Ask any helicopter operator what it’s like to open a bill from an Allison/Rolls Royce engine shop for a ’small’ repair. You will be expecting a bill for maybe $5,000 to $7,000. Can you imagine what it’s like staring at the bottom line, when it says: $27,000…..!!!

The sheer cost of maintaining a helicopter is staggering.

Secondly, cash-flow gyrations are wild and unpredictable. As part of my job, I got to go collecting checks from customers. Sometimes I was dealing with a large Korean industrial conglomerate, which owned all kinds of industries, of which their tuna fishing fleet was just a small portion. I found the Koreans concerned very honorable, very charming, and pleasant to do business with. But the payments, not surprisingly, went through a central office back up in Seoul. There were inevitable time lags. From a cash flow point of view, it was often either feast or famine. We would be gasping for liquidity, for the dosh to pay suppliers, and our pilots and mechanics. Delays would creep in. We would be behind on paying the guys by a few weeks. I would go down to the offices of certain customers, and play the ’smiling leaning elephant’ trick. (Be real nice, but real persistent). Then, all of a sudden, I’d be carrying a check back for $450,000!

Feast or famine! The owner, a laid back Australian by the name of Barry Jones, was great to work for. He was so remarkably unflappable! His staff, including myself, would be climbing the walls, and he would always seem to find the funny side! Then we would quickly catch up on the payments. I never -ever- had any doubts about the owner’s integrity.

Barry is as straight an arrow as they make them, but nobody can fully compensate for such wild cash flow gyrations.

And this is where I can see it from both points of view. That of the helicopter operator, and that of the pilots and mechanics.

I once had a bizarre situation , basically a drunk pilot who was flying a helicopter -against direct orders- after a tailboom strike. On a Hughes 500, it is a monococque structure, and repairs are not permissible. This blithering imbecile was telling me he had ‘knocked the dent out with a hammer, and it was okay now’. I flew out to the Marshall islands with a spare tailboom, couplings, and drive shaft. He was most anxious that I did not come. When I got there, I was met at the airport by this -drunk- personage, who tried everything he could to convince me not to go out to the boat. He would have liked very much if I had turned around and flown back to Guam!

Climbing the helideck on his boat, I was absolutely staggered -horrified- to immediately observe that the tailboom was ‘kinked’. The upper vertical fin was bent over backwards. The lower vertical fin was bent slightly forwards.

And this cretin (a so-called pilot/mechanic) had been flying it like that!

Imagine the risk. There is no way the rear coupling was rotating in the same plane. It would have been wobbling on the shaft. Imagine the stresses on the drive shaft! The gearbox input! At those revolutions, there is just no telling how long that party would have kept the music going, but some kind of cataclysmic failure was only a matter of time. I fired him (he was very upset, and went off telling everybody horrible things about me) and changed out the tailboom and couplings.

I then sailed out on the boat.

The point of this anecdote (apart from showing you what idiots are out there) comes next:

I went out there unexpectedly. Nobody knew I was coming. I also went out armed with all the latest payment information, who had been paid what and when. We were actually, once again, beautifully up to date.

Now you should know that the boats are sometimes alone, and sometimes together. It depends on the fishing.

At night,some of the captains might get together, for gambling and whatever, and there would be a large gathering.

All the pilots then, at night, get on a common radio frequency, and start chatting about everything and anything.

Imagine my surprise as I dialled in, and I found myself listening to a furious anti-Tropic helicopters diatribe.

By our own guys! They were busy working themselves into a state, and the rest of the world was listening to all this!

What really amazed me was that supposition had become fact. It was obvious that these guys had not checked their bank accounts for a couple of months. Not only were they unaware of payments that had recently been made. They were also unaware of payments that had been made two months earlier! I had all the information in front of me.

What really disappointed me was that they would bash their own company so hard in front of everybody else. There were pilots and mechanics there from several other companies, and it was obvious from the conversation we would never get any applications from any of them! I let the whole thing go on for a good while,and then I came up on frequency! Shock and horror! I gave our guys the details of their payments, how much, and what dates. Then I made sure they repeated the amounts and dates back to me. With the whole world listening in! It was amazing, after that, how suddenly all our guys needed to go to bed!

You will see what I mean: people sometimes just want to believe the worst. And talk themselves into believing the worst.

In case you are still shaking your head in disbelief about the character with the hammer and the tailboom.

If you ever meet Johnny Walker or one of the Hansen staff in a bar, buy him a beer, and ask him to tell you about some of their worst experiences with pilots and mechanics. It will be the best value you could ever score for the price of a beer!

Ron Barr, my old buddy, with Tropic Helicopters, is another great candidate for this.

Watch their expressions change as they warm to the theme.

It is absolutely astounding what some pilots and mechanics will do in the name of rotary wing flight!

I have twenty or so anecdotes flitting through my mind as I write this.

Let me pick one, which took place at the old Big Eye base in Guam.

I had arrived back from six months or so out at Sea, and I was in a great mood, going off for a vacation. I was collecting my pay, and getting ready to depart. Another Hughes 500 landed there, off a Korean ship. The Korean pilot, the captain beside him, and the mechanic in the back. A while afterwards, my boss came back in.

“Moggy!”

His tone had changed. I looked up in surprise. Gone was the jocular boss. He seemed stressed.

He wanted me to go down and start up the newly arrived Hughes 500. He didn’t want me to fly it, just start it up.

And he didn’t want me to pre-flight it.

When I queried that instruction (no pre-flight?), he was again very sharp with me. He didn’t want me to do a pre-flight inspection. Just a start up. He seemed displeased with something.

I thought: “Well, what the hell.”And I walked down, made sure the blades were not tied down, climbed in, strapped myself in, and lit the fire. I did notice the boss was watching me closely, leaning against the hangar door.

Before I had even gotten to 25% N1, I was frantically trying to abort the start and shut everything off. The vibration was so horrible, a weird, wallowing, rocking motion, that I was very much alarmed. It was well and truly frightening.

I climbed out with a look of amazement on my face, saying:

“What the HELL was that!??”
Roger, bless him,detached himself from where he had been nonchalantly leaning, and said:

“I feel better now. That was my reaction as well. I wondered if it was just me. Thanks for re-assuring me…”

He then asked me to go find the problem. It took me five seconds.

I walked back to the tail, grabbed the tail ’stinger’, that little arm that prevents the tail hitting the ground during a botched autorotation. and shook it it. To my absolute horror, the entire tailboom moved! I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t.

Further investigation revealed that where the tailboom was attached to the helicopter, all the rivets were LOOSE.

They were so far past the “smoking” stage (where you see a trail of small suspicious particles indicating something is moving and fretting) that it wasn’t funny anymore. You could actually have somebody move the tailboom with the stinger and WATCH THE RIVET HEADS MOVING!

These guys had been FLYING it that way. For MONTHS!

It cost the company a lot to repair that. Both in time, and lost earnings. It was by no means an easy repair either.

What had happened was that the ‘mechanic’ had been hired in a hurry (that happens a lot) and in his interview had claimed he knew exactly how to operate a ‘Chadwick’, which is the instrument mechanics use to balance main and tail rotor systems. He not only didn’t know, but didn’t ask to be shown. Now the imbalance in the tail rotor system will progress over a period of time. It will get worse and worse. It seems amazing that any helicopter pilot would not feel this. We can only assume that they got used to it.

I hope you will see where I am going with this: trust -between helicopter operator and flight crew- needs to be a two way street!

Francis ‘Moggy’ Meyrick (c)

Previous Chapter: Herding and the Tow line… Next Chapter: Pay? How much….

1) Herding, and the ‘tow-line’; speedboats and net boats.

I want to mention at this stage the concept of ‘herding’.

We will talk about it again under Section 3 (Handling your helicopter), but for now I want to touch on ‘herding’ as part of the outline of what the basic job entails.

‘Herding’ as the name implies is the use of the helicopter as a tool to scare the fish.You chase them into the set – if you’re lucky- and once they are in, you try and keep them there. While the nets slowly close…

Many ships never ask you to herd. The American ships by and large seem to regard the practise with amusement. However, the Taiwanese and the Koreans may expect you to herd, and I understand that some other Mexican and South American purse seiners will ask you as well.

The principle behind this is that fish tend to follow the leader. The leader tends to follow the baitfish, until such time as he gets really spooked., and then he just wants OUT of the set. If you can turn the leader, (or the baitfish and therefore the leader) you may turn the whole foamer around. If you play it right, maybe a hundred tons or more of fish will reverse course right back into the set. The ‘tow-line’, as the name implies, is a heavy steel set of cables playing out off the back of the ship, which literally ‘tow’ the net. When the nets are first going down, and the ship is steaming around in a circle, there will be a huge gap at the bottom of the set (not yet closed), and a second gap behind the ship.

It is this ‘towline gap’ that I have spent many an hour guarding! Hovering at four to six feet, kicking up a huge spray, and sliding sideways up and down the length of the towline. IF… the whole foamer is heading en mass for the ‘towline’ (the still open section in the net ‘curtain’), and only the helicopter is in the right spot, and if you do succeed in turning the whole lot around, it is pretty obvious ‘whodunnit’ and who gets the glory! The reverse also applies!

Yes, there are speedboats running up and down, often more airborne than on the water, trying to do the same job. But they are no match for the helicopter in terms of agility, speed, and noise footprint. There will also be some ‘net boats‘ trying to help. These are much slower, small tug boats. They are designed to hold the nets from drifting the wrong way, and therefore can grab onto the net and pull hard with a lot of torque. But they are slow to accelerate, and can hardly be called nimble.

Very often the captain will look to the helicopter as the star player to keep his fish inside the net, in that critical time period when the winches are going crazy, straining to close the net. Anywhere between twenty five and forty five minutes.

The greatest successes for the herding helicopter tend to come unexpectedly, when part of the ‘corkline’ sinks below the surface. The top of the net is marked by a continuous line of hundreds of large, bright, yellow ‘corks’. They are the size of a very large jar, or a small drum. These provide flotation so the net hangs down vertically. You will see them in all the photos on www.tunaseiners.com that picture the net retrieval scene.

Now the ‘corkline’ should not normally go under water. Two factors however can cause this to happen: excessive winch speed, and/or strong Ocean currents. The effect is that the top of the net, rather than resting on the surface, sinks down maybe eight to ten feet under water. This is a perfect escape opportunity for your captive foamer! I’ve seen it happen many,many times. The good news (if you’re not a tuna) is that the helicopter is very efficient at reaching the affected area in a matter of seconds. Well before the speedboats, and way, way before the netboats can come chug-chugging around.

Now you are going to make a lot of noise and try your hand at ’sterilising’ that critical escape window that goes down eight to ten feet. All you have to do is shush sideways up and down the submerged corkline, and you will see fish lined up on the inside, wanting to get out, but frightened to get too close to that nasty ‘thing’, making all that horrible noise. Remember sound travels really well under water.

To give you an idea: we had 150 ton in a closed set one day, with everybody very happy, until the corkline sank down! I had just departed on a search flight, and I was gone about three minutes. I got called back by a frantic captain!

For a few seconds, I couldn’t figure what was going on. All I heard over the radio was:

Moggy!…Moggy!….MOGGYYYYYYY!!!……..

I looked at the observer, and he was as puzzled as I was. Then we heard:

“Moggy-Moggy-Moggy!!!….
!…Gott!…Gott!…..Moggy!!….corkline….corkline!!….Moggy!!!
Come back to ship! Come to shipppppp!!!….Moggy-Moggy….
feeshh get out…!!…..Aaaaahhhh!!!!”

You could tell he was just about hysterical. In those days, 1998, that was a cool hundred twenty thousand bucks about to say: “Arrivederci, suckers!”

You would think a submerged corkline would pop right back up, but this is not always the case. I came back as fast as I could then, and then spent an interesting twenty minutes screaming backwards and forwards at low level, tailspinning, landinglight on, etc, anything I could think of. It worked… Everybody said afterwards that it was weird the way you could see part of the foamer make a dash for an area, and the helicopter cut across and block the escape. A minute later, another section would make a rush elsewhere along the line, and again be turned back.

That day, the helicopter scored big time, and in twenty minutes of efficient work, paid for three months’ worth of helicopter rent! But that is kind of rare to score so well during herding. I have also been in the exact same position, patrolling the corkline, only to have one section of fish succeed in breaking out. After that, you’re finished. History. Fish will follow fish, nose to tail, and you can hover a foot above them, making as much noise as you can, and the chances are you are wasting your time. You won’t stop a full bore nose-to-tail escape!

It’s kind of frustrating -and kind of funny!- all at the same time. They are so beautiful to watch, and you can’t help but wishing them the best as they disappear…

A whole set will empty out in minutes, and -you guessed it- the chopper gets the blame!

Some pilots love herding. Many pilots absolutely loath and detest herding. Some will refuse to do it.

Everybody who has actually done it, for real, (as opposed to the B-S’ers!) has firm views on it, one way or the other!

I have herded extensively in a Bell 47 (Lycoming O-435! Not much Power!) and also in Hughes 500 ‘C’ and ‘D’ model

helos. (Allison C20B! Oodles and oodles of power! Great!)

I guess I hold mixed views on it.

These could be roughly summed up as follows:

1. Sometimes it works spectacularly well. Most times it doesn’t seem to make much difference, although it’s maybe hard to tell.

2. For damn sure, it can be dangerous. There have been many herding accidents. Usually people stick a tail rotor in a wave.

More on this later…

3. It can be fun, on a nice day, reasonably calm sea, not too much wind. But on a windy, rough, blustery day, with a lot of spray and large waves, and the machine trying to weathercock all the time….. Yuk!

4. To be safe and efficient, it has to be done in a certain way. Otherwise it can quickly become dangerous,or a total waste of time, or even counter productive.

5. With that much salt spray, you need to wash your bird down with copious amounts of fresh water immediately afterwards.

We will talk about this again, later. For now, just be aware of the concept!

2) The ‘Brown Ball’

One day, you may have an experience similar to mine.

It was early days, and I sure didn’t know much about tuna fishing. We were circling around an area of small, patchy foamers. Suddenly,old Akaya got all excited.

“Brown Ball! Brown ball! You see?! Brown ball!”

I looked down, and, sure enough, there, floating in the water, was a sort of… brown ball.

Ten meters across, it sort of got bigger and smaller, then sharper,and then more dull. Heck if I knew what it was, or why my friend from Taiwan was so excited. So, being a naive type, who tends to fail to recognize situations when silence would camouflage ignorance, I spoke the deadly three words:

“What is it?”

In reply I got one of those looks of disgust. He went back to his binoculars, still shaking his head. Back on the ship, all I heard at the dinner table amongst lots of laughter at my expense, was ‘brown ball’.

Eventually, the captain explained.

Anchovy. Pure and simple. Lots and lots of anchovy, millions and millions of them, huddled together knowing some are going to get eaten, but hopefully it will be the next guy. Another amazing spectacle in mid Ocean, I shall be forever grateful for to have witnessed up close and first hand…

Now the significance of finding a ‘brown ball’, is that it often means the chance of a really good catch of tuna. If you can see any tuna at all on the surface, the chances are good that there’s lots and lots below. They are just feeding their faces voraciously, blind to any other consideration other than ‘Food, food, and more food’. I’ve seen ‘brown balls’ only a few meters across, maybe several nearby, and I’ve seen a whopper that filled more than half the set. They form very quickly when there is a threat, and take on the color of rich dark brown coffee. Often you will see whales there as well, or sharks.

The whales are quite majestic as they typically rise up in the middle of the ball, jaws wide, rolling over onto their sides as they swallow great gulps of anchovy. Again, spectacular, and you, you lucky thing, have a ring side seat.

The brown balls form quickly, and when the threat passes you will see them suddenly expand, the color fades abruptly, and then they sort of evaporate. All really neat stuff.

The ship of course will set around the brown ball, in the knowledge that the tuna are too busy feeding to take any notice of anything else.

So besides foamers, breezers, gatherings of birds, logs and barrels, you can add ‘brown balls’ to your shopping list when you are out on your first tuna runs.

As a postscript to this section, I might add that I was very impressed at discovering what a ‘brown ball’ was.

So I resolved in my innocent way to try and find one. Boy! Was I excited when I saw my first one.

What made it so good was the fact that El Plonker, Him-who-knew-it-all, sitting beside me, hadn’t seen it. Grrrreat!

“Brown ball!” I announced importantly.

He lowered his binoculars, and followed my outstretched finger.

The reaction was not what I had expected…

I got that damn look of disgust again, that ‘Lord save me from baby pilots’ look.

I looked again at the brown ball. My FIRST brown ball. What I had spotted all by myself. It was definitely a brown ball. A bit creamy maybe, but definitely still brown.

“Oi!”, I said, indignantly. I should have known better.

“Brown ball! Is important, no?”

He lowered his binoculars slowly, gazed wearily at me, and moved his left hand to pat his left buttock.

Then he raised his binoculars again.

“Huh!?”

Two words entered wearily into my headphones.

“Whale shit…”

3) green dye and seal bombs

I’ve mentioned the ‘towline’ behind the ship, and the temporary gap between the ship and the net curtain.

This is a prime area for escape for the tuna, and an area of heavy use of ‘green dye‘. It gets dropped off the boats in small bags, into the water, (or thrown) and it creates a huge green, billowing underwater cloud. It’s meant to discourage the tuna from passing that way and escaping, and it probably works well.

Now the reason I mention it here,is that some bright spark always gets this real neat idea to drop green dye bags from the helicopter. I soon learned to be dead against it. Here’s why.

Firstly, they will want to deposit a huge pile of ‘ammunition’ right in the open door. It’s usually that hot, you are going to fly with the doors off. Well, that pile is going to leak all over your helicopter, and create a corrosive mess. And it’s hard to clean up. And if a bag falls out while you’re flying along, where is it going to go?

Secondly, the observers get way too excited. They will end up throwing the baggies in all directions, including up into the rotor disc and dangerously close to your tail rotor.

Thirdly, you haven’t lived until your observer, in his excitement, prior to the throw, brings his arm back, and manages to accidentally bop you right in the eye with a green dye bag! At low level! After that fiasco, (boy, was I cross), I banned them from the helicopter. There really wasn’t much need anyway, because the net boats and the skiffboat guys could cover the area just as well.

If you think that green dye bags could be interesting, well, try seal bombs in the helicopter.

I’ll tell you right now, I will NOT allow those things on board my helicopter!

I have no personal -direct- experience of them, but what follows is my understanding. If anybody can correct me,and provide more information, that would be great. I understand a seal bomb is commonly made from dynamite mixed with sand. Its purpose is to be dropped, and scare seals or fish in the right direction. The purpose of the mix, sand and dynamite, is to reduce the volatility. It succeeds in doing this, but at the expense of reliability in use. It needs to explode! It’s no use if it drops in the water and fails to go off. In order to combat that lack of reliability, there is some kind of a ‘heater’ device (I have never seen one) which is installed in the cockpit. What they then do is ‘pre-heat’ the cartridges for a few minutes, and then they drop them.

It all sounds extraordinary to me. A pilot I talked with had experienced a serious accident, where the whole tray exploded prematurely – in the cockpit! The helicopter then crashed into the water. The pilot and the observer both survived, but with serious burns. The pilot had to be rescued by the speedboat driver, who dove into the water and managed to extract the unconscious pilot…

I think I’d pass on that!

4) Underwater breathing/ escape devices

For years I have carried some kind of compact underwater breathing device. You get so used to it, you hardly notice it’s there. As a scuba diver, I’m very comfortable with their use, but somebody with no scuba training can easily find a local dive instructor to get checked out. These “Spare Air” devices are easily available on the Internet. Mine clips to my lifejacket. There is plenty of air to roll upside down in the water, put the device in your mouth, clear it, and start breathing. Then, at your relative leisure, you can untangle yourself, unbuckle, check on your observer or passenger, and make your way out. I have done it in training many times, and I hardly used half the available air.

Now consider one fatality that occurred while I was out. An Austrian pilot crashed in a Hughes 500 off the Fairwell 707. On his first take-off from a tuna boat. He went down with the sinking helicopter, because the floats burst. Yes, they hit hard. He eventually made it up to the surface, and they got him on deck. He was lucid, and conscious, and told his mechanic (a friend of mine) that it had gotten ‘awfully dark’ down there.

He was down a fair way! On the way up however, he breathed in quite some salt water into his lungs. Some of you will already know what this can mean. It’s bad, without medical help. He survived for another twelve hours or so, but he got a very common inflammation in his lungs. This was a reaction to the salt water, and it is often referred to as ’secondary drowning’. Essentially, you get a build up of fluid in your lungs, to where your ability to absorb oxygen is slowly reduced to the point where you literally drown -on dry land- in your own lung fluids. He was so far offshore, it would have taken the ship three or four days to get him back. Too long. What he needed was medical oxygen,urgently.

Poor Walther! We drank a few good pints of beer together on Guam, before his ill fated first voyage.

Everybody was devastated at his death. I was only a few miles up the road when it happened, and I still remember being called to the bridge of my ship and being given the sad news.

You will understand what I’m trying to say: for the small cost of these spare air bottles, about $130, the potential dividends are enormous. I strongly and wholeheartedly recommend EVERYBODY on board a tuna helicopter to wear these devices, and to be trained in their use….

Francis ‘Moggy’ Meyrick (c)

Previous Chapter: Radio Buoys, Bird Radar,Dirty Tricks and Sculduggery Nex Chapter: Your Job offer…

I have already mentioned radio buoys a few times. It is a common tool in the tuna industry.

What you have got is basically a long aerial, maybe twelve to fifteen feet high. At the base is a round, circular body, with a diameter of perhaps twenty inches or so. This serves both for buoyancy and as a storage compartment for the electronic components, including the batteries. There is also an ‘off’ and ‘on’ switch, set on this body..

The ship’s name will be boldly painted on top of the body. It is usually clearly legible to a hovering helicopter.

A boat that has a helicopter will usually also have a slightly shorter set of radio bouys, specifically designed for the helicopter. Even so, frequently at ten or eleven feet long, they pose an extreme hazard to safe rotorcraft operations, as will be explained later.

The radio buoy will be attached to a log, or any other floating object, such as as a barrel, a raft, or even a dead whale.

This can be done by two delivery methods. The first is directly from the ship. The ship will arrive alongside, and crew members will attach the radio buoy to the target. The second method is from the helicopter, which descends down, goes into a hover, and attaches the radio buoy.

A signal is then transmitted, which enables the ship to keep track of the log or other object. In particular, it enables the ship to search elsewhere, roaming around elsewhere. Then, first thing in the morning, just before dawn, having returned to the log (by homing in on the radio buoy), the ship can ‘make a set on the log’. Meaning, they will first ascertain by means of the fish finder that there are indeed fish present. Once that is established, the ship will -very quietly- drop the nets, and steam around in the usual circle. The radio buoy on the log, along with side scanner radar, and an attached light, serves, even in semi darkness, to permit the captain to keep the log smack in the center of the set.

For the helicopter pilot, it can be a device with which he becomes TOO familiar. Too quickly…

There are several really horrible, and potentially fatal ‘go-wrong scenarios’. More later…

Ships will quite often literally steal each other’s radio buoys. It gets nasty. The Taiwanese seemed to get on quite well with the Japanese fishing boats. (It was the Japanese who originally taught the Taiwanese how to fish with purse seiners.)

But although our captain had some good Korean friends (he would call them and give them coded directions to rich fishing, and they would reciprocate and do the same for him), he seemed to hate the other Korean ships. He would pinch their radio buoys, and they would pinch his… More time and effort was wasted with this nonsense.

If our ship had found some good logs, and put radio buoys on them, our captain would stand guard on the bridge like a demented Doberman. Especially when there were other ships about! If and when the signal would suddenly go dead (somebody had retrieved our buoy and switched it off) he would have a fit. More than once I was dispatched in a hurry in the helicopter to investigate. Or he would simply post me as an orbiting guard, to show the Korean vessel that we had a helicopter, and that we were watching! I also worked on a Korean ship, and it was the exact same performance.

A pilot needs to be careful that he does not get drawn in too deep into this pointless vendetta.

More on this later…

2) Bird Radar

As the name implies, ‘Bird Radar’ is designed to specifically trace flocks of birds within a specified range.

They show up on the bridge radar screen as tiny ‘angels’ that persist in a particular area. Often time a captain will send the helicopter over to have a look. You may wonder at the interest in birds, when it’s fish we’re after…

Like the ‘dead tree floating in the water’, a flock of birds also draws the attention of tuna fishermen, not because of any great ornithological interest, but purely for the reason that “where there’s lots of birds, there’s often lots of fish”. Few birds that I know will go for a tuna. That would have to be one heck of a bird. It’s more the smaller baitfish that attract the birds. But since the tuna also go for the baitfish, plenty of birds means a good chance of tuna.

It’s worth becoming familiar with the bird radar on the bridge. It’s quite interesting when you learn to recognize flocks of birds. Prior to take off it’s easy to work out range and bearing, and it’s satisfying to navigate straight to your target. Your observer will be pleased too! If you do go wrong, the captain – if he’s on the ball- will usually come on the radio and give you a heading to steer.

If you have never used bird radar before, it’s handy to know there is usually a ‘range ring’. This is merely a circle on the radar screen, which is controlled by a knob. Twisting the knob means the ring slides in or out, and somewhere, often in the top right hand corner, a display in nautical miles will give you range to target when your ‘range ring’ covers the ‘angels’/

After that, it’s just a matter of looking to the top of the screen, twelve o’clock, and working out your clock angle to fly to get to your target.

Let’s say you reckon ten o’clock looks about right. Transfer that ten o’clock over to the display near or on top of the helm. That gives you a rough bearing. Finish. Don’t forget it is only ‘rough’ because the ship will be moving along while you are getting the chopper ready for take off.

The same radar machine will also give you an idea of the density of the water droplets in surrounding cloud masses. You can save yourself a thrill by delaying or canceling a departure, when there’s nasty stuff out of visual range coming your way. A squall line especially is a nasty thing for a helicopter, and they sometimes show up really well on radar.

The only problem I found is that the different settings often produce better or worse results. When the labels are in Chinese, or Korean, that can be quite a headache! You find yourself staring at a screen that looks all nice and clear, and then the captain reaches over, presses a button, and -uh-oh!- now you can see all the nasty stuff bearing down on you!

I got myself into a fine pickle of a mess one day, and that story I have described in “Blip on the Radar – Part 2″.

Flying along, you will develop your own ‘mental bird radar’.

Somehow you know when to ignore birds, and when to study them closely.

If they are flying along steadily, more or less in loose formation, then the chances are that they are doing the same as you: hunting. If, on the other hand, they are wheeling around, swooping down and up, and moving erratically and excitedly, the question is: why?

Often then you will get closer and start seeing maybe a log, with baitfish around it, and now your pulse quickens and the eyes really get to work!

Now that we have talked about logs, baitfish and birds, it’s a good time to introduce a real easy system for simplifying ship-to-chopper communications. How do you describe to the captain what you are looking at? Are you going to say: “Well, uh, I think it’s a pretty good log, it’s got some birds, and, uh, I can’t see tuna but I can see baitfish, and, uh, it’s about five meters long…..”?

A much simpler way is the ‘one to five system’.

No.1 Log: tuna (foamer or breezer) and birds and baitfish

No.2 Log: tuna (foamer or breezer) and baitfish, but no birds

No.3 Log: no tuna, but you can see birds and baitfish

No.4 Log: no tuna, no birds, baitfish

No.5 Log: no tuna, no birds, little or no baitfish

The call above then simply becomes: “No.3 Log, five meters.”

If your observer does not want to use this system, it is still worth your while studying it. It will give you an idea of what the relative merits of a particular log are. Obviously, the value of a log decreases rapidly from Log No.1 down to Log No.5…

You may wonder why anybody would be interested in a ‘No.5 Log’. Sometimes a ship will go and pick one up. Physically. Reel it in with a crane. Then later, if they find a No.1 or a No.2 Log that is rather small, then they will ‘add’ a No.5 log to it (roped together) in the hope that this will attract more baitfish, and therefore, tuna.

It does seem to work sometimes, especially on a ‘double-dipper’. This is where the ship will make a set on a log, but decide to go for a second hit a few days later. They will leave a radio buoy on the two roped together logs, and sail off.

Why would a ship ‘double dip’? Usually because after the first set a nice foamer or breezer has appeared just outside the set, leading the captain to believe he missed part of the fish the first time. You will often see, say, thirty tons the first dip, and fifteen tons the second dip. However, I’ve also seen 150 tons day 1 and 150 tons day 2! That is rare though.

On a handful of occasions, we had so many fish in the net, over 300 tons, that the captain was concerned about his net being damaged. He then deliberately let half the fish out! Next morning, he set again, and caught them anyway.

That takes a cool customer, and against that, I have also seen over excited captains trying to reel the whole thing in, having their nets rip, and losing the whole lot! An exasperated Taiwanese sailor swearing in Chinese over the radio sounds really impressive. You can easily tell they are very, very upset.

Sometimes you have to work hard at keeping your face straight, as you watch the beautiful tuna hop-skipping away towards the sunset, courtesy of a greedy captain’s ripped nets…. I often wondered whose side I was on!

3) Dirty tricks and sculduggery

Remember I talked about the radio buoys above? And captains pinching them?

One variant on this plays out this way: of course nobody will EVER admit to it….

Say a boat sees somebody else’s buoy, attached to a really good log, with a lot of tuna. That radio buoy in theory is like an ownership stake. But it doesn’t always get respected.

If the ‘owner ship’ is going to return to set the next morning, they will be back no later than midnight. I have seen it whereby, if the ‘owner ship’ was not nearby, that a ‘rogue captain’ would very, very quietly, sneak up to the log. They would be quiet and slow, so as not to scare the fish away. Then comes the next dirty trick…

First, they would sneak up, very, very quietly.

Next, they would gently lower ANOTHER log down. Perhaps a Number 5 log they picked up a few days earlier.

Next, after an hour or two, (giving the baitfish a chance to adopt the new log), they would gently raise the ORIGINAL log (plus owner radio buoy) out of the water.

Next, they attach their own radio buoy to their own ’substitute’ No.5 log….

And finally, they would hide the other ship’s -original- log and radio buoy under a tarpaulin.

Needless to say, the next morning, there would be a boat going round and round trying to find their missing log and radio buoy, and maybe a helicopter searching as well. As the chances are the pilot will be a buddy of yours, you all know the game, and you all play along. Crazy stuff. Pilots need to be really careful not to get drawn in too deep. Shots have been fired at helicopters, and aerial duels have also been fought out. Angry helicopter crew have dropped objects on other purse seiners, and crew have chucked objects at helicopters hovering overhead.

I have point blank refused to fly over and allow one angry observer to drop five gallons of green paint on a Korean ship.

I wasn’t getting into that. That’s childish. It’s not worth it…

Finally, you should watch when the bird radar is cluttered with really bad weather. Now imagine yourself stuck out there in the helicopter, trying to find your way back without penetrating any ‘cunims’. (Cumulonimbus -remember?)

Nasty..

Now reflect for a second what major assistance a clued up captain could give you by using the radar screen! I’ve had a captain do just that..

If you fancy a good giggle, you’ll get a laugh out of the expressions on some of the larger sea birds as the ship approaches to tie up to a log! Especially towards late evening. Some of them look really ticked off!

They are often MOST reluctant to shift, and do so at the last second after throwing looks of pure poison up at the ship!

You can hear their thoughts:

“Huh! There I was, all ready to bed down for the night, and here comes this bloody big THING. This is MY log. I’ve been sitting here for HOURS, so why don’t you lot BUZZ OFF and go and find your own log!!”

Francis ‘Moggy’ Meyrick (c)

Previous:Foamers and Breezers | Next Chapter:Herding and the tow line….

1) Foamers

There are some sights in Nature, which are universally recognized as truly magnificent.

Most members of the public are familiar with documentaries showing large salmon migrating up seemingly impossible mountain streams. Their determination to return to their native spawning grounds, despite everything, hurdling rocks and battling everything the dangerous journey throws at them. We’ve seen the big grizzly bears delightedly fishing ‘em out.

An amazing ritual, that has gone on for millennia, that Man must take great care not to destroy. If, in his foolishness, he was to do so, the loss would be not only the spectacle of the migrating salmon. But the whole eco system, including the happy bears, filling their tummies, would be damaged and altered in a way that would be tragic beyond words.

If you’re like me, you have watched squadrons of geese migrating across the sky, obeying a time old instinct. Homing on their winter grounds, with ancient senses that we yet barely understand.

Maybe you have seen coral reefs at the moment of their annual orgy. An amazing event, only recently captured on film. The first time I saw the coral reefs spawn, the stunning footage was set to a strange, dreamy, far away music. It was peaceful, and even soothing. It spoke of an ancient ritual, aeons old, that we small, fragile little humans should honor and respect.

Maybe you have seen entertaining documentaries of walruses mating. And like me, laughed at the phrenetic cacophony of their love making, the smack of blubber against blubber as a male suitor gets his wicked way with the lady of his dreams. It is neat to watch. But it is with a pang you come awake, as that same camera takes you on a low level flight along hundreds and hundreds, even thousands of miles of starkly deserted South American beaches. Beaches that for thousands and thousands of years… reverberated with the happy, busy sound of seal and walrus love play, territorial claims, and warning barks.

Yes, Man again. In his greed, his shortsightedness, his foolishness… managed to wipe out -forever- entire populations.

In a few short decades, a century at best, a whole tradition of Nature, a ceremony, a ritual, a wonderful feast of life and reproduction… was destroyed. For-ever…

And such a terrific wonder, such a spectacle of Nature at its richest, at its best, is the ‘foamer’.

I spent hours and hours trying to describe it to the best of my limited abilities for a chapter in my second novel. It is called “The Tuna Hunter”, and is largely finished. I quote here an excerpt from Chapter One.

It was a strange love affair, that had started on almost his first reconnaissance flight, three years earlier. He had been flying with a Taiwanese observer, Yang, who had spent almost the entire flight peering through binoculars, and barking out compass headings.
“You fly two-seven-zero, quick-quick!”
Bob had obediently swung the helicopter around, and then had peered into the distance, puzzled at the little Taiwanese’s obvious urgency. He had noticed nothing.
“You see? White water. Foamer! You see?”
Bob had not seen. He had looked hard, but seen only white topped waves, and spray blowing back.
Then, amazingly, they had arrived overhead, and he had seen. The foamer. White water. The purpose of his new employment…

The sea had erupted into life. Quick bursts of white foam were appearing all over. He had the immediate impression of a garment tearing, of a beautiful translucent emerald green dress being ripped full of holes. When he looked down again, he could clearly see hundreds and hundreds of small, agile shapes darting about, some leaping high up out of the water, before satisfyingly crashing back down in a shower of spray. They were like a bunch of out of control schoolboys making mischief. The surface of the sea was being torn open, and brilliant white gashes criss crossed the green surface. The white scars seemed to bunch together in five or six groups, each group maybe twenty or thirty meters across. Then two of the foaming, vibrant, living groups were joined together as yet more tuna surfaced to join the wild party. Impossible as it seemed, even more vivid white gashes were opening up, as yet more raving party goers made a grand entrance. Within a minute, the five or six groups had merged into one huge white foaming frenzy, some two hundred meters or more in diameter. Spellbound, Bob could only stare down from the circling helicopter, his eyes opened wide in awed amazement. There had to have been hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of fish down there…
“You see, Yellow Fin. All together. Foamer. White water. Is good. Many fish. You understand?”
The calm voice of Yang, unperturbed, matter-of-fact, had snapped Bob back to reality. He had stared at his observer for a whole second, amazed that this man did not share his own awed breathlessness…

Bob had understood all right. On that day, he had fallen in love with one of Nature’s more spectacular displays. Foamer. White water. To him, it was life itself in such abundance, with such a gay abandon that it was hard not to regard the Tuna as having fun. Having a ball, in fact. The more rational explanation that they were surface feeding, and chasing small anchovy, seemed wholly inadequate to convey the sheer dynamism of the event. It seemed much more appropriate to think in terms of the Tuna frolicking, playing, erupting out of the deep with such force that they sailed clean out of the water, sometimes several feet into the air, landing back with a bursting white splash. He could never shake off an impression of the boys showing off, playing for devilment at who could jump the highest. Who could make the biggest splash. Who could jump the highest wave. Who could make the most white water…

After that, he had become an avid Tuna watcher. He had learned to recognize the foamer from afar. From fifteen and twenty miles away he had been known to spot the ‘white water’, when the erupting Tuna turned the ocean into a boiling cauldron. He had learned to recognize the ‘breezer’, or ‘black water’, a phenomenon much harder to capture at first. It occurred when the Tuna stayed below the surface, but packed together in such dense schools, that they affected the wave action. The result was an area that looked as if the waves had suddenly died down. A relative calm would exist where waves should have held sway. When the helicopter flew over the top, and the pilot looked down, he could see the shadows of the submerged fish.
Black water…

And finally, one evening after sunset, when he had stood alone on the very bow of the ship…
When the engines had been stopped, and only the generators disturbed the peace, just before nightfall, a foamer had welled up beside the silently rolling ship, only yards from where he alone stood witness.
One moment he was alone on deck, peering through the twilight to the far horizons, with not another ship to be seen. Feeling alone, mournful, missing he knew not what…
The next moment, he was witnessing the first ‘jumpers’ erupting, vanguards of the main formation, only yards from where he stood in silent introspection. That was the night when he realized that a foamer also has its own sound. Its own music. The cry of the circling, diving, hungry birds intermingled with a soft splashing of thousands of busy fins. The surprisingly loud ’smack’ as the erupting Tuna re-entered the water. The struggling, desperate sounds of small fish shooting across the surface, eagerly pursued by the hungry Tuna. It was like no sound he had ever heard before. With the sound of wind and waves forming the accompaniment, here was Nature in its purest, unspoiled as yet by Man, and he had wished only for all extraneous noise on the intruding killer ship to cease…

What more can I say about the foamer!??

It really is mesmerizing. Spectacular. Any pilot or fisherman who says a foamer is ‘just a bunch of stupid fish splashing about’ has the soul of a mildewed, shrivelled up prune! He is obviously totally devoid of feeling, and will never be any good in bed. Sex to him will always be ‘just a quick scratch of the itch before you go to sleep’!

So says I!

In terms of size, foamers will vary from really small (only a few meters across) to absolutely stunning. I have seen ’stationary’ foamers hundreds and hundreds of meters across, and I have seen a ‘river’ of foamers, stretching literally for mile after mile, as all the time even more fish appeared over the horizon. That lot were ‘travelling tunies’, and they were travelling at speed! You could almost call them ‘racing tunies’… They seemed to be following an invisible ‘tuna freeway’, a ‘Skipjack Motorway’, and we ran low on fuel before we had even surveyed a fraction of what was passing below. We are talking about millions of fish. That was in March 1996, about four hundred miles North of Papua New Guinea. That was the time we filled up 700 tons in three days. We were back in the port of Wewak after one week. Precisely seven days after departure, we were entering the harbor, and calling the shipping agent on the radio. I was on the bridge, when I heard the agent, most concerned, inquiring if we had a ‘problem’. We were back so soon!

“Yes”, said Captain Alan, with a straight voice.

“We have BIG problem. We have no more room to store fish!”

Everybody got a good chuckle out of that one.

The three fishing days were pretty bizarre, actually. With 300 tons in the set together at one time, and the captain absolutely petrified that his one million dollar net was going to tear.

Sights such as that give one hope that the tuna stocks are still healthy. However, more on this -debatable- issue later, under the section ‘Conservation’!

Finally, I will mention again the inevitable day when you will have this experience: you will have the best seat in the house -in your helicopter- watching frustrated and desperate purse seiners, (after weeks and weeks of not even sighting any tuna), trying so hard to make a succesful set on a ‘travelling foamer’. The fish dive under the net, and come up a minute later on the outside! There is often a breathless few minutes, after the ship has set, before the nets are closed, that everybody is waiting and wondering:

“Will the fish stay inside?”

You can’t see anything. Inside or out. The captain will ask the pilot many times over the radio. Do you see fish?

But no, first one, then another, then a whole gang, will start surfacing just outside the net. The crew will heave a loud collective groan. Now they are faced with the long and tedious labor intensive task of recovering the nets. All for nothing.

You will watch as another purse seiner rushes in, smoke belching from the funnel. There is the loud ‘clack!’ as their skiffboat is cut loose, and goes sliding down the ramp with a mighty splash, their crew hanging on for grim life. They make a set, and everybody on that ship is holding their breath. You watch again as the fish dive deep under the net, and a minute or two later… there they are, appearing outside of the second purse seiner’s net, re-grouping and still travelling in the same compass direction!

Your captain rushes in, makes a set, the fish dive under the net, and a minute later they appear outside, still travelling in the same direction! I have often seen so many sets in a row, all empty, and a huge travelling foamer with mature Yellowfin hopping and skipping merrily away on their journey across the Ocean Deep! With a gaggle of weary, tired, frustrated purse seiner crews following the escaping prize with baleful stares. It’s hard not to laugh! It’s uncanny at times. It’s almost as if the little darlings are ‘cocking a snoot’! I think a lot depends on the leaders. If they are ‘old hands’, I think their mental processes react along the lines of:

“What? Net? Oh, boring, booooring!! FORMATION-DIVE-DIVE-DIVE!”

Followed a minute later by:

“Bloody purse seiners! UP YOURS! (finger) (or fin)”

Conditioning is probably a major factor here. The more the tuna get used to nets coming down, the more liekly they are to dive down. And learn how to escape.Until the set is closed can take anywhere from twentyfive to forty minutes. It depends on equipment, skill, and sea state. A diving tuna can easily escape until that time. It is interesting that purse seiners are using (having to use) bigger nets, that sink more quickly. Even so, I suspect the smart tuna will get used to those….

Sometimes it’s hard to know whose side you are on. Fishing is an honorable tradition, centuries old, and the loudest environmental activists who complain about ALL fishing (often with very little knowledge), will be the first to complain bitterly when the price of fish and tuna in the supermarket goes up. They reserve the right to eat and enjoy the product of the fisherman’s labor, whilst decrying and criticising the fishing! Having said all that,I must admit to more than a sneaking sympathy for the worthy tuna quarry, and a snicker of amusement when I see them escape.

You will hopefully absolutely enjoy your first few foamers. When the sun is sparkling down, and the water is massively criss-crossed with white scars in the distance… it’s good being a tuna pilot!

2) Breezers

The ‘Breezer’ is also a ‘large gathering of fish’, but one that is taking place just beneath the surface of the sea. A foamer can become a breezer, and vice versa. At the ‘foamer’ stage, the fish are much more easily to spot. Sometimes however, a breezer will stay a breezer for a very long time, with very few fish breaking the surface.

Then they can be the very dickens to see.

It takes a while before you can recognize them. Rain falling on the surface of the sea also often looks misleadingly like a Breezer. The best way to think of it is as a ‘disturbance of the normal pattern of the waves’. The waves are flatter, sometimes almost calm. Remember, you might be flying over 50,000 fish… together, that’s a lot of mass, seriously affecting the wave pattern. A breezer can also look a bit like a slick. As you circle overhead, you will see the dark shapes flitting about underneath.

Sometimes you will peer into the far distance on a calm, hot day, and be puzzled by what appears to be a small circle suddenly forming on the water. This circle will grow rapidly in diameter, from a few meters to maybe twenty or thirty. Occasionally, it will grow up to one hundred meters or more. This circle expands and also shrinks rapidly. It can at some stage become characterized by the appearance of ‘jumpers’. These are a few fish jumping clear of the surface, often chasing food, causing white splashes. The jumpers can be the heralds of a foamer, but not necessarily. Sometimes the jumpers disappear, and you are left with your breezer again. Just a ‘calm’ on the surface.

Sometimes the growing circle splits off into two or three circles. Or you will see other circles spontaneously forming some distance away. Forming. And disappearing. Forming… and disappearing.

I have listened to all sorts of theories, and some pretty wild statements. I record my observations not in any way as the ultimate truth, but as ‘impressions’ only. I don’t think there is any validity in the story that ‘foamers are always bigger than breezers’. I have seen some massive, massive breezers, with hardly a ripple on the surface.

I suspect the factors that decide whether the tuna splash about on the surface, or stay underneath, have a lot to do with environmental conditions such as:

• time of the day
• presence of ‘baitfish’ (dinner!)
• the behavior of said baitfish
• the temperature of the water
• the temperature gradient of the water (how much the temperature changes as you go down)
• mating behavior
• clarity of the water
• cloud cover
• etc, etc.

The breezer is very important to a good helicopter crew. It is harder to identify than a full blooded ‘foamer’, but after a while you get the hang of it. Your worst distractions are the already mentioned rain falling on the surface, and cloud shadows. You will find breezers much, much easier to spot on a calm sea.

If you are a new tuna helicopter pilot, you might be wondering why I am going into so much detail about the actual behavior of the tuna. You may be impatient to get to the ‘meat’, as you see it. The important stuff. Flying…

Relax, amigo, we will talk at great length about the actual techniques of flying, landing and taking off, and dealing with herding and radio buoys later on.

But you will miss out on much if you don’t understand the basics.

Let me give you two examples to illustrate the point…

The first example was on a red hot equatorial day, with unlimited visibility, and almost zero wind. That -dangerous!- flat calm brilliant blue surface, that lulls everybody into a false sense of security…. (more on that later!)

We had been looking for tuna for a week.

We hadn’t seen a thing. My relationship with my observer, Akaya, had improved, but he could still be rude and uncouth.

I for my part wisely bit my tongue, but I was not above engaging in good old-fashioned ‘pay-back’ when the opportunity presented itself…

Well…. all of a sudden, off on my left, way, way in the distance, seven miles away, I saw the typical circles form in the water. Akaya was looking through his gyro stabilized fancy-dancy binoculars somewhere else, and had noticed nothing.

I watched the circles grow. Then the first jumpers. Then a huge foamer. Then back to some circles. Then nothing. Not a trace. Anbd a mischievous idea formed in my mind. Akaya was wholly unaware. I watched the whole diving and surfacing cycle a few more times. There would be four or five minutes of activity, followed by three minutes of ‘nothing’. Not a ripple.

Hmmmmm….

I waited until it had just gotten flat calm out there.

“Akaya!” I said, excitedly, “Fish!”

My observer followed my outstretched finger, and searched intensely.

“Nothing!”, he said, annoyed, and went back to looking on his side.

I watched the fish come up, do their thing, and dive again…

“Akaya!”, I said excitedly, a few minutes later, “Fish!”

He searched again, and found nothing. There was nothing to be seen.

I was now hugely enjoying myself. In a space of ten minutes, I managed to wind him up like a clockwork mouse.

I would be pointing at nothing, saying: “Can’t you see!?? I can see!!”

He would search the indicated spot in the far distance for thirty seconds, and give up. He was getting really annoyed with me.

Stage Two: I called the captain.

“Captain! I see fish! But Akaya not let me go there!”

Back came the captain’s voice, telling Akaya in no uncertain circumstances that we should go see. The captain took great pride in the learning efforts of his disciple-me- and wanted me to find fish. So he could have the glory of having taught the pilot!

We swung on an intercept course, and Akaya, with his binoculars down, was berating me for wasting everybody’s time. He used the word ‘crazy’ in every sentence, several times. I kept my face perfectly straight.

Ho-hum…

As if by magic, a two hundred ton foamer burst to the surface. His face went from anger, through disbelief, to shock.

Now HE had to call the captain… and explain….

Back on the ship, I was the captain’s golden boy, and Akaya got a good scolding, and told next time to “listen to Moggy!”

Poor old Akaya. He had no clue he was being ’set up’. I managed to pull the exact same gag a few more times, until, eventually, he got suspicious…

Knowing about fishing can also save you time and effort. And give you the opportunity to ‘get one over’ on the competition.

One day we were with half a dozen other boats in an area, and two of them also had helicopters. We had not seen or caught fish for a while. I was the third machine to take off that afternoon, following shortly behind the two “Brand X” birds.

They BOTH flew over a large breezer and missed it! I was not really concentrating, and my observer was already asleep.

I assumed the area to have been ‘well helicopter searched’ already. I spotted it, nudged my observer, and we circled around. Next thing we found a big log! This breezer was a really nice ‘log breezer’!

We dropped a radio buoy, and decided to go home! It was a real short flight.

The next morning our ship caught a hundred tons off it, the only vessel to catch anything. And that was rather satisfying.

This happened only four or five miles from where all the ships were gathered together.

It was amusing, later that same day, quietly listening in to the conversations of the other two helicopter pilots. I had enjoyed an easy afternoon, nice and lazy, with a plentiful supply of beer and sausages supplied by our happy captain. The other two pilots were hot, tired, frustrated and empty-handed. They had flown a triangle, sixty miles out, across and back, and found nothing. Just about home, and then they spotted our radio buoy, bobbing about !

“What the f@!!!K!!… That’s Moggy’s buoy! Well I’ll be DARNED! That’s a good breezer! Shoot! I reckon we must have gone right over the top of that!”

More than a little tipsy, I raised them a beer, from my comfortable chair in the captain’s cool, air conditioned cabin.

“Suckers….!”

Francis ‘Moggy’ Meyrick (c)

Previous Chapter: Skipjack, Yellowfin, Bigeye, Albacore, Bluefin, log fishing, purse seiners, longliners, good pilots and dead trees| Next Chapter:Radio buoys, Bird radar, Dirty tricks and Sculduggery

In four words! Because fish live there!

It seems odd at first, but it’s true: fish will ‘adopt’ a passing log, and decide to call it ‘home’ for a while. Often the little dudes like to hide in the roots. This in turn attracts bigger fish. Usually hungry. This in turn attracts… tuna. Before you know what’s happening, you can have 10,20, 50 , or 150 ton or occasionally as much as 300 ton of fish milling around that ol’ dead tree. That is why everybody is so interested. Although the exact reasons why fish congregate around logs in the middle of the Ocean has apparently been the theme of a doctoral thesis of some academic geek, in simple terms I think I am right(ish) when I say that it all starts with the little guys, so-called ‘baitfish‘ looking for some kind of shelter and protection (however illusory) from the bigger guys trying to eat them. These bigger guys get a nasty shock when even bigger guys come along gunning for them. The ‘even bigger guys’ are our good friends the skipjack tuna, yellowfin tuna, and the bigeye tuna. In the nineties’ when I was out there off the waters of Truk, Tarawa, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, etc,etc both the Skipjack and the Yellowfin were in plentiful supply. The BigEye tuna was rare.

Yellowfin tuna – a simply beautiful fish, and spectacular performer

1) Yellowfin tuna.

As of June 2009, if you check with ‘Wikipedia’, you will see that the Yellowfin is ‘endangered’ sofar only in the Mediterranean. However, this warning is also posted:

“Recent studies proved that this species is endangered especially in the Mediterranean sea. This is due to over-fishing serving commercial interests regardless of high concern from the scientific and environmental community.”

“In terms of whether the yellowfin tuna fishing industry is sustainable, the jury is out. The Audubon’s Seafood Guide (a guide for what types of marine food products are not eco-friendly) lists yellowfin tuna that have been troll-caught as “OK” but those that have been long-line caught as ‘Be Careful’…….”

Factors working in favor of the Yellowfin include the fact that this fish is a real wanderer, and roams over vast areas of the world’s oceans. Most people will have heard of the disaster that occurred due to over fishing off the Canadian waters, but remember there that the Canadian species of fish (not tuna) affected the most were not nomadic. They were ‘resident’ in a relatively defined area, and were ruthlessly hunted down. Short term greed, long term loss….

Another factor in favor of the Yellowfin is that many island nations in the Pacific control huge maritime economic zones which consist of prime Yellowfin habitat. Their national income frequently depends heavily on fishing licenses they sell to foreign fishing vessels. The licenses stipulate that ‘observers’ may be placed on the fishing vessels, at the fishing company’s expense. Although I only ever recall an observer onboard ship once (in five years), this is potentially a method which could provide protection to the Yellowfin harvest by scientific monitoring and evaluation of the health of fish stocks.

My understanding is that, today, the observer program is being much more strongly enforced. That is great news for the chances of international cooperation to preserve this amazing creature for future generations.

Factors working against the Yellowfin are human greed and shortsightedness. Yes, there are still plenty of Yellowfin in many parts of the world. But an ever expanding world population propels ever more fishing vessels with evermore hi-tech weaponry. The hope is that responsible industry leaders in the tuna power game will plan for a long term game.

And listen to scientific and academic input…

By the way, you have not lived until you have tasted Yellowfin Shashimi. Freshly caught and sliced yellowfin, dipped in a little sauce…. yummy-yummy; good in your tummy. A tuna pilot will enjoy for free what a customer in Tokio will pay hundreds of dollars for…

I absolutely loved watching Yellowfin tuna from the air. They can move like demented torpedoes through the water, leaping out and splashing the water in a spectacular white cauldron of feeding frenzy. I have described my feelings of awe in the opening chapter One of my novel, “The TunaHunter”.

The Yellowfin will grow to amazing sizes. Seven and eight feet long, and weighing 200 pounds.

2) Skipjack Tuna

The Skipjack Tuna; another fun loving FAST moving rascal

The Skipjack Tuna is aptly named. When they are in the mood, they can hop-skip-fly and romp with the best of them. It is astounding how fast a Skipjack will move through the water when he feels like it. They also like to dart above the surface, sometimes following each other into the air in a virtuoso sequence. They also crash back into the water, collectively causing a brilliant white gash on the surface of the Ocean, visible for many miles away. With maybe up to 50,000 fish whooping it up together at a time, you can imagine what a raucous party they can throw! Fascinating to watch… They grow up to a meter in length (3.3 feet). These are the most prolific tuna in the world today. Nobody that I know of is seriously suggesting that the Skipjack is under threat. Thank goodness. Criticism does often focus however on the ‘by-catch’. The other species and juveniles that are unfortunately caught in the same purse seiner net. In some areas of the world, quite extraordinary efforts are being made to reduce this by-catch. This is to be applauded.

3) The Albacore Tuna

The Albacore Tuna, also called Longfin Tuna or German Bonito

‘Wikipedia’ in June of 2009 makes the following statement:

The National Scientific Committee (NSC) conducts regularly scheduled stock assessments of Pacific albacore. The 2003 stock assessment found the albacore stocks to be at or near record highs. The North and South Pacific albacore stocks are not overfished. The ISC findings are accepted by the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission and the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and employed in the responsible management of Pacific albacore tuna stocks.

Regrettably, the same cannot be said for Atlantic stocks of albacore. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has not re-assessed Albacore in over 10 years, and the last assessment given (from 1996) was “data deficient”. Other assessments of the North and South Atlantic stocks from the same period showed them to be vulnerable and critically endangered respectively, due to significant population reductions measured through an index of abundance and considering “actual or potential levels of exploitation”.[1] No similar finding was made regarding Pacific albacore, which are believed to be at or near historically high spawning stock levels.

I did find that the Taiwanese and Koreans call these “Skipjack”….!

4) The Big Eye tuna

A beautiful, and highly endangered fish

Pity the Bigeye! This magnificent fish is under threat.

From Wikipedia, in June 2009:

Bigeye tuna are amongst the tuna species most threatened by overfishing. Juvenile bigeye tuna associate closely with floating objects such as logs, buoys and other flotsam, which makes them extremely susceptible to purse seine fishing in conjunction with man-made FADs (Fish Aggregation Devices). Bigeye mature at a later age than other commercially important tuna species such as skipjack and yellowfin tuna, and the removal of large numbers of juvenile bigeye before they reach breeding age is a major concern to fisheries managers, scientists and sport fishermen.

5) The Bluefin Tuna

Alas the poor Bluefin! International support needed urgently!

(From Wikipedia) There are several species of Bluefin tuna. Some of which belong to the colder waters of the Atlantic. Dealing only with the Pacific Bluefin Tuna, these are sadly overfished throughout the world. They are hooked on long lines or illegally netted where they swim, and many young bluefins are captured before they reproduce. Creating effective fishing policies for bluefin tuna is difficult because they are highly mobile and swim through the territorial waters of many different nations. Data about their movements and high levels of international cooperation are needed to ensure sustainable bluefin tuna populations…

In the order of the ‘food chain’, the tuna are therefore picking on several orders below them. Their meals range from the tiny anchovy, that maybe only an inch or so long, up to much larger baitfish. A mature Yellowfin or a BigEye is a truly awesome beats with a humongous appetite. I’ve seen them eight feet long, weighing more than one man can lift. Usually they are not that big, but three and four foot yellowfin are quite common. The name Yellowfin is derived from the rows of small dorsal and ventral fins which are an astonishingly bright yellow. This bright color fades quickly after death, and is gone completely by the time refrigeration has taken effect.

The Skipjack is a smaller tuna, much more plentiful, and has a typical mature size of more like two to three feet or so. They have blue markings on them.

Both yellowfin and Skipjack mix freely together. A lot of catches in the South Pacific I saw were ‘mixed’, with Skipjack/Albacore nearly always outnumbering Yellowfin three and four to one. Occasionally we would catch only Skipjack. It was rare to catch only Yellowfin. When we did, for some reason the Yellowfin were truly huge. I often wondered and worried if we were in fact interrupting a critical spawning event….? On those occasions I often wished that we had a knowledgeable observer on board, with authority to ’stop’ fishing operations if they were seriously detrimental.

I suspect this is the only way that sustainability of the species can be enforced. It will take knowledge and political will.

And drastic enforcement against illegal poaching.

The Yellowfin is more valuable. The price varied crazily, depending on demand. But in the nineties, if a ton of Skipjack was fetching $1,000 then a ton of Yellowfin was fetching $1,700. But I’ve seen Skipjack down to $500 a ton, and Yellowfin soaring past $2,000. All it takes is a decent war, such as the Sandbox War in Iraq (Round One) and the price goes through the roof…

6) Purse seiners and long-liners

I could spend several pages describing a purse seiner at work, but you would still learn more the first time you saw it happen in reality. Very, very briefly: on the back of the purse seiner, a small boat is riding along piggy-back style. At a signal from the captain, this boat is cast loose. It slides down the ramp and hits the water with a mighty splash. Everybody gets excited, because now there is no going back. The little skiffboat serves as an anchor point for one end of the net.

As the purse seiner continues on, the net plays out off the stern. The purse seiner then steams in a large circle, surrounding the fish. Hopefully. Eventually, the purse seiner ends up back at the skiffboat. Now you have a net sinking down like a curtain around the fish. But still open at the bottom! And there is also a vertical gap behind the purse seiner. Now the winches go to work. The “towline” starts closing in the vertical gap, and the other cables start slowly closing the bottom of the net. Eventually, the “purse” is closed, like a bowl if you like, and the fish -if they have condescended to wait around- are caught. Now it’s a matter of taking in the nets, and harvesting the catch.

Depending on how much money the boat owner has spent, this proces can take 25 minutes or 45 minutes. Fancy nets sink faster, and go deeper. More powerful winches are quicker. Better boats steam quicker. Etcetera.

And don’t forget the skill -or not- of the captain. I’ve seen some really impressive screw ups. I’ve seen a skiffboat sink -that was interesting- and cables break. And captains making the circle too small, or way too big. And I’ve seen a captain ram his own skiffboat. I thought I was dreaming. (Amazing how wickedly bad Chinese swear words sound…)

A helicopter pilot will work on a purse seiner as opposed to a ‘longliner‘. A longliner is a much smaller boat that trails out long lines behind it, with baited hooks. very long lines. I’ve seen them, and they seemed to be miles long. A rather indiscriminate kind of fishing, that kills anything and everything. The longliners I saw loved the Yellowfin. Each one is handled carefully, packed in dry ice, and rushed off to places like Japan by airfreight. There they are served up as ’shushimi’ to discerning clients. Prices are -to us- insane. You hear sums like $3,000 up to $10,000 per fish. When I hear those figures, I often wonder how anybody will ever stop poachers when the rewards are so great. I can envisage the last BlueFin being unceremoniously hauled out of the water, and a phalanx of bidders screaming hysterically to own it…

The helicopter pilot’s purse seiner is not set up for the individual “pack ‘em in dry ice and treat ‘em gently” modus of operation. Hell, no. Fish are handled, chucked, thumped and kicked in a manner which would outrage a longliner fisherman. A purse seiner is more of a mass fishing process as opposed to the individual treatment of fish that happens on a longliner. The value of a ton of purse seiner fish is therefore on a different scale. Market rates vary according to supply and demand. I’ve seen it as low as $500 a ton and as high as $2,700 a ton. Now do some sums: take an average purse seiner, capable of storing 700 to 1,000 tons of fish, and multiply that by, say, $850. That’s $595,000 to $765,000! The next question you should ask is: how long does it take to catch that much fish?

In other words, how quickly can a purse seiner fill up?

This is, of course, the multi-million dollar question. Ship owners have a real strong interest in this question…

To answer this, here are some figures for you. Today we have bigger ships. However, from December 1995 until May 1996, I served on a ship with a carrying capacity of 700 tons. A Taiwanese ship. We averaged 700 tons a month. At the time, in that locale, that was regarded as a lot. The quickest turnaround was one week (700 ton), and the longest was a frustrating six weeks for 440 ton. On other ships and at other times I have seen as long as three months! That’s not too good, because there is a limit to the amount of time you can succesfully store fish in the brine in the holding area, and maintain their condition. The captain I mentioned was Captain Alan, of the Hsieh Feng 707, and with an average of 700 ton a month, he was one of the best in Taiwan. Our best performance in one single month was 1250 ton.

Now do you see where the helicopter comes in! I used to be mesmerized, and wonder how on earth a stupid old fishing boat could afford such an expensive item as a helicopter. The answer is: chickenfeed. No sweat. Peanuts. A good helicopter flown by a good ‘no hassle’ pilot, maintained by a good ‘no hassle’ mechanic, is a tuna ship captain’s dream.

If the pilot uses his eyes and helps find fish… he is positively loved! There have been cases where a fishing company has gone absolutely bananas at the helicopter company for trying to transfer the pilot to another boat.

“Take our pilot? No way! If you take the pilot, you can take the damn chopper away as well!”

And that of course is excellent for a man’s job security!

I speak here from personal experience as well. My company tried to transfer me off a Bell 47 to a Hughes 500 on another boat, the Fairwell 707, as I had a lot of turbine time. The move was abruptly cancelled, and I never had any idea why. It was not until, months later, when I got back to port, that my boss told me the whole story. It seemed my captain had a screaming fit when he heard they wanted to transfer me. He told my company furiously that he would cancel the helicopter contract if I went…

Returning now to the subject of logs, or dead trees floating in the water.

It depends where you go in the world. It even depends on the season. In many areas, so-called ‘log fishing’ is very important. At other times, other places, there are no logs around, and you will be trying to catch ‘travelling Tuna’. Tuna-on-the-March as it were. And boy! Can they move… A third method is to look for porpoises which accompany the tuna. This is more a feature of the Eastern Pacific. South America. For some reason that nobody has been able to explain to me, in the western Pacific Ocean, porpoises do not follow tuna.

You will have grasped a big fundamental when you realize that, regardless of the method being used (logfishing, making a set on ‘travelling tuna’, or looking for porpoises), that finding the quarry is much, much more easily done from the air…

Enter: you, my friend, in your helicopter. And your observer. It might be the captain of the ship, or one of the crew.

Let the games begin!

I have to pause here, because I’m chuckling quietly to myself.

I’m remembering my ‘first tripper’ days. When I was a newbie. A neophyte. A ‘lost landlubber’.

You see, I’m a well meaning sort, terribly clumsy and naive, but basically a good heart. It gets me into all sorts of trouble, let me tell you. Well…. I reckoned I was going to ‘help’ my taciturn Taiwanese observer to find logs. He didn’t seem to like me very much, and I thought I could change that by being a good fellow.

I really meant well… There we were, on one of my early flights, flying along. I knew we were looking for logs. Oh, yes, I had advanced in my knowledge! I couldn’t wait to find one. Eventually:

“LOG!”

I announced it loudly and triumphantly, pointing down at the object of hours and hours of searching. My stone faced Oriental observer lowered his binoculars, and followed my outstretched finger. Hell, I felt good!

Huh?

The reaction was not quite what I had expected. Instead of pleasure, delight, hell….acknowledgement even.. all I got was this withering look of disgust, followed by total disinterest! He just went back to his binoculars!

Bloody Hell! What was wrong with that one?

My puzzlement was set to continue. A while later he motioned for the helicopter first in a specific direction, and thrn down to the surface. There we attached a radio bouy (more on that later) (much, much more!) on a small log that was really a miserable, mangy old thing, (nuthin’ like as good as mine…). Then we flew back to the ship.

This was the pattern for many days to come. I almost gave up pointing out logs. He just didn’t take much notice, and I got fed up with that withering look of disgust. I could try ever so hard, and find him the biggest, juiciest, most spectacular looking tree you could imagine, and do you think the git would be pleased?

No, Sir!

Then we would end up plonking the radio buoy on some miserable, maggoty old sapling…

Heck, it was frustrating… Things were not helped by my observer’s sullen refusal to explain anything.

Apparently the two previous pilots had each only lasted two months, and one of them had banned this observer from the cockpit. I was told they had nearly come to blows on the helideck. I was beginning to understand why. I could have cheerfully belted him myself a couple of times! But there are much more satisfying ways of getting revenge….

(One was to occur a few months later, involving beer, a urine bottle, and a unique kneeling position of my observer. And sweet, sweet revenge! But that story must keep until later…)

Tired of the log fiasco, I eventually decided to take the bull by the horns and go and see the captain. This man had been described by previous pilots in the most unflattering terms. He had not much spoken to me. However, when I knocked on his door, with determination in my eyes, and a thirst for knowledge, he mellowed out completely. A pilot who wants to know about how to find fish!!? Apparently, I was a novelty.

In the event, he turned out to be an excellent teacher. He spoke reasonable English, and always had a dictionary at hand. I for my part, was learning Chinese, and I always had a Chinese dictionary at hand. I couldn’t read their letters, but if I pointed to the english word, they would give me the Chinese pronunciation. Soon I learned all kinds of vital Chinese expressions. Like ’strong wind’, ‘lots of birds’, and ‘I need to turn back for gas’. I also learned ‘I need a beer’, and ‘when is supper?’. Oh, and the Chinese word for ‘psychopath’. (’Sentin-pjin‘) Very important, as I shall explain later.

The captain promised to go up with me, and show me the ropes himself. I was well pleased. Soon my learning curve started to shoot up. It wasn’t the log that mattered so much as, get this, its location. It wasn’t so much that you looked for a log. You looked for foamers and breezers, which are ‘gatherings of fish’ if you like. THEN you looked for a log in the neighborhood, with a good chance (even if the log was several hundred yards away) that it had been ‘adopted’.

Especially if the small baitfish were acting terrified (clinging together in a tight ball), then you knew something was up.

THE NEXT MORNING there was an excellent chance that the tuna would be right beside the log coming up for breakfast!

You could check the fishfinder and see. Lots of fish would turn the scope a bright red. And just before dawn, that is when the ship made its set. Bingo!

Ooooooooooh….well I wish I had known THAT before…

Now I suddenly understood a lot more. I understood why I had received so many dirty looks when I had indicated logs that were drifting miles from anything. Now I understood why we had circled round and round and round some boring old breezer, when there was what I thought was ‘a jolly nice log’ only a few miles back. Now I understood why that ’scrappy little sapling’ three hundred yards away from that breezer knocked the socks off my ‘juicy goliath’ three miles back.

Well, hell, call me Irish, how was I SUPPOSED to know?

THEN (har-har) came the next flight with my ‘bundle of laughs glad-rags observer’.

We flew along, and my eyes were out on sticks. We flew past some large trees floating about on their own, which I of course (being an expert now) contemptuously ignored. Eventually we ended up at this huge foamer. There were a lot of fish splashing about and making whoopee. But now (har-har) I knew why ‘misery face’ beside me was hanging out the door desperately searching the rough waters for ye old log! And, whilst trying to appear relaxed (musn’t let on…) I was desperate to beat him to it!

In the event, it worked out beautifully. I spotted, on my side, a really nice log. Difficult to see with the rough waves. Besides such a large foamer, it was worth big bucks.

I clicked on the intercom.

“You want log? I see log.”

He looked at me disbelievingly, suspicious.

“Eight meters”, I added, careful not to indicate its position.

That was a big log.

Something in my cocky demeanour registered with my observer.

“Where?” he said, for the first time deigning to ask the stupid pilot a question pertaining to the finding and catching of fish. Oh wonders! Oh wow-ee!

I arched my eyebrows as superciliously as I could. A real “My! Haven’t you seen it??” look.

Then I pointed out the log.

(har-har)

He just about fell across my lap in his haste to get a look!

(Yes! Yes! Gotcha!)

(double har-har…)

From then on, things changed.

Now I got attention. Respect even. The urge to wring his scrawny little yellow neck or rattle his teeth down his Oriental throat diminished. We started finding lots of fish together. He started occasionally laughing, even being pleasant. I actually started to remotely like the guy. Later still I discovered the reason behind some of his previous hostility. His best friend had been killed in a tuna helicopter crash off the Winfar 636. Akaya understandably hated helicopters, but the captain ordered him to fly….

So who says hunting fish is boring!

Logs come in various shapes and sizes. The best log (apart from being reasonably close to a foamer or a breezer) has a large root system. I suspect it offers small fish more protection, so they hang around longer. More small fish = more hungry predators. It’s best if there is no rope remnant attached. A new rope remnant means some other purse seiner has beaten you to it. An old, frayed, worn rope might not be so bad, as a lot of time has elapsed. So maybe the resident fish population has had a chance to build back up again. But ‘no rope’ is best. Light colored trees are better than dark. (Don’t ask me why)

And generally, the bigger, the wider, and longer… the better.

‘Time of the day’ is important. At the crack of dawn, you will see lots of activity as the tuna come up to feed on the little guys. A log nearby is a good target for a radio buoy. Later on in the day, especially it seems to me if it’s bright and hot, you might see the log, but not the fish. They are deeper down, where its cooler and more pleasant.

If you come upon a log during the day, and it’s bright and hot, keep an eye out for even one tuna splashing out of the water.

Then it’s worth descending, and hovering over the log.

(Don’t autorotate! Especially on a flat calm surface. More on this common fatal accident cause later…)

Have a real good look beside the log. Lots and lots of small baitfish hovering nervously close to the log…. that’s what you’re looking for. They still haven’t recovered from the fright of being hunted by a predator earlier that day. Tuna fish may be about!

The technique -and massive potential dangers- associated with attaching a radio buoy to a log from a helicopter is dealt with later. From the outside though, let me warn you I have done it hundreds and hundreds of times. It mostly went pretty smoothly, except for one famous occasion. And that event came so close to killing me and my captain it wasn’t funny! Later…

I have used some phrases which may confuse new tuna pilots. When we are talking about “log fish”, remember all tuna are nomadic. They travel truly awesome distances around the globe. “Log fish” therefore have interrupted their circumglobal journey for a few days to rest and feed, and have -for those few days- adopted a log. Tuna at rest, feeding, are so much easier to catch than ‘travelling tunies’ which are actively travelling. They often occur in huge -awesome- quantities, moving very fast. It’s generally a lot more difficult to catch these migrants. I have spent many an hour in quiet amusement, orbiting overhead, watching frustrated captains, one after another, setting their nets. The Tuna would get so used to it, they would just swim down and out. Down and out. Down and out… I’ve seen eighteen successive boats set on the same Tuna. One after the other. With not one single fish being caught…

You will hear people talking about ‘a good log area’ or otherwise.

Where fish are moving, and not resting, I have heard the phrase ’schoolfish’ area used, or ‘migrant area’.

Now you know what they are talking about.

If you locate an interesting log, your observer will thank you for orbiting with the log on his side. In a Hughes 500, to your right, in other words. Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the log, especially if you do not allow for wind effect. You will irritate your observer if you start wandering off. They will simply expect you to perform a nice circle with the log in the centre! There are different techniques for this, and these are also dealt with later.

In conclusion of this chapter, you can see there is more, much more, to a ‘dead tree in the water’ than meets the (first tripper’s) eye!

Francis ‘Moggy’ Meyrick (c)

Previous Chapter: “What’s it all about? – Finding Fish!” | Next Chapter: Foamers and Breezers

This manual owes its inception to a cry I have heard many times in various forms.

“I wish somebody would write a decent manual for those damn first-trippers!”

The ‘first tripper’ being a derogatory term used to describe the obvious newcomer to the field, who unwittingly has broken one of the unwritten rules, or executed a hair raising landing on a nearby ship. I have also heard the phrase “R-22 virgin”, ‘lost landlubber’ and ‘150 hour wonder’ used in the same manner, indicating the low-time fresh graduate of an R-22 school with no real commercial experience.

I was once a ‘R-22 virgin’. And very proud I was of my Commercial. By the time I made it to the ‘Tuna Fields’, I was racking up over four thousand hours, but that did not prevent me from accidentally upsetting some other pilots, and I know the phrase ‘damn first tripper’ went rapidly out over the airwaves!

My training -if you can call it that- was typical: about one hour. Another pilot had ‘walked off’ my boat in disgust, (after only two months) and my employer needed a pilot NOW. One day I was in Scotland with a promise of a job six weeks later. At three the next morning I got a phonecall from the small island of Guam, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, saying:

“Your ticket is at the airport – the boat’s waiting – we need you NOW!”

I got off the long transcontinental flight -right across Siberia and Japan- at the airport in Guam, and found myself sitting in an old Bell 47 helicopter. After barely an hour, I was pronounced fit and able. At that stage I discovered the boat had already set sail, and was some forty miles south of Guam. I was told to “head south – you can’t miss it”. I guessed I probably could…. Off I set anyway, on my little ownsome, and after investigating several vessels, I finally located my boat sailing full speed off over the horizon. Running tight on fuel, I caught up with my future home, and my first landing on a tuna boat -underway at full speed- was a self taught hands-on affair. The entire crew seemed to be out watching the arrival of their new pilot, and I wonder what the bets were. And that… was the sum total of my ‘training’.

I knew nothing. Nada. Zip.

Small wonder then that the first time the boat stopped at sea, I wondered in complete puzzlement why everybody was so interested in a dead tree floating in the water!

That was in the early nineties’, and little was I to know I would spend five years flying off Taiwanese and Korean tuna boats. I eventually moved on, flew fixed and rotary for a Arizona Sheriff’s Office for three and a half years, then a sojourn flying Air Ambulance, and after that I came to the Gulf of Mexico, flying offshore. I’ve been here for over five years again.

I think I can safely say that since my tuna helicopter flying days, a lot of air has passed around my rotorblades. I’ve learned a lot, seen a lot, and made a few whopping bad mistakes. I have come close to wiping myself out, and frightened myself severely a few times. Above all though, I avoided possible future disasters by the kindness of more experienced tuna pilots, who unselfishly shared with me some of their experience gained the hard and painful way. No, I have never crashed. Touch wood. Touch a tree. Touch a whole damn FOREST. I have never even scratched a helicopter. But if I had never had any help, never had any advice, never had mentors… I would be dead by now. I have waltzed -innocently- into many situations where a little amber caution light went off in my retarded brain. Where a little voice said to me:

“Hang on! Old Bill Saathoff was telling me about this! This is where I have gotta watch it! Hold on here now!”

And it is only in hindsight I fully realize how important those informal bar flying sessions actually were.

Many of the guys that I talked with were proud, stubborn old mules. Typical tuna pilots. Odd dogs, out of the mainstream, defying convention. Anti-authority. However, over a quiet beer, in some Godforsaken offbeat locale on some third world island, all were willing to tell on themselves, and admit their past mistakes, their learning cycles, and their prize f….. ups.

I always admired that. It takes a lot for an ex Vietnam Cobra pilot to admit where he screwed up on the tuna fields, and ’splashed out’. Jim was one such a man, who reckons that the Hughes 500 is the ‘only machine’ that he could have been in and survived his high speed crash. Moody, occasionally sullen, introverted, and quick tempered, he nonetheless -patiently- answered all my simple questions. He spent hours with me, and he taught me a lot. Rough on the outside, he revealed to me a much softer side. He cared. All you had to do was ask. Jim was a willing teacher, who sought no reward.

Another tuna high-timer was Bob, who taught me all about avoiding rotor strikes near microbursts! I will always remember Bob for his quiet worrying about the offshore bird count. “We used to have thousands of birds milling around here”, he would say. “Now it’s just hundreds. Why is the bird count going down?” He would worry about the impact of over exploitation of the Ocean’s ressources, and advocated a much more active preservation role for those many island nations who control the fishing rights over large portions of the richests fishing grounds.

Ricky from Peru, a wonderful gentleman, told me what it’s like to go playing submarine in a bell 47, and two other Hughes 500 drivers told me that a floating 500 rolls over inverted ‘real nice and slow’…. the same cannot be said for the adrenaline rush!

This manual then merely continues the tradition: an unselfish ‘passing on’ of information, tips, anecdotes and techniques that center on “the Art of flying a tuna helicopter” safely and succesfully. This manual does NOT pretend to be exhaustive, or complete, or THE way to do things. One example of a highly contentious area is the landing technique on a boat that is rolling wildly with a heavy catch off the port side, Another is the use of ’seal bombs’; many pilots refuse point blank to carry explosives in the helicopter. There are some great tales around about what happens if that little lot blows up inside the helicopter during flight. And then there are those pneumatic guns that fire steel arrows into floating logs. Just wait until they bounce, and go up through your rotor system.

Different pilots believe -passionately- in different things, but if this manual at least gives you an insight into the arguments for and against, you will be so much better prepared before you go out. And you will know what to watch for…

There is a huge amount of time and effort gone into this manual, and it is an ongoing process. But if it saves just ONE pilot’s life, somewhere along the line, and if that pilot one day drops me a thank-you note… then I will be more than rewarded. It’s now thirty-nine years since I first went solo. And for some reason, I still get a thrill out of flying helicopters. All I need is a quiet morning, first flight, and I simply can’t wait to pull pitch and get going. One of these days I guess I might grow up and stop enjoying it so much…

Fly Safe, may God go with you, however you perceive Him.

Francis ‘Moggy’ Meyrick (c)

Next: Chapter 1-A: “What’s it all about? – Finding Fish!”