Isamar II and the Dalcahue dive fleet

Esteban, a Dalahue native in his late 30’s, does not have the imposing attitude or build of the stereotypical Gloucester or Kodiak fisherman. Clean-cut and hair combed, he rows his tiny yellow dory out to his boat wearing clothes that seemed more suited for church than for fishing. Yet aboard his pride, the Isamar II, it is immediately clear that he knows exactly what he’s doing. An attitude or broad shoulders, while sometimes the accompaniment of a salty fisherman, can just as often be misleading. Esteban, without need for ceremony or costume, is plenty salty.

The Isamar II is one of around 100 dive boats which fish around Dalcahue. Amazingly enough, I hadn’t even recognized this fleet of boats, which are all colorful, low-profile crafts around seven meters in length, as a distinct fishery until this morning. My eyes had been quick to identify the modes of fishing I was familiar with- longlining, gillnetting, pot-fishing for crabs- and had somehow overlooked or misinterpreted the function of a bulk of the Dalcahue boats. Trickery of the eyes!

To give my embarrassed senses a bit of credit, dive boats, when at rest, have very little gear on deck which might give away their line of work. This is exactly what makes this type of fishery so popular with small-scale independent fishermen- small capital costs for gear and a relatively small boat. This is what distinguishes the artisanal fleet from the industrial fishing vessels, which usually use larger boats, expensive gear, require bigger crews, and are often owned by a corporation or a fish processing plant.

Aboard the Isamar II, the day’s first task was to briskly offload the catch from the day before. This time of year, navijuelas, razor clams, are the targeted species. From the outside this shellfish seems to be more closely related to a cigar than the classic bivalve, although when cooked there is no mistaking the clamminess. About 300 kilograms (700 pounds) of live clams, in mesh bags of around 30 kilograms (70 pounds) each, were brought out of the boat’s hold and passed onto the dock, where they were weighed and then carefully piled in the back of a small pickup. Esteban settled up with the buyer, and we cut our lines from the dock and were off.

The crew aboard consists of Esteban, Cesar, and Jose. (Cesar is the exact likeness of George Clooney, and middle-aged woman in America would doubtless swoon over him. Luckily this hadn’t gotten to Cesar’s head, if he was aware of it at all.) I had offered to help with any work, but my primary goal was to not get in the way. These three were old hands at their work. The Isamar II has two sister ships, Yely and the Don Jose, and the three boats travel together to fishing grounds and share information freely. This time of year, the trio of boats were concentrating on an area only an hour or so from town.

South Americans have a traditional drink, yerba mate which is native the nexus of Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, but has crossed many other borders and is quite popular in Chile as well. Loose, shredded mate is placed in a small cup or gourd, boiling water is added, and the scalding hot drink is enjoyed fairly quickly through a filtered metal straw, a bombilla, before being passed to the next person in the room. There is a special ceremony surrounding the communal drinking of mate, perhaps somewhat like passing around a peace pipe. Mate drinkers the world over are cringing at my sacreligious description, and I can only apologize. Perhaps, after learning more about the importance of the drink, I’ll remedy my description. Regardless, I’ve mentioned mate here because it plays an integral part in the fishing day aboard many of the small boats: the day begins, is split, and end ends with this custom. I can easily see how the drink can easily be a celebration for fishermen who routinely spend eight to ten consecutive hours on the ocean floor.

After the morning mate, Esteban and Cesar quickly suit up. Jose is in charge of maintaining the air supply for the divers and maneuvering the boat to keep the divers within range of the air hoses. Despite the warm air, the ocean is still cool in these parts- I would guess in the mid 50’s- and the two divers don full wetsuits, as well as masks and fins. They strap on lead weights to the back and legs to reduce buoyancy, each grab a long mesh bag and a modified pair of longnose pliers, and without fanfare, slip overboard. For Esteban, the transition church-going clothes to submersion in the water takes less than 10 minutes.

Now only Jose and I are on deck. Jose starts up a rusty five horsepower engine and eases the throttle to a slow idle. This engine serves to pump pressurized air into a holding tank, which in turn supplies the divers with air through long yellow hoses. The hoses disappear into the dark water. Bubbles give clues as to where each diver is working. Jose is kept quite busy tending to a number of tasks. These are the often overlooked parts of fishing, regardless of the quarry: he lights a fire in the galley stove, repairs a radio, prepares a hearty meat soup from scratch, rewires a speaker. All the time, he is continually lengthening or uncoiling one of the diver’s air hoses, checking the pressure of the tank, or pulling the anchor and bringing the boat closer to the divers. The three boats are sometimes within shouting distance, and a joke is occasionally passed between decks. The tiny, heavily-bearded man aboard the Yely is especially entertaining to watch listen to, and he darts around deck almost as quickly as his high-pitched exclamations jump across the water.

The boat is an exhibition of marine resourcefulness and healthy frugalty. Recycled wood utilized for non-structural parts of the galley (for those new to the boat world, galley is the marine equivalent to a kitchen/living room; the head is the marine version of a bathroom, although the Isamar II doesn’t happen to have one. A five-gallon bucket or waiting suffice.) Potable water is plumbed into the galley in an entertaining blend of garden hose, PVC, and copper piping. Twine is devined by unraveling strands of large frayed line. The diver’s belts, on which they carried heavy lead weights, have been repaired countless times.

Twelve meters down, Esteban and Cesar work the muddy sea floor, probing each dime-sized divot with their adapted pliers, carefully pinching the delicate shells of the clams, pulling straight up, and then smoothly depositing the living cigar into their mesh bag before shifting their attention to a new depression. Too much pressure from the pliers crushes a clam’s shell and makes it less valuable; too little pressure and the clam, sensing danger, flees with astounding speed for the center of the earth. The 100 centimeter mud dash of a razor clam is almost certainly a benthic mollusk world record. In speed and physique, naviquelas are the greyhounds of clams.

After filling their mesh bags, the divers rise up to the surface, pass the 30 or so kilograms of clams up to Jose, swing themselves aboard, take a leak, and quickly return to the water and disappear for the bottom. This happens every couple of hours. Why they both seemed to go through the effort of getting aboard, seemingly only to pee, is beyond me, as the wetsuits are two-piece. Perhaps this is a brief excuse to take a break from sucking compressed air through a tube. Something most of us take for granted when at work.

By noon, I estimate about 200 pounds of clams are aboard. At the Dalcahue dock, fishermen have been getting around 500 Chilean pesos per kilogram (roughly 30 cents/pound). The two divers took a short break to enjoy a bowl of Jose’s soup and pass around the steaming matte. Once again, the divers slip backwards overboard and descend, leaving only bubbles and two snaking yellow hoses as markers. The clams accumulate on deck, and Jose carefully stacks them in mesh bags and sets them out of intense stare of the sun. Constant adjustments on deck, constant searching and plying below. This is tiring, repetitive, physically demanding, honest work- these are the characteristics that define commercial fishing all around the world. By evening, I estimate 600 pounds of clams aboard- slightly less than the boat’s catch yesterday. A rough estimate of the boats total gross for the day is around $200 US dollars. After expenses, each fisherman may go home with the equivalent of $40. While not a large amount in the US, this is significantly better than minimum wage here in Chile, which converts to roughly $10 per full day of work (assuming an 8-hr shift).

Esteban and George Clooney climb aboard, looking somehow reluctant to quit. This is exactly what they’ve done for the past few weeks and is exactly what they’ll continue to do tomorrow and the next day, yet for them this is no reason to cut short today. With impressive efficiency, the two divers shed their wetsuits, wash both the suits and themselves, and are back in civilian clothes, hair combed, before the kettle water has time to boil. Pass around the mate, pull the anchor and we’re off.

According to Esteban, this is how most days go aboard his boat. They fish for five or six days a week, and most days they sleep on dry land. Sometimes they venture out for multiple days at a time. When there is a closure on razor clamming, they instead target almeja (think your “classic” clam), or they’ll dive with gaffs and hook the bottom-loving congrio (an eel-like, cusk-like fish) in the gills and stuff it into a bag. I would love to witness this spectacle, as I imagine the congrio are anything but willing partners in the activity.

With the colorful 24-foot Isamar II, some very basic equipment, and lots of perseverance, Esteban, Cesar, and Jose each support a family. Their shellfish and fish are either sold fresh in one of the Dalcahue markets or are processed in the fish plant, which is located no more than 100 yards from the top of the dock. The route that the harvested fish take once caught is as simple and straightforward as the methods used to catch them. This very simplicity may just be one of the keys to a sustainable fishery.