Little Green's Life

On the crab boat, no one called Henry by his name. Everyone followed Old George and called him "Little Green."

It originally meant Green_Crew, a rookie crewman. Using the terminology from Henry's memories, it was called a "newbie" in Chinese.

How did that saying from the military go? Veterans gave the orders, middling soldiers waited, and rookies endured. No matter where you were, greenhorns had no rights. It was practically an unwritten rule.

On Annie 21, Henry really was the only one without any experience going out to sea to catch crabs. Even the least experienced among the others had gone out with Old George's boat several times; this was their second year aboard.

A newbie had to know his place, and Henry had that much self-awareness. Besides, he really was starting from zero and knew nothing. Of course, he could not rely on his superhuman strength to beat everyone into submission.

If you wanted a comfortable life, go home!

Still, under Old George's leadership, no one deliberately bullied the newcomer. That was because from the first day they set sail until they reached the crab grounds in the Bering Sea, those were the only peaceful days.

What followed was a terrifying nonstop grind!

A crab boat worked nearly twenty-one hours a day. That did not mean there were three complete hours available for sleep. Those three hours were scattered throughout the day, and the total uninterrupted sleep might end up being only a little over an hour.

Work was divided into shifts of two to three hours, with only five to ten minutes of rest between shifts. That time was for eating, drinking, and answering nature's call. That was why crab fishermen ate five or six meals a day.

The breaks at noon and in the evening were longer, twenty to thirty minutes. Those were the only two chances each day to eat hot food. During the other breaks, they could only wolf down simple dry rations.

The work was complicated and dangerous. Crew members had to hang bags of chopped-meat bait in the middle of iron crab pots weighing as much as 350 kilograms, then lower the cages about 150 meters beneath the sea surface to lure crab schools in to feed.

But that did not mean everyone could rest after tossing a cage overboard. How could a crab boat possibly have only one crab pot?

The work was continuous. They might have just dropped one cage when they had to haul up the one they had thrown in earliest. Whether it had caught any king crabs or not, it had to be sorted out again and fitted with fresh bait bags.

One major part of the sorting work was dealing with ice. Unlike seawater splashed onto the deck, solid ice would not flow back into the sea through the gaps along the railings on its own. Some of it even froze onto the crab pots.

If too much ice built up and was not dealt with in time—meaning smashed apart with sledgehammers and thrown back into the sea—it could affect the boat's center of gravity and cause it to capsize.

So even when all the crab pots were temporarily in the sea and none were being hauled aboard, everyone still had to go smash ice. There was no chance to sneak in a rest.

Launching and hauling up crab pots naturally relied on the boat's crane. As a Little Green, Henry did not get anywhere near the crane. He basically just worked beside the crab pots with the veterans.

And do not think king crabs were some docile seafood. Even after being hauled above the surface, when they were less active than they had been on the seabed—

their hard shells, sharp spikes, and claws were all very real. Even if you were not stabbed or pinched, simply picking up a king crab could injure your hands. Gloves were essential.

Of course, Henry was not going to get his hands hurt by a mere king crab. But he did not make an exception of himself by insisting on working barehanded just to show everyone he was invulnerable.

Besides the relentless work hours and unfriendly target crabs, the greatest challenge on a crab boat was the sea conditions.

The Bering Sea in October and November was solidly winter weather. Polar storms sweeping down from the Arctic, mixed with seawater, forced the crab boat crews to work in temperatures around freezing. Sometimes fine snow even drifted through the air.

There were also frequent strong winds exceeding twenty-six kilometers per hour, whipping up enormous waves as high as ten meters. Crab boats were small vessels, so naturally they could not be very stable. In such an environment, merely staying on one's feet was a challenge.

Not to mention that the large waves constantly crashing into the boat could sweep careless crew members into the sea. Fortunately, crab boats were not warships; if someone fell overboard, they would still attempt a rescue. But under such brutal sea conditions, the difficulty of rescue was obvious.

You could say that the first hurdle for anyone wanting to board a crab boat—and the biggest hurdle—was not getting seasick. Or rather, getting seasick as little as possible...

If you got seasick, all you could do was keep vomiting. Forget about working.

So the harsh sea conditions, terrifying work hours, and difficult king crabs were why Alaska's crab boats were short on workers every year.

Henry had originally wondered whether it would be better not to push himself so hard every day and get more rest.

But after personally experiencing the working conditions, he did not need to ask anyone. He could answer that question himself.

Ice had to be chipped away constantly, and the sea conditions were so awful. If someone could sleep soundly on a boat like this, they were skilled enough to nap on a roller coaster.

So everyone on a crab boat would definitely agree: fill the boat as quickly as possible, then get back to port as quickly as possible.

Only someone with nothing better to do would complain about not having enough sleep. Get the job done early, go home early!

At times like this, an experienced captain was extremely important. Besides controlling the boat through the wind and waves so it would not be overturned by the sea, he also had to accurately judge where king crabs could be caught.

King crabs had no fixed migration pattern, nor did they show up on fishing radar or sonar. So the quality of the haul depended heavily on the captain's experience, instincts, and luck.

If their luck was bad, they would have to remain at sea longer, and the risks would rise accordingly. If the captain was capable enough, they could fill the hold and head back in around five days.

What Polack had told Henry before—that a trip took around two weeks—was the kind of result only a lousy captain could produce.

Most people could not last two weeks. After enduring a little over a week, even if the hold was not full, they would choose to return to port and recover.

After all, this kind of high-intensity work meant gambling with their lives, desperately holding on through the adrenaline in their bodies. If they pushed too far and someone suddenly died aboard, taking the whole boat down with him, that would be a disaster.

Yet during these short few days, Henry's performance had left all the veterans more satisfied than they could possibly be.

In such a high-intensity working environment, the greatest fear was running into a useless teammate. There was no spare time for workplace bullying, either.

Henry could not shake off his rookie status, because there were too many things aboard that he did not know, and he loved asking questions. But as long as he had asked once and done it once, he almost never made the same mistake a second time.

The reason it was only almost was that when working with others, there were inevitably times when their coordination was off. Still, no one complained, because as soon as someone called out to him, Henry corrected himself quickly.

Who would not be pleased with such a worry-free crew member? A "Little Green" like him earned the lowest pay of everyone on board. No one even knew where to begin feeling jealous.

His learning speed and efficient way of working gave him opportunities to handle tasks beyond the basics.

It could be said that aside from the helm, which they had not let him touch yet, Henry had handled every tool inside and outside the crab boat. No one objected. And it had not even been five days.