COLD WATER LIVING:

A  Fisherman’s Truth

Before the sun even thinks of rising over Cape Columbine, we are already awake , we roll quietly through the sleeping towns, headlights cutting through mist that smells of salt and kelp. The ocean lies dark and waiting. The cold from the Atlantic ocean bites straight through jackets and into bone...It always has. It always will.

This is not just a job. It is inheritance. I did not chase degrees or corner offices. The sea was my classroom. My father’s hands—cracked and scarred ~ were my textbooks. The tide was my clock. The wind was my exam.

On the West Coast, fishing is not a career choice you make on paper. It is something that grows inside you long before you understand what it costs. And it costs plenty.

 

The Sea Is Freedom — and Fear

People romanticize. They see sunsets splashed in orange and gold, dolphins riding the bow wave, seagulls

dancing in the wind. They imagine adventure. Yes, there is beauty. The kind that makes your chest ache.

The kind that reminds you that God painted this coastline with a rough, generous hand... But there is also fear.

Every launch carries uncertainty. The next haul could make you, or it could leave your deck empty and your tank drained. If the fish aren’t there, neither is the money.

We don’t clock in. We gamble with weather, quotas, and a sea that owes us nothing.

 

We Are Not the Enemy

Too often, fishermen are painted as greedy—men who strip the ocean for profit. That story is easy to tell from an office far from the shoreline. But come stand on a deck at dawn... We notice when shoals thin out.  We feel the shifts in seasons before scientists publish reports. We are not destroyers of the sea...We are sons of it. Our grandfathers fished these waters. Our children hope to. 

 

No fisherman wants to empty tomorrow’s ocean.

Our survival depends on its survival. When regulations tighten without consultation, when small-scale

fishers are squeezed between industrial fleets and policy paperwork, it is not greed that hurts us,...

it is the fear of extinction. Not of fish... but off culture.

 

The Work No One Sees

When the fish are there, the real labour begins. Sleep disappears. Hands split open. Backs strain. Salt burns

into cuts. The deck becomes a blur of repetition — pull, sort, pack, repeat. Over and over. Through cold

nights and heaving swells. There is no pause button. And when the catch is good, the pressure is heavier.

Move faster. Work harder. Don’t waste the moment. By the time we return to harbour, we are not heroes.

We are exhausted. ...Then comes the quiet part — the part that breaks many men.

 

The Sacrifices We Don’t Talk About

We miss birthdays. School plays. Anniversaries. The small daily moments that build families. Children grow whether you are home or not. ... “Life goes on at sea and on land. But only one of us gets to watch it happen.” That is the truth that sits heavy in a fisherman’s chest at night. There are no benefits. No retirement guarantees. No safety net. Many have died “in their boots,” because stopping isn’t an option when your income depends on the next launch.

 

Brotherhood in the Cold

On a boat, you learn men deeply. You see who they are when the weather turns. When the nets tear. When the hold is empty. Trust is not optional — it is survival. The crew becomes a second family, forged not by comfort but by shared hardship. Within a crew, loyalty runs thick. If something goes wrong , the only people who can save you are the ones standing beside you. That bond cannot be explained to someone who has never watched a storm roll in from the Atlantic horizon.

 

Why This Story Matters

When you sit down to eat your fish tonight, you are tasting more than seafood. You are tasting missed birthdays, Frozen fingers, Salt in wounds and west coast pride and heritage. West Coast fishing communities are not statistics on a policy document. They are living, breathing cultures stitched into the coastline of South Africa. Our coast was build on the rhythm of tides and nets. If fishermen disappear, it won’t just be jobs that vanish. It will be identity, language and culture. Generational knowledge of winds, reefs, currents, and seasons that cannot be downloaded or replaced.

 

We Don’t Ask for Sympathy. We Ask for Understanding. To understand that behind every fish on ice is a human story. To support local catch. To respect the culture. To remember the hands that feed you. Because long before sunrise tomorrow, while most of the country sleeps, we will be launching again into the dark Atlantic — not because it is easy, not because it makes us rich, but because it is who we are. The West Coast does not just produce fish. It produces fishermen. 

And as long as the Benguela breathes cold against our shores, we will answer its call.

 

 

 

 

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