I haven't been over to this side of the bay since the fire.
Been kind of missing him.
And I know he's gone, because normally he calls up
and razzes my wife about how better his tomatoes are doing than ours.
And our tomatoes are doing pretty damn good this year so.
I just thought I'd come see what it feels like.
This past winter we had a, unfortunate event occurred, a house fire.
We lost one of our esteemed elders of our community, Gary muehlberger.
When you lose an elder in a small community like ours,
the loss is really just incalculable.
He was a huge part of this community
and everybody, and its lives.
He had a heart of gold, and I sure do miss him.
Probably one of the last of the old breed, you know,
could really actually just live by the seat of his pants.
All he needed was his rifle and a, blue tarp and he was good to go.
But one thing I've learned in my time on the planet is
when tragedy strikes, everybody going to, kinda come together,
prop each other up.
Living in port protection can be extremely dangerous.
Without the community, your chances of survival are pretty damn slim.
There's newer generations coming in here
and they're willing to get their hands dirty and
that's what we need to keep this village going.
The best way to carry on Gary's legacy is
keep passing on his knowledge, share it with the new folks.
We are the ones that are the next generation of people coming up.
I want to do everything in my power to make sure
that port protection is thriving again.
We need to rise up and rebuild.
This is the dog and pony show.
Who's the dog, who's the pony?
This is how you build things out here and move things.
One terrible inch at a time.
But look at that. See, it's, it just wants to.
Yup. Okay, now we're gonna come up to a, make sure that, that second row
is underneath, where the, yeah.
I've got this much room.
Whoa, whoa, it's coming.
And away we go. Yeah, I wasn't stopping that.
Gravity always wins eventually.
And we got the, the main fire pump out
and we're, we're getting this fire boat as empty as possible
and taking it into the shipyard in the closest city, which is
a hundred-mile round trip, basically.
We're bringing it up to the twenty first century.
I can't even express the horrible tragedy of losing Gary in the fire.
That was the last time we used the fire boat, and it had some shortcomings.
So, we gotta get this boat whipped back into shape asap.
I don't like what I'm seeing in here.
I'm seeing electrolysis up the kazoo, corrosion from the aluminum.
We might have deeper problems than we thought.
We're going to definitely have to assess exactly
how much damage occurred here.
I'd like to say I'm going to be here for life.
The old fisherman, we don't die we just kind of drift away.
73 gallons on number 2.
Yeah, fuel out here is not cheap,
but part of the cost of doing business.
My name is Carl Hernandez,
and I have lived in port protection my entire life.
I stayed in port protection because I
don't feel like I really belong anywhere else.
My main income source has always been fishing,
I started working on deck and helping out when I was like seven for my dad.
I want to do kind of what my parents did.
They bought a piece of land, built a house, built a life.
You know, Gill netting, trolling.
There on empire if you will.
I got to be a part of that, and I feel like it's my turn now.
You know, I wanna, I wanna build my empire with the person
that I would like to spend my life with.
Would you like some coffee? Yeah.
And I did put a splash of cold water in there.
- You did? Thank you. - Yes. I know you.
My name is Morgan turcott and I have lived in port protection for a year.
I grew up in Petersburg, Alaska.
I did not want to live paycheck to paycheck.
I met and fell in love with Carl. And
he's going to marry me; He just doesn't know it yet.
And it's going to happen. I'm just waiting for it.
The whales going crazy out there.
Feeding, it's a good sign! Bods well.
This Gill net fishing season means a lot to us right now
because we are building a house and we have to make our money
and pay our bills and get things going to build our empire.
Each week we get a certain amount of time to fish.
Good morning! So, we get 48 hours to get our net in the water
and catch as much fish as we can get.
So, we need to get our ice and get fishing.
Sweet, thank you.
I kind of know where I want to go but it doesn't open till noon.
It's 11 o'clock right now.
So, every week on Sunday at noon on the dot,
you can start fishing. We've got us a nice open spot here.
There's no count down, you know, but everybody kind of pays attention.
We have our GPS on or something reliable
that tells you what time it is. Come on baby, one minute, less than a minute.
- It's time. - Okay, time to go.
We are really fishing for anything that will go in our net.
So, right now it's dogs, it's humpies, hopefully sockeye and coho as well.
Right now, as of 12:01, we've got the next 48 hours
to get as much fish as we can get.
So, these next 48 hours is extremely important. We're fishing now.
I hope we're catching.
Living out here it is a very small community.
Everybody is like part of your family,
and you know every time someone farted, basically.
It's a really big day for me, the opening day of subsistence deer hunting.
It's huge. Your odds of bagging a deer
are pretty damn good.
When deer season first opens, the deer aren't used to the hunters being out there
and they're not used to being shot at.
So, your odds are pretty good if you see a buck,
you're going to get him, 'cause they're not spooky yet.
Bella, you better be on today if I need you.
Venison is a huge part of my diet.
I get plenty of meat for the year off of deer hunting.
My intention is to fill my freezer,
so I'm going to push myself to my body's limits.
I like this spot, the deer, just lay down in there.
I am sure they are in there sunning,
I am going to go in and look around.
Just.
I like coming and checking out by these rivers and streams 'cause
all the animals always go to water eventually
and there is lots of nice green grass,
berries, everything they like.
Bear on this trail.
More bear, it's like he was just here when I drove up.
It makes me wonder if he is watching me.
Bear's always make me nervous because they are unpredictable.
You never know if they are going to have cubs or what,
you don't want to sneak up on them.
It makes me, just be a little more conscience of my surroundings.
Pay attention to any movement in the bushes.
I don't like surprising bears.
I feel like I am one of the richest guys in the world.
To be able to live here and just to see what I see every day.
If these old boats around here could talk,
boy they sure would tell you a story or two I bet.
It'd be pretty interesting too.
I am trying to find some sort of makeshift garden bed.
I figure if I can find an old skiff or bathtub.
Or anything like that will, will do for a garden bed.
My god, I just don't really see anything that's catching my eye around here. I,
I got another spot that I can check out.
I know of an old skiff from years ago
that it used to be up in the woods there, I am going to go see if I can find it.
And I want to grow my own vegetables,
costs a lot of money to get the produce out here, you know, I mean
the freight alone will kill you.
What is this?
I'll be damned, there is a flat bottom skiff.
This is almost considered an artifact.
I don't know how the hell I am going to get it out of here.
I guess the first step would be is get all this damn moss off of it
and try to get it unburied here, and,
hell, it has even got a tree growing on it,
I mean, you look at that?
You go, they put all these screws where the rivets used to be,
this thing must have leaked like a damn sieve.
Well, junior, let's go.
See if we can get this thing in the water somehow.
I am thinking about maybe attempting to yank this thing out, into the,
into the bay with a skiff. I don't know how it would work, but
it beats packing it or dragging it.
Hopefully it will slide right across there like boiled okra.
And so, I am going to hitch the bow of the skiff with some of that line and
I am going to proceed to try yank this thing out of the woods
and get it as close to the water as I can.
Hopefully, even in the water.
Hey, I guess we are going towards the beach junior.
I figure that is the easiest way and besides I like pulling.
There she comes, here she comes.
That was freaking cool!
Grrr! Look at that junior.
Damn! She's a sinker.
Holy.
There she goes out of sight.
This little skiff sinks, you know, there is a good chance
it could pull my skiff that I am pulling it with underwater,
it could get my get my engine swamped. Come on!
We don't want that to happen.
There it comes, thank god! Holy,
she was heading down to Davy Jones's locker.
The only thing I can do right now is go like hell
and don't slow down, 'cause it will sink.
As long as I keep her going, we will get her to my beach.
Success,
we got her home,
aha, my new garden bed.
Supposedly, good stuff to clean aluminum with here in this jug.
It's basically a mild acid.
This'll give us a lot better idea of how deep this corrosion is.
You know, we built our community building in the fire hold just for this boat.
I was only 23 years old I think.
She's, in sore need of a little tlc.
I think the next thing we; We need to rinse wherever that acid was.
A day doesn't pass that I don't draw upon the knowledge
that I got directly from the old timers who used to lived here.
A sure way to make sure port protection goes on in perpetuity is to,
share our knowledge with the young folks.
Give them a hand whenever we can.
Basically, what I am doing right now is I am looking at
those cork lines and just checking to see if we get fish in our net.
Corks bobbing right in the front there.
Bobbing? We got a hit, we got fish!
I'm getting the hell out of here.
There's just too much fresh bear poo around.
Actually, my favorite kind of bear's a gummy bear.
I'm not afraid of those at all. And you could tell.
I get this thing tied.
Well, now I'm off to go and see if I can round up some soil.
Well, we got her all whooshed out now, look at that.
Well, it's not leaking.
No, it's not all the way through but man those are some deep pits alright.
- The main thing is. - Yeah.
David, we can get to town with it, and without being rescued.
- Yeah. So, no. - No rescue missions.
No going down with the boat, damnit.
I guess it's time to, make sure that we can have the main up in operation.
Get that ready to throw water.
Get some water pumping out of it before we leave. Yeah.
It's always a touchy subject when we have to actually bring the boat
into town to get serviced because it leaves us out here
without protection of the fire boat.
Well, right now, we're just, pulling the hose out,
then we'll fire up the pump and,
make sure that in our absence whoever is here will be able
to throw some water at a fire it occurs.
That's good Dave.
Until we can make sure that this is all fully functional,
we're, we're not gonna leave the harbor.
Fire in the hole.
Coming at you!
I'm barely getting any pressure down here; I got a kink,
or you're not fired up far enough.
Something's going on.
So, we definitely got some issue going on.
You can see the, the water hammer
and the interruption in the, flow there.
It's never done that before.
But apparently, we're gonna have to have
some work done on the on the, on the water pump as well.
Why don't you kill her, Sam.
Well, at least, we, we have water coming out of the hoses
and it's a hell of a lot more than a garden hose.
Yeah. Start packing up the rig for the run tomorrow?
Well, hopefully the wind dies down.
We have sunshine and now it's windy so.
It's kind of open in here,
it's a good place to stop and take a peek.
Hopefully there is some action in here.
Whoa. Deer.
And he probably just tucked in right up there.
I'm quietly sneak in there.
It's a Doe, damnit.
And that was a perfect size, but it was a Doe.
I can't shoot it. Damnit.
Maybe I'll go in there and take a peak and see if she has a little boyfriend in there.
In the beginning of deer season, you can only harvest a buck, which is a male deer.
I'm going to follow her into the woods because
if she's got a boyfriend with her or daddy,
that's what I'm looking for.
There she is.
Underway. I gotta wave at, wave at the wife.
Every time I leave the harbor, we go through that little ritual.
Gotta say goodbye, you know, might not come back.
Could happen.
- Come on fishy, fishy! - Come on fishy.
Come on fishy, fishy. Come on now! Come on now!
We need some excitement!
Hey girl. Where's your man at?
Well. She didn't have her honey with her.
She stayed right there.
That's why today is so good they're not freaked out yet.
So, I'm going to get back on my scooter and
get on down the road and find me the one with antlers.
Come on money! Money! There is a fish.
Yeah.
First fish of the set. Sockeye, that's a good sign.
Yeah. Let me help. Put it over there.
Your side? Put humpies over here, yeah.
I don't really have a lot of experience fishing,
especially commercial fishing. I mean, I put a pole in the water before
and tried to catch fish, but this is completely different.
I've had maybe a summer and a half under my belt of Gill netting.
There's something.
Sockeye. Sockeye? Hell, yeah!
Hell, yeah.
Carl has been fishing from the time he has been a peewee.
- Try not to break it. - He does know a lot
and he is teaching me a lot.
Not seeing as many fish as I like to see.
A couple of sockeye, a couple of dogs, a couple of humpies.
I didn't come here for no stinky humpies.
We caught ourselves a few jelly fish.
There is a nice one, look at that. Look at that.
Sorry. That went in my eye,
that's what I get for trying to get it out of the net.
- Yup. - God,
that's going to suck in about 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!
I hope it was just water, I hope it was just water!
That was depressing.
God, my eye hurts!
I hate it. I hate it.
Are you okay?
My god.
You horrid.
Jellyfish in my eyeball.
Nice, lovely, burning, jellyfish, right in the corner of my eye.
Great.
That's why you should always wear sunglasses while you're doing this.
All right, gonna go back up top, I think.
And then I got some a little bit on my face it doesn't react too bad,
it tends to react mostly with moisture, so.
Nostrils, mouth, eyeballs, it, reacts pretty bad.
Gonna go try scraping along the beach as the tide goes out,
see if any fish built up in there.
Arf, arf, arf, arf.
How you doing kids? Arf. Arf.
Me and Dave squibb are heading into Petersburg,
we've got a bunch of much needed maintenance to do on the fire boat.
It's imperative we get that boat dropped off in Petersburg so that the,
the experts can fix it and we can get it back home as soon as possible.
Have the capacity to fight some fire.
In about, half a mile up here I'm gonna pull over.
And you can come along side, and we can,
we can have a little snack, a little bite to eat.
Roger that, I'm feeling a little peckish myself.
I'll, I'll follow you into a cove.
All right. Well, I can't think of a better picnic spot.
Would you like some tomatoes, Dave? Yeah. I would.
Sometimes I eat them, sometimes I don't. Today, I'm not.
- Thank you, sir. - Absolutely.
Made your way on up there to the, up the hill?
Yeah, I, I, I went back
for the first time since the fire, so it was time.
Now that.
I still haven't mustered the gumption to go up on site yet.
Made the boardwalk a couple times but I,
just couldn't, couldn't get there yet.
All I can say is, at least he, sucked at the marrow of life with a smile
'till the very end there, I mean, you know. Absolutely, yeah.
Didn't spend the last couple years in a,
in town trying to deal with it.
I think that was the last thing he wanted to do.
No. Go to the old folks' home so, what the hell.
We are in the old folks' home, we're in the best place old folks can be
as long as.
We keep the firewood blazing and. Yeah.
Food on the table.
Gonna miss that salty old sourdough, damnit.
Thinking it's probably time to fire it up.
This is your fun.
My happy place where I exist.
In the kelp.
Hey, for a quick one, that wasn't bad.
Couple is better than none, at this point. This wasn't that bad.
Look at you being optimistic. Right?
Where'd you get that from?
This is a big spruce tree that's blowed over.
The only soil around here is attached into the roots.
That's what I get for my garden.
I need to be careful here and watch these rocks behind me here, too
if one of those things fall, it's going to ruin your day.
The grand city of Petersburg.
Time to get this boat up to the shipyard.
Yeah, she's right up here.
Next time we see this boat, she'll be as new and improved as the fire boat has been
in a long, long, long time.
I'm gonna hook around this piling,
I figure what I'm going to do is I'm going to use a block and tow line.
I'll tighten these lines up back down here.
And then I'll hook on to it with my skiff
and give it a big yank and see what happens.
Hopefully I don't yank the damn piling out from underneath my hot tub deck.
That would really suck.
There's all kinds of rocks in the way that could get hung up behind anything.
Let's go, junior. So, we're just going to cross our fingers
and pull like hell.
Damnit. I might be stuck.
Try this again.
Holy.
I think we did her, junior. Thing's up the hill.
Whoa. I can't tell if it was a buck or a Doe.
But it was a deer.
He's still there.
He's watching for me.
It's a bush, he went in a little bit.
I'm gonna go in and look around.
They're in here, there's buck right there.
You can see all their little tracks. They're in here.
Just gonna look for any kind of movement or anything.
See if I can knock these seats out of here.
I got a big hammer.
Hopefully knock them loose.
There's one.
I don't hear anything moving.
One little tweety bird.
There we go. Won't be long we'll be planting seeds.
Just not in the cards for me today.
Some days, you're lucky. Some days, you're not.
But I'm not giving up.
Because if you keep trying, you'll get that pat hand.
Looky, looky, there she blows.
Time to mosey on down to the skiff and see, the improvements, ay?
Yeah.
Look at that nice pretty bottom paint. Ha ha ha.
Yeah.
- Get that bow line. - Yeah.
Push up to her, I'll give it a quick hop.
Sweet.
Look at how sweet that lit up. Yeah.
You can't even hear them.
Hell, you can even sit on the,
on the transom back here, this is insane.
I am digging, I am digging hard.
They even put some silicone in the pitting on the inside
and they put a patch on the outside.
This is the cat's meow certainly.
How right you are my bright little star.
I'll pull it around to the skiff float and we'll,
start working on getting the water Cannon back in place.
All right. Fish or bust.
There's humpies jumping all in here.
That's good to see.
Come on. Come on. One good set.
Let's see if we can scare some fish into the net real quick.
Yesterday, the first couple sets were not good, actually, by any stretch.
But day two, we got a way better idea of where to be when.
Look at that! Man.
It's looking a hell of a lot better.
- There's a nice school. - Look at that.
Damn it. They're all going through. Yeah!
Thank you, Jesus.
I can see why you love and hate your job.
Right? There's ups and there's downs.
It's great when your catching fish. When you're not, you just wanna hang yourself.
It's like, I'm done. Just wanna sink the boat, walk away, never come back.
Look at that.
We got a big one.
What the is that?
That better not be what I think it is right there. Is it?
- Is that a sea lion? - Nah, it's just a seal.
Don't you eat my fish, you little, got something I can throw at him?
He's right behind us somewhere.
I saw him tugging on a fish down there.
Eating at the belly of it right now.
Just try and scare him off.
- Bye bye! - Okay, we might have to
start picking our way out of this a little bit.
Come on, baby. Let's make some money.
Damn seal.
Got a giant hole in the side of it.
That's what the seal does, so, it's not that bad.
He was trying for it.
At least it was a humpy.
There's a fish!
There's a lot of sockeyes here. This is good.
Sockeyes are the highest dollar fish we catch.
This is kind of what I was hoping for, but
definitely worked out better than expected.
Way more than breaking even?
Definitely more than breaking even.
We did get a little bit ahead not enough where we need to be,
but it is a start, and hopefully this can keep up
through the rest of our Gill net season.
This has been a success.
Sometimes make the right move.
Well, I got some carrots and turnips I'm going to stick in the ground and,
I can get the damn things open.
There we go. I consider myself kind of a softie, a sentimental guy.
I mean, just having this skiff there,
it takes me back to a time when things were a lot easier.
I had a skiff exactly like it when I was a kid, man.
Had to work my butt off in the hayfields,
and I pulled tansies too for the farmers.
And worked all summer to save up enough money to get that skiff.
It was, my prized possession for a long time.
Had a lot of good adventures on that thing, going up and down the old scatter
crick trapping and duck hunting and fishing.
All my other friends were getting in trouble, I was out there having fun.
Yeah. Those were, those are some good times back then.
Not a worry in the world.
Guess that's it. I'm super stoked that the skiff is up here
and done and that my garden is planted. What a relief.
Best thing of all is I'm going to have, carrots and turnips in my bear stew.
And hopefully the damn crows don't eat it all.
There we go.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, nice.
Gonna spray some water.
See what she's got, see what's she got.
What we're witnessing now is basically a changing in the guard,
the old timers are slowly passing away,
but we do have an influx of new blood,
young folks that are attracted to this part of the world.
And they're a pretty Hardy lot.
It's hopefully gonna help revitalize the community of port protection.
We've got our work cut out for us.
This bag is all humpy's.
It's a different lifestyle growing up, for sure.
You don't get your summers out of school playing
and having a good time it's, it's work.
But, as a young kid, seeing that, it's kinda cool. 222.
And, this is where I want to be, building up our empire.
I came out here for a simpler lifestyle
and just to get all the stress out of my life.
I've done that but it's not simpler, by no means, it's a lot of work.
Starting to get up there in age, but I prefer to live the way I do live.
If I have I got to work my ass off to get something that I need, then so be it.
Boy, he loves retrieving.
You gotta have a strong back and a weak mind to live out here.
Junior. Good boy.
Every single one of us is going to live on with Gary's spirit in our hearts.
The community is going to have to band together, take a deep breath.
There's another day coming.
Tickled as a peach. Damn, that's nice, man. Yeah.
Well, inevitably we're going to have to pull this puppy back out of the barn
and go fight.
Well, we'll be ready for it.
There's no, no way that I would want to change my life.
The call of the wild drew me out and I could never leave.
This is a gem in its own way, it's a beautiful place.
Port protection is kind of, in a crossroad.
There she goes.
The last decade we've really lost a lot of the sourdoughs,
the pillars of our community.
That's about an eighty pounder.
A handful of young folk out here now that are pretty Hardy
and they have the right stuff in a critical time we need.
I feel like I caught a fish man! I feel like a stud, dude! Hell yeah!
I feel a certain responsibility to keep it alive, like to really push.
Stop, stop, stop, stop!
Really important for people like me to pass on as much as I can.
Whoa! That is a sea monster!
If these young people don't learn how to survive,
the very fabric of the community is going to fail.
Yeah, I see a bear right there.
Go!
I've seen a lot of people left with their tails between their legs
and I have big goals not to be one of those successful day, if you ask me.
Yeahhh!
This is where I want to be, this is my end game.
It may be hard work but we're ready for it. Hey, hey!
Many are called, few are chosen.