Many hooks are empty, but they are immediately provided with new bait, cut from the
smallest fish of the catch. It is a cold job.
Workplace on the Icefjord
Even in the coldest winter the World’s most productive glacier pushes its enormous ice masses towards the Disco Bay. At the same time the fjord is covered with a meters thick layer of ice with interspersed areas of pack ice.
The temperature is somewhere on the "wrong" side of -20o C. The fishermen’s daily workplace is on the fjord ice at a short distance from the great icebergs. The scenery is this: A simple hand winch stands by a hole in the ice. First this hole has to be chopped through a meter thick ice armour. Then a metal gliding plate, big as the door of a kitchen fridge, is slipped down the hole. It is to slide the 400 meters to the bottom like a paper flyer in a classroom. It takes a long while for the flyer to reach the bottom, hauling after it the long-line with the many hooks. A hundred and fifty or more hooks are strung out over the ocean floor complete with delicious fishbites to tempt the great Greenland halibut. The line with the bait disappears into the hole with the red retrieval line in the end. With a rythmic sound the roll on the winch is emptied and the fisherman Niels Karl finds the time for a cup of tea.
A small tent is stationary by the fisherman’s site on the ice. It serves as a shelter and as a sleeping place. In the icy silence the wheezing from the Primus stove is heard for miles around when lumps of ice are melted for water.
When the long-line has rested by the bottom for a sufficient length of time it has to be hauled back up. Maybe the cold has already closed the hole so that it first of all has to be hacked open again. The winch has to be turned for a full hour before the beginning of the long line appears again. Gives you warmth, Niels Karl chuckles. Now he must work with his fingers and meter by meter the line is lifted out.
DIGO
The Greenland halibut is an ugly fish as it lays grey and colorless on the ice. For the dogs it is the daily bread and to the fishermen it’s a well-paying catch. Its range is in the Arctic area with Ilulissat as the southern-most landing site in Greenland.- If you cannot fish for Greenland halibut in the open waters of the Disko bay, it has to be caught from the ice. During this period the Ilulissat fishing fleet is frozen solid in front of the township. The tide may break the ice on the shoreline but it does not give much freedom of movement for the ships.
Niels Karl is happy with his life. In summertime he stands on a cutter and in the winter he fishes alone from the ice. His dogs are healthy and after two or three days on the ice he can go home with a sled weighted with 100-200 kilos of Greenland halibut. A solid income, he gets a good price, but at what cost! - I promised him that I would never ever be his competitor here as I tried to hide my frost-tormented photo finger in the middle of the glove.
©1999 - translation by HG
DIGO