My first job
During Christmas break in 2011 when I was 12 years old I got an opportunity to deckhand on a small commercial fishing boat ,owned by my uncle, while in Southeast Alaska. We left around 12 o'clock to get to the location where the crab pots were located (my uncle had set them a few weeks earlier). when we got there it was dark so we lowered the anchor and rested for the night. The way crab pots work is that they sit on the ocean floor and are designed so a crab can get in but cannot get out, they have a rope attached to the top of the pot the other end of the rope is tied off to a buoy that floats on the surface to show the location of the pot. the buoy also allows for the crab pot to easily collect the crab pot and also show who the owner of the crab pot is. Early in the morning,before the sun had risen, we set out to pull pots and collect the crabs. I was cleaning out the small plastic jars used to hold the bait, since they were on the ocean floor for so long the bait began to rot. This created a very potent smell that attracted the crabs even more, but it did not smell as good to me as it did to the crab. I would cough and gag as I cleaned out the bait pots and the worst part is, The smell was so bad I literally got sick. I was in my bunk for the two remaining days sleeping almost the entire time. At one point the two other deckhands woke me up to make sure I wasn't dying. but I had recovered by the time we returned home.I got a good night sleep that night before I got up early to help clean up the boat, sell the crab to the cannery and put the crab pots away. Even though I was sick and unhelpful for a large chunk of the trip my uncle paid me $300.