Tasman Sea - The Bluefin

FTV Bluefin VKBF, was built in 1981, Launceston Tasmania. A training vessel for the Australian Maritime College – teaching those who’s focus fixed solely on the sea from a young age, and came from far and wide to learn the art of fisheries and all things maritime. It was a closed loop – fishing practices taught – gillnet, longline, cray pot and trawl. The catch landed on deck, made its way to a cool store on shore – into the hands of seafood labs, fisheries scientists and biologists in training who’s tools of the trade were scalpel and blade where dissections and anatomy paved the way for deeper understandings in ecology of these species once in the sea and now on ice.

The vessel, a place for technology and innovation. Tricky questions explored by parties coming together to resolve issues of bycatch and the waste of marine creatures discarded back to the sea who’s floating bodies would have fed the sharks, bar the fact that the sharks too were plucked from oceans blue in numbers beyond the capacity of these once swirling masses to replenish themselves the way that evolution had designed populations to dwell. The Northern Prawn Fishery and those like it had problems which needed to be interrogated. Multi-pronged issues of turtles meeting untimely deaths, causing the wasting of time and unnecessary risks to crews. Parties came together, turtle exclusion devices developed through collaboration between fishermen and scientists, ideas refined. An iterative process stemming from thoughts and rolling conversations on the back of decks through collective experiences of countless prawn seasons, problems and annoyances discussed, methods trials, practices adapted.

Sheet bend, bowline, splice, truckies hitch. Rope at first clumsily passed through the hands of students on the journey towards mastery bred only through repetition. The crew, who could tie these knots with eyes closed and hands behind backs, spawned from life before this one lived at sea where the craft of perfectly laid ropes were used for fisheries hook and line, cray pot, and gillnet. There were times when our perceptions that fish stocks where infinite, paralleling the limitless immensity of the ocean were once, yet they are now no longer. A turning point, a fishery decline and a change in direction of the young scholars coming aboard.

The steady rumble of the Bluefin remains, still a place for teaching, still a place for science – research and development. She makes her way across oceans allowing those fortunate enough to embark on journeys to places of mystery. Where flourishing fish populations no longer seen in other places are spawned through convergence of tropical and temperate seas, rich colour and diversity, protected from fisheries and seer geographic isolation. Galapagos sharks in mobs, boisterously swirling through shallow lagoons, tiger sharks with teeth sharp enough to make your eyes water. Reefs originating from volcanic hotspots ageing 5 million years in the heart of the Tasman Sea, revealing numbers reflecting the dominance of these predators on reefs in days gone by.

She is 39 years old, and through her lifespan, things have changed. The crew remain, the students remain – yet the lessons are different. Now she is commissioned to collect data with technologies which are so cutting edge they are developed tomorrow to be used today. Before, on the return voyage of this vessel, freezers were packed with fish, now hard drives filled with terabytes. The comradery of the Bluefin crew who collectively experience conditions only known in the deep blue. Like a well-oiled machine they achieve the dispatch and retrieval of equipment worth more than your house in seas making landlubbers weak at the knees.

This vessel paints the picture, it sets the scene and provides a window. It gives insight into the hearts and minds of those who thrive on a life at sea. They are at home miles from shore. Their life is lived juggling the polarities of security and adventure. The marbled push and pull - the desire for a life at sea, matched with changing nature of being surrounded by the swirling blue.