Money and the Fishing Industry Theme Analysis

The Perfect Storm is a nonfiction account of fishermen and their loved ones in Gloucester, Massachusetts—a coastal town sustained for centuries by the fishing industry—in the autumn of 1991. Among other fishing boats described in the book, the Andrea Gail is Sebastian Junger’s special focus—a small swordfishing boat that regularly goes out to sea for about 30 days at a time. As Junger describes it, the main draw of a fishing career is that even a crewman, doing menial but dangerous tasks, can make a lot of money on a single trip. This possibility is attractive to men like the crew of the Andrea Gail who need cash and don’t see many other options in their lives. Occasionally, the risk pays off handsomely. As a result, people sometimes get caught in a cycle of big payoffs, overspending, and dead-end, dangerous work. At worst, the financial interests of ships’ owners—those who often assume the least physical risk—prevail over everything else, including crew wellbeing. By exploring the various financial incentives at work in the fishing industry, Junger argues that the most vulnerable people in the industry are the ones who assume the costliest risk.

Junger suggests that, given other options, most people probably wouldn’t choose to fish. There’s a difference between those who fish for the love of it and those who do it primarily for the money (which, according to Junger, is most people who fish). One captain, Charlie Reed, speaks rapturously of the refreshing solitude of the wide-open ocean and the courtesy the entire town of Gloucester affords him as “Cap,” but this romantic outlook isn’t typical. Junger suggests that those who aren’t well-paid skippers have a different experience: “Most deckhands have precious little affection for the business […] fishing is a brutal, dead-end job that they try to get clear of as fast as possible. At memorial services in Gloucester people are always saying things like, ‘Fishing was his life,’ or ‘He died doing what he loved,’ but by and large those sentiments are to comfort the living. By and large, young men from Gloucester find themselves at sea because they’re broke and need money fast.” In other words, fishing isn’t a romantic pursuit for most people—it’s a risky venture undertaken by those who don’t have many other options.

Fishing is a worthwhile risk for some, but there are trade-offs. For one thing, fishing is an unpredictably lucrative job: “A longliner might pull up ten or twenty swordfish on a good day, one ton of meat. The most Bob Brown [owner of both the Andrea Gail and its sister boat the Hannah Boden] has ever heard of anyone catching was five tons a day for seven days—70,000 pounds of fish. That was on the Hannah Boden in the mid-eighties. The lowest crew member made ten thousand dollars. That's why people fish; that’s why they spend ten months a year inside seventy feet of steel plate.” A haul like the Hannah Boden’s 35 tons doesn’t happen very often. The point is, though, that it could happen, and it could make somebody rich quick. That tantalizing possibility is what keeps fishermen coming back to such a dangerous job season after season.

However, even an unexpected windfall can still keep fishermen in poverty. When euphoric after a successful fishing trip, fishermen are known for compulsive spending: “A swordfisherman off a month at sea is a small typhoon of cash. He cannot get rid of the stuff fast enough. He buys lottery tickets fifty at a time and passes them around the bar. If anything hits he buys fifty more plus drinks for the house. […] The money is pushed around the bartop like dirty playing cards, and by closing time a week's worth of pay may well have been spent. For some, acting like the money means nothing is the only compensation for what it actually must mean.” Junger’s point is that fishermen can become trapped in a cycle of cathartic spending that lands them back in the needy position they started out in. Fishing offers a strong financial incentive, but even on the rare occasions that it pays off, it triggers other financial risks that impact those with the most to lose.

Fishing’s biggest risk is loss of life—and when that happens, their family members are generally left with nothing. After the Andrea Gail sinks in late October’s once-a-century storm, killing all aboard, the fishermen’s family members have to fight for any compensation: “Within weeks of the tragedy families of the dead men get a letter from Bob Brown asking them to exonerate him from responsibility. […] For several of the bereaved […] this is the only letter they get from Bob Brown […] protecting himself from future legalities. […] They see Bob ‘Suicide’ Brown as a businessman who has made hundreds of thousands of dollars off men like their husbands.” It’s never proven that Bob Brown’s maintenance of the Andrea Gail was negligent or contributed to its loss in any way, but the bereaved receive small settlements. In any case, there is nothing to show, financial or otherwise, for the terrible risk that its crew undertook. The one who stood to gain the most financially—the boat’s owner—assumes the least risk and walks away with the least harm overall, while those who assumed the most risk, and those whom they loved, pay the steepest price. Junger suggests that this is typical of the fishing industry and that there will always be people willing to assume those risks, as well as those who will exploit them. While Junger doesn’t propose any solution to this inequality, he implies that to some degree it's embedded in human nature, especially in a society that’s so much driven by financial profit.