Worries aboard a Ukrainian fishing boat

Michael Field

On the darkened bridge of a large Ukrainian fishing boat it was easy to tell if the captain was near as he incessantly clicked his rosary-like worry beads.

 "In Russia," says Yuri Kylybov, the 49-year-old captain of Aleksandr Buryachenko, "we have a saying that a fisherman is twice the mariner of any other mariner."

Under charter to Nelson based Sealord Group, the 14-year-old 4407 ton factory trawler is the largest operating in New Zealand's exclusive economic zone, taking "high volume, low value" fish and squid.

Its 80 men and three women come from Sevastopol on the Black Sea, in Ukraine, part of the Soviet Union until disintegration in 1991.

Launched in 1997 it is built to the one grunty size fits all Soviet-era plans; it looks older than it is.

In Cold War days they were suspected of spying on the West.

Kylybov, a captain's son who served first as a fourth officer in the Soviet fleet, doesn't disagree.

His ship has gun-platforms and the captain's cabin has a safe for the sealed orders to be opened when war started.

In another era, Kylybov could have been told to seize Nelson.

Aleksandr Buryachenko, named after a CEO of the Ukrainian State Fishing Corporation, is rich in Soviet touches, down to rotary telephones and machinery made in Soviet era numbered factories.

Over the radar, sonar and fishing finding electronics, a picture of what once would have been Lenin is replaced with an icon of Saint Nicholas, patron of fishermen.

Cyrillic notices renders me illiterate, so the chief mate had to act out the safety briefing.

"No worry," he says, his English just surpassing my Russian, "we not sinking."

Kylybov's cabin has the only hammer and sickle left aboard - perhaps because I seemed to be the only one to notice it. 

He grows chilli to flavour the Russian borscht served every meal - enlivened occasionally with unappealing sweet breads. They did not eat fish.

The boats stay in New Zealand as crews rotate every six months, flown out in Uzbekistani jets.

Kylybov is a "summer captain" - six months on here and six months summer there. He's been coming for 11 years.

"I like the order in this country.... This is a very civilised place; order and no corruption."

Where once spy reports would have dominated the mission, technology is now devoted to the Internet, Skype and daily contact with families in Sevastopol.

"Skype is a dangerous thing," he says adding there is no such thing as a quick call. It can take hours to get through the family.

Valeriy Moskat, 59, bosun with 38 years at sea, the last 11 here, says he would have been out of contact with his family for months.

"We are in constant contact.... We have got used to it."

He says in Christchurch sized Sevastopol they have a "marine culture" and people know of New Zealand because so many work the ships here.

Kylybov's worry beads were disconcerting. In the 1954 movie The Caine Mutiny Humphrey Bogart played a navy captain who under tension fingers two ball-bearings, click, click, click.

Kylybov always seems tense on the bridge, but never spoke loud nor barked orders.

"I am responsible for 80 people and all there families. I am like a father to them, and I have to find the fish. The harder we work, the happier we are the more fish, the more happy."

Squid intrigued him.

"It is a very difficult fish, mysterious and so interesting that something with such a tiny brain  can be so unpredictable."

The ship seldom spends more than two days at dock because its charter costs Sealord US$30,000 (NZ$37,000) a day, fishing or not. Sealord, half owned by iwi under the Waitangi Treaty settlements, upset at coverage of mainly Korean boats using near slave labour crews, invited the Sunday Star-Times on a voyage.

In the Tasman they "shoot" their first net for mackerel.

Aleksandr Buryachenko can trawl faster than most ships and when the net is out, the ship has a comfortable motion.

Next morning several metre long sharks come up with the net and are grabbed and thrown to one side. Nothing is thrown back; it is against the rules and the dozens of albatrosses and petrels wait fruitlessly - in the jargon the we're on a "clean ship".

Special rigging hanging out from the stern prevents the birds snaring nets.

Mackerel are headed and gutted in the spotlessly clean - and very wet - factory below the trawl deck while the small by-catch and the guts are turned into fishmeal. That includes a large electric skate, flapping on the floor. It can still deliver a decent kick so is left to die.

School sharks and four decent sized tuna lay in a bin. As the tuna had been killed in the nets and not bled, its meat was unappealing (although I'd have cooked it myself to avoid cattle tongue lunch).

Kylybov was disappointed.

"Small fish, not good fishing," he said although around 30 tons of jack mackerel seemed a good morning's work.

Aleksandr Buryachenko is a quiet ship with few announcements.

Despite the machinery of pulleys and cranes, bringing in nets is physically demanding. The factory workers are mostly semi-skilled, but as sailors and fishermen they have all come up through a deeply hierarchal maritime system.

They are skilled beyond the ability of most New Zealanders in this line of work.

When they are not working, they are sleeping or watching Russian soaps and music videos. News of the sinking of Costa Concordia was watched with horror, especially as there had been many Russians aboard.

In the bow was a sauna along side a seawater plunge pool. Russians love dunking themselves into cold water - I lacked the courage.

My cabin had a large bath but a stench of what I thought was cabbage and raisin fruit drink stained urine kept me away much of the time. Watching birds from the bridge was fascinating.

Mooring fees and time meant Aleksandr Buryachenko wasn't going to dock just to let me off.

A pilot boat has to pick me up and the captain gave me a bottle of honey and chilli flavoured vodka and Ukrainian fortified wine, seeming as a token for the abrupt ending.

Just after 1am, under a moonless and Milky Way filled night we approach Dunedin, the light at Taiaroa Head flashing.

Kylybov's worry beads work hard.

"Don't be afraid," he says like some one's father.

Moskat is at the head of the ladder. Way below the pilot boat nestles in as we move five knots through the darkness. He hands me some gloves, a warm handshake and I'm over the side.

I knew not to look down but it is a big ship.

About to look down a voice rich in Southland rolled-rrrs says "only two more steps mate."

Aleksandr Buryachenko moved off into the dark, bound for the Southern Ocean - it's not my ship but that old hymn for all in peril upon the sea came to mind; budem zdorovy, stay healthy....

 

Footnote: Sealord Group facilitated Michael Field's voyage with the Sunday Star-Times paying all other costs.

22 January 2012

Sunday Star-Times