Rowboat in a Hurricane by Julie Angus Read Free Book Online

repeatedly smashed the oars into my legs. If I was a mediocre rower in calm water, I was a dismal rower in ocean chop. And to say I was a moderate rower in civilization was really being kind.
    I gave up on technique. It was all I could do to keep moving. I felt exhausted; my arms ached, my knees hurt, and I couldn’t imagine rowing for another minute, let alone another several months. I looked at my watch; I had been rowing for thirty minutes.
    I tried to distract myself by watching the fishing boats in the distance. I saw close to a dozen, all of them moderate in size and weathered in appearance. I knew that these were small-scale fishing operations, one or two men (I hadn’t seen a fisherwoman yet) who went out six days a week—never on Sunday—and sold their catch fresh each day at the local fish markets. They caught mostly sardines, mackerel, and hake, although local octopus, sea bass, tuna, prawns, squid, and swordfish were also for sale at the markets. Most of Portugal’s fishermen work in small boats, catching just enough fish to subsist, but they struggle to make a living amid dwindling fish stocks. Today only the bigger and better-equipped boats, which can travel farther in search of fish and stay longer on the water, can prosper (and even their margins are shrinking).
    The Portuguese eat more fish per person than any other nationality except for Icelanders, but their fishing industry is in distress as stocks of cod, hake, and whiting are near collapse. They can now no longer meet their own fish needs, relying on imports of dried cod from Norway, sardines from Russia, and stockfish from Iceland.
    Sadly, Portugal is not alone in facing this crisis. When I returned to civilization, I heard news reports that this could be the last century of wild seafood. The story was based on the research of an international team of scientists who published their findings in the November 3 , 2006 issue of Science. They looked at fish catch reports since 1950 in almost all ocean regions, and found that, if the present trend continues, all fish species will decline 90 per cent from their peak numbers by mid-century. Once a population’s numbers drop this low, recovery is very difficult, and the species is considered collapsed. If we don’t change our approach to managing the oceans, say the scientists, all the world’s fish stocks will collapse by 2048 .
    That’s the bad news. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. This is not a prediction set in stone, but a warning of what will happen if our approach to the ocean doesn’t change. “We can turn this around,” said the lead author of the study, Dalhousie University professor Boris Worm. “But less than 1 per cent of the global ocean is effectively protected right now. We won’t see complete recovery [in these protected zones] in one year, but in many cases, species will come back more quickly than anticipated—in three to five to ten years. And where this has been done, we see immediate economic benefits.” In other words, the costs of managing the oceans responsibly will be infinitely lower for humankind than the cost of continuing our race to catch every last fish.
    As I continued rowing, the small fishing boats disappeared from sight. With this last connection to civilization broken, I felt the magnitude of our isolation even more. I looked at Colin sitting inside the cabin and wondered if he, too, worried how we would handle being in this rowboat for months with only each other for company.
    IT WAS HARD to decide what was worse: rowing, or lying in the cabin waiting to row. When I was at the oars, all I could think about was how much my body ached and how I wanted the pain to end. But now that I was in the cabin, the pain shifted to other areas. I felt like a teenager who had just discovered the downfall of drinking lemon gin like it was lemonade. I clutched my stomach and closed my eyes, willing myself to ignore the nausea.
    Not only was Ondine a