cold fish

May 3, 2004 10:12 PM

Frozen seas.A brief but kind of amazing collection of photos of the deck of a fishing trauler in fridgid conditions, where every exposed surface has layers of frozen saltwater accumulated. This condition can cause the boat to become topheavy and capsize, as well as just plain making life more miserable for those that work on the deck.
posted by jonson (12 comments total)

pretty amazing.
posted by sklero at 10:23 PM on May 3, 2004

This is very cool, no doubt, and yet I couldn't help thinking what a better photographer (i.e. with a better eye) could have done with this...
posted by vacapinta at 10:27 PM on May 3, 2004

I think I'm gonna go make some hot chocolate. Anyone want a cup?
posted by jeblis at 11:19 PM on May 3, 2004

Nice post, jonson.
posted by eddydamascene at 2:04 AM on May 4, 2004

My brother in law has some pictures from when he was working on a fishing boat in Alaska. They look a lot like this, only it wasn't sunny and the boat was much smaller than that Coast Guard cutter. Lots of ice though - hanging and encrusting everything.
posted by troutfishing at 7:43 AM on May 4, 2004

of the deck of a fishing trauler in fridgid conditions

This is an amazing post! My father has a segement of video he took of his own cutter at the time, around 1990 off the Eastern seaboard which shows very similar conditions. You can see crew beating off ice with baseball bats. He's been very frank with me, once he brought the video home safely, how annoying and dangerous ice encrusting the desk is, it adds an enourmous amount of weight.

But being a (U.S.) Coastie brat, I must point out that these photos are of the deck of a Canadian Coast Guard Icebreaker, the Sir Williams Alexander. The phrasing of the site makes this confusing, but what it was saying is that a small fishing trauler (the El Loda Cash ) went down in the Bay of Fundy, and these are photos of one of the rescue vessels out looking for it, hence similar conditions were probably what caused a smaller boat to capsize.
posted by nelleish at 8:18 AM on May 4, 2004

Hey jonson, this is (at LEAST) the second great post you've had about tough commercial boating conditions. Do you have some connection to the industry? Or just a morbid curiousity with sea tragedies?
posted by vito90 at 8:48 AM on May 4, 2004

For those that missed it, this was the first one I had in mind
posted by vito90 at 8:50 AM on May 4, 2004

Oh yeah, I remember that post! That was a great one! jonson, nice stuff once again.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:20 AM on May 4, 2004

And I remember this one on sharks - yeah, jonson, what gives with the fascination with scary things in the ocean? ; )
posted by widdershins at 9:35 AM on May 4, 2004

I'm on a mailing list for scary ocean related photo collections. Actually, I typed that meaning to be sarcastic, but then given the absurd scope of interests on the net, there probably IS just such a list. No, I've just happened to run across these photos by pure accident.
posted by jonson at 9:42 AM on May 4, 2004

There probably IS just such a list

If anyone knows the signup address, please let me know. I would definitely subscribe! :-) Cool pictures. Thanks jonson.
posted by rglasmann at 10:10 AM on May 4, 2004