Blindfold Game

“Oh yeah,” he said with a matching grin. “Miles of it, on the main camera and the backup. He’s already started editing it into spots.”

In spite of his protestations of devotion to the seas east of Iceland, Doyle was loving every minute of this. Since signing on board a tramp steamer as a common seaman when he was seventeen, he had worked his way up to a master mariner’s license and had captained containerships, LNG carriers, and cruise ships over the navigable waters of all the seven seas. He’d been studying for his marine pilot’s license for south-central Alaska when the Exxon Valdez went hard aground on Bligh Reef.

It wasn’t that he’d never seen an oil spill before, he’d told Vivie

By contrast, the Exxon Valdez had spilled a mere eleven million gallons, but it had spread four times as far, across much of what had previously been a pristine marine wildlife habitat. And after thirty years at sea, maybe he’d just had enough of slipshod seamanship, lousy ship management, and an international maritime attitude of “out of sight, out of mind.” He’d left the marine pilot’s program and flown to Amsterdam, where he offered his services to Greenpeace. Now sixty-three, he’d been master on a dozen campaigns, including a protest to disrupt the arrival of construction barges at Prudhoe Bay and prior visits to the fishing grounds on the Bering Sea. He had more sea sense that any other ten sailors Vivie

“Food?” Doyle said now.

“Deal,” she said, and followed him to the galley a deck down. Two long tables with matching benches were bolted to the floor at one end of the room. At the other end was a serving line of steam tables with a mini salad bar at the end. Today lunch was kielbasa and sauerkraut. Feet braced against the pitch and roll of the ship, Vivie

He looked around at the otherwise empty galley. “Is everyone else seasick?”

Vivie

“Not yet.”

She smiled. “After, what, forty-six years at sea, chances are you won’t.”

He waved a loaded fork at her. “Don’t tempt the fates, Vivie

When they were done, she carried the dirty dishes to the pass-through to hand to Nils, who was still pale but no longer sweating. The first fifteen minutes after you threw up were a grace period between bouts of nausea. She knew, which was one of the reasons she was smug about not being seasick now. She brought back two cups of coffee, heavy on the cream for her and heavy on the sugar for him, and they wedged themselves between table and bulkhead so they wouldn’t keep sliding up and down the benches.

“CNN?” Doyle said.

“Ben says they’re interested. It’s about time. The Bering Sea fishery makes up half of the United States’ fish production, mostly pollock. There are smaller fisheries, including pacific cod and snow crab. The industry is worth over a billion dollars a

Doyle grunted into his coffee cup. “What’s the bad news?”

“Everything is down, species across the board, pollock, fur seals, sea lions, sea otters. King crab used to be big but the stocks crashed in the early eighties and they have yet to come back.”

“There was king crab on the menu in that restaurant in Seattle.”

Vivie

“What North Atlantic cod?”

“Exactly. The Bering has an abbreviated king crab season in January, about two weeks, I think, limited to area 517 only, and limited to a catch of a few hundred thousand pounds.”

“Still too much, if the species is that close to the edge.”

“No argument here. If I had my druthers, the government would buy out all the fishermen and close the area to fishing for the next hundred years, give it time to recover.”

“Like they did with the cod fishery?”

“Yeah, but there they waited until it was too late, until the Atlantic cod was gone before they did anything about it.” She could hear her voice rising. “Sorry.”

“Never liked anybody the less for their having a temper, Vivie

“Bristol Bay, on the eastern edge of the Bering, used to be the world’s largest salmon fishery.”

“And now?”

“It started failing in the mid-nineties.”

“Not a lot of good news in the Bering Sea. What do the scientists say?”

She shrugged. “They say what they always say. They use the a

“They don’t know a hell of a lot,” Doyle said, and shook his head. “In 1900 there were around a billion, a billion and a half people on the planet. Today, there’s over six billion. All of us wearing clothes, driving cars, eating our heads off. Seems pretty cause and effect to me, but then that’s just this poor ignorant sailor talking.” He brooded for a moment. “I sailed up around the coast of Norway one summer, all the way from Oslo to Murmansk. It was a beautiful sail, great weather, gorgeous scenery.” His grin flashed. “A lovely young bit of a thing for deck crew. Wasn’t old enough to call the Beatles by name, but could she cook.” His grin faded. “We didn’t see a single whale. Or a seal, or a sea lion. Damn few fish. We did see a cow about a week into the trip, who had slipped her leash to browse on seaweed on the shore. A few seagulls.” He shook his head. “It was eerie.”

“We’ve already lost so much,” she said, and sighed. “They’re ripping up the bottom of the North Pacific Ocean, Doyle. Sometimes I think…”

“What?”

She spread her hands. “That we’re bailing with a sieve.”

He pretended shock. “Heresy. Calumny. Sacrilege!”

She smiled, but it was a tired smile.“ ‘O Lord, your sea is so vast, and my boat is so small.”“

“Quit stealing my lines. How many ships up here on their side of the line nowadays?”

“Last report I got said sixteen.”

“How long do they stay?”

“Until they break down and have to go into port for repairs. Supply boats bring in food and water and change out crews.”

He looked at the porthole, through which they could currently see a lot of frothing dark green water. A moment later the ship heeled in the opposite direction and the porthole was dark again. “I’m not seeing a calming in the weather anytime soon, Vivie