World Wide Wabs

Early September 2009, Kiyikoy, Turkey.

Kiyikoy being one of those increasingly rare places that still have fishing dayboats rather than seafloor-scraping ocean trawlers, Babs and I decided that trekking down to the harbour to see the boats pull in would be a good use of a Saturday night.

And what a Saturday night it turned out to be.

By the time we sauntered over, there was quite the crowd of men, women and children alike at the breakwaters. Evidently the arrival of the home fleet was the Saturday Night Live event in these parts.

After finding myself a place to perch among the locals, I started to muse about how much time these people spent waiting on a regular basis for fishermen fathers, sons, husbands, uncles and brothers to come home. I also started to wonder how closely they watch each incoming catch. After all, a day’s catch for me just determined what kind of dinner I could get for the day — for them it likely determined what their lifestyle might be for the next few days or weeks.

The fleet held this line for a long time, just slightly away from the harbour. Too long. What the hell were they doing? Waiting for something? Comparing catches? Colluding on prices?

People at the pier were waiting. Watching. Pacing. Exchanging murmurs. Was this not a usual weekend homecoming party of the returning fleet after all?

“There’s some drama going on here that I don’t quite understand yet,” I said to Babs. Oh for subtitles in real life!

More omens. A guy in a black t-shirt (below) showed up on a motorbike and whipped out a heavy-duty looking camera. And then (I can’t even make this stuff up) I saw a red moon rising.

Then finally it became clear. A fishing boat had gotten into trouble and had to be towed back by a big brother of some sort. The nets were completely tangled all over the masts and it was already more than half submerged. Hopefully everyone on the boat got out in time.

By now a good chunk of the town was thronging the docks, snapping pictures with phones and cameras (I’m glad it’s not just me!). There was a lot of shouting between men on boats and men on the docks about what needed to be done.

A bulldozer / excavator pulled up behind the crowd. More yelling. A lot of rope got thrown around, and tied onto the excavator’s “fingers”.

The excavator starts pulling hard on the rope attached to the boat. A horribly painful creaking sound ensued. I managed to grab this one photo before Babs yanked me quite a distance away.

“There’s too much water in the boat. That rope is going to snap, and when it does, there’s no way you want to be anywhere near it,” he said.

Sure enough, whatever the rope was attached to on the boat cracked and broke away, the rope went flying, and the locals went running and gasping. Damn. Great scout / sailor / engineer instincts, Babs.

Yet more shouting. I’m guessing that in the end the plan to tow the boat out of the water got abandoned, because these 2 poor sods were told to go wade in and undo all the roping.

The attention of the crowd turned. An empty truck had pulled up to the water’s edge. Somebody’s got to deliver some fish tonight. Another fishing boat — whom in the corner of the crowd’s eye had been quietly sorting and boxing their haul — now pulled up quickly in front of the truck. A man holding an order list yelled out fish names and weights and one box after another got relayed up into the bowels of the truck, none of it even touching terra firma on Kiyikoy.

I suddenly realised it was was 9pm. We’d been here 4 hours. A local man possibly realised the same, and maybe decided that I had scrambled up and down enough crates and fishnet piles and had the right reactions at the right times to earn a little street cred. He yelled out to the fish relay team to stop for a minute so that I could get a proper picture. Then he nudged me forward, pointed to the man below with his arms folded and said, “This captain of this boat. You take photo of him.”

And so I did. His mates looked quite chuffed.

Quite a different look on the other boat. This image is the one that often comes to mind now whenever I’m tucking into fish, with a new sense of appreciation of what it can take to get to my plate.