Wednesday, March 17, 2004

These guys are craaaazy, man.

Who? Tuna cowboys. That's who. National Geographic has a series running at the moment all about very dangerous jobs, called Cheating Death.

The most crazy I have seen so far is the tuna cowboys who go to sea for several weeks at a time, using several ships to coral and net as much tuna as possible, coax them in to holding pens and slowly (as in <1knot) tow the pens back to base, a job that takes 3 weeks alone.

Over the course of their time at sea, these guys will be swimming in a deadly, 30m deep net (deadly because the current created by the circling tons of fish creates a deadly whirlpool that will suck the unlucky or careless to the bottom of the net where they will drown) to count the fish. When they're not doing that, they'll be swimming around inside the net repairing holes, tightening nuts and, finally, manhandling sharks out of the pens. Some of those are 3m long Mako sharks.

Then there are the storms.

Didn't I telly you these guys are crazy? You can read more here.

No comments: