My father was a sailor, and my father's father was a sailor. Maybe someone else's father of someone else's father in our family was a sailor, but not am I.
I was engaged in sports rowing and love fishing, sailed several times in the southern seas, but I never conquered my native northern waters. Well, my profession in life is as far from the big water as possible. This weekend I had the opportunity to correct this unfortunate misunderstanding and go on an underwater fishing trip with the owner of a small boat.
I was surprised to know that all these boats are preparing for an early meeting with tourists who have been showing more and more interest in the north in recent years. Local fishermen are happy to conduct excursions in these waters, organize delicious lunches of freshly caught seafood, tell stories about the peninsula and the village. There are even bathhouses in the holds of some of these ships! Can you imagine what it's like to dive into these icy waters after a good steaming.
Not this time. This is the first exit of our vessel before the start of the tourist season, the main task is to check how the boat survived the winter and equipment for underwater fishing. As well as to mark the places for the next month in which there is enough victims to catch.
Spring is already felt here. Only a few sunny days and light rains, and most of the snow debris has already been washed into the bay from the rocky shores. Young waterfalls murmur merrily in the coastal rocks and even the first vegetation begins to respond to the call of warmth.
In the photo below you can see how the tourism business affects the region, pay attention to the houses in the background. These are abandoned Soviet-era buildings, residential and commercial, they have been slowly rotting for years. And in the foreground is a newly built marina with a restaurant and recreation rooms for tourists.
The captain warned me that I could get very seasick during a walk, like many land rats. These boats have a fairly high landing in the water, which is why a little excitement at sea is felt on the deck. But thanks to the forefathers, my body can stand it. Nevertheless, it was difficult to take good pictures, given the downed autofocus on my old camera.
For example, the captain noticed the fin of a whale, but I didn't have time to react in time and take a picture because of the pitching. However, half an hour later we managed to see a bearded seal, which looked at us a little with discontent and superiority, maybe we spoiled his hunting…
I was surprised how much life there is in these seemingly dormant waters. Looking at the metallic gray surface of the sea, it seems that there is nothing on the bottom but rocks and algae.
Sea urchins, scallops, hermit crab, starfish, sea cucumber. All these guys with the prefix marine ... in just half an hour, the diver was able to find so many different and dissimilar marine life. Don't worry, almost all of them have been released... almost.
It always seemed to me that local fishermen mostly fish with nets. But the guys explained that there has not been such a number of fish here for a long time to be enough for both animals and people. Moreover, large companies reserve the richest areas with fish and send it for export.
But in the last decade, more and more residents have become aware that we live on the seashore, which is rich not only in fish, but also in other creatures suitable for food, the population of which at the same time manages to reproduce itself. Who would have thought that these waters hide such riches…
By the way, due to the fact that fishermen switched to bottom fishing, whales and other mammals returned to these bays, there are now enough fish for them.