FISHER FEATURE: ERIC GREEN
Meet Eric Green
Young, energetic fishers like Eric are the life blood of Oregon’s Dungeness Crab fishery.
Name:
Eric Green
How long in Newport:
10 years seasonally, 5 straight
How long fishing:
5-10 years
Current Vessel:
Anona Kay, Shearwater (co-owner)
Do you listen to music at sea?
The boat is noisy, so anything with enough rhythm that you can hear something. Reggae, hip-hop, something that will kinda keep you going.
What do you do when you're not fishing?
I like to surf, ride mountain bikes, snowboarding, anything outside really.
Favorite seafood?
Chinook salmon is pretty hard to beat.
Best meal you’ve had on the boat?
Fish that we catch. Sometimes we'll get a little lingcod or rockfish on the boat and make fish tacos or fish sandwiches.
Worst meal on the boat?
Frozen burritos. Hot Pocket type things. You see a lot of those.
What’s your wildest nature encounter?
We spent an hour last winter drifting with a pod of four orcas. We caught a giant Pacific octopus a couple years ago that filled the entire crab pot, probably weighed 70 pounds. That was pretty crazy to me.
Best way to eat a dungeness crab?
I think they're pretty much delicious any way you do it, but one of my favorite ways I learned recently is instead of cooking them in boiling water, clean the crab while it's raw and steam it with some white wine, garlic, butter, parsley, kinda like how you'd make steamer clams.
Do you have any boat superstitions?
I'm not very superstitious. People talk about "whistling up a storm" being a thing but I really never knew how to whistle anyway.
Why fishing?
To be honest, I think I'm just kind of an introvert. I like being alone and being outside. And it's really satisfying to watch your hard work turn into money, see your pots come up full of crab. Y'know, I think a lot of people are really into gambling for the same reason. There are so many variables you don't know, that you can't control: population, price, weather, if you landed in right spot... Basically luck, also. It's exciting and really satisfying when everything works out.
