# West Coast Crab Fishermen vs. Big Oil

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 22 Apr 2019, 21 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/4bf7fd1f-bcc1-40bd-8257-b3ec00f4eb4e/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

In 2015, climate change shut down West Coast crab fisheries, disrupting ecosystems, food chains, and livelihoods. Scientists had warned the oil industry this would happen for decades. We explore how the fisherman community is fighting back. Support us: https://www.patreon.com/Drilled See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:04] Speaker 1: In Season one of Drilled, we examined the creation of
[0:08] Speaker 1: climate denial. We talked to scientists and uncovered documents that
[0:12] Speaker 1: outlined a decades long propaganda campaign launched by big oil.
[0:16] Speaker 1: We dug into a lot, but there was still plenty
[0:18] Speaker 1: that we didn't quite get to. For one thing, climate
[0:21] Speaker 1: scientist Ken Caldera said something to me that I couldn't
[0:24] Speaker 1: get out of my mind.
[0:26] Speaker 2: Eric Barron was performing paleoclimate simulations and then running the
[0:31] Speaker 2: model and trying to figure out where in ancient times
[0:35] Speaker 2: the upwelling zones might have been in the oceans, because
[0:38] Speaker 2: those would be zones where oil might form. And the
[0:42] Speaker 2: oil companies were funding this work as part of their
[0:46] Speaker 2: oil exploration. At the same time that they were kind
[0:51] Speaker 2: of talking down the models in terms of their ability
[0:54] Speaker 2: to have futility for current policy, they were used those
[1:00] Speaker 2: very same models to help guide their oil prospect thing.
[1:06] Speaker 1: I don't know if you caught that, but what he's
[1:07] Speaker 1: saying there is that during the same years that companies
[1:11] Speaker 1: were saying that climate science was just too uncertain to
[1:14] Speaker 1: inform regulations or for anyone to make decisions about the
[1:17] Speaker 1: future based on it, they were using that exact same
[1:21] Speaker 1: science to prospect for more oil. So obviously they felt
[1:25] Speaker 1: pretty confident about those models. And then when I started
[1:28] Speaker 1: reading the full complaint filed in that legal case we
[1:31] Speaker 1: mentioned at the end of Season one, where West Coast
[1:33] Speaker 1: crab fishermen are suing oil companies, I came across this
[1:37] Speaker 1: list of patents that oil companies started applying for in
[1:40] Speaker 1: the seventies for all the various types of machinery and
[1:43] Speaker 1: boats that you'd need to drill in a melting Arctic.
[1:47] Speaker 1: Here's a summary. In nineteen seventy three, Exxon got a
[1:50] Speaker 1: patent for a cargo ship capable of breaking through sea
[1:53] Speaker 1: ice and for an oil tanker designed specifically for use
[1:56] Speaker 1: in previously unreachable areas of the Arctic. Next year, Chevron
[2:01] Speaker 1: got a patent for a mobile Arctic drilling platform that
[2:04] Speaker 1: would allow for drilling in areas with increased ice flow
[2:07] Speaker 1: movement due to warming temperatures. Then Texaco got one for
[2:11] Speaker 1: an apparatus that would allow for drilling in previously unreachable
[2:15] Speaker 1: Arctic areas. Shell picked up a similar pattern in nineteen
[2:18] Speaker 1: eighty four, as I was digging into all that, news
[2:21] Speaker 1: broke about an ongoing case in Massachusetts focused on an
[2:25] Speaker 1: exonmobile oil storage facility.
[2:28] Speaker 3: It's a new twist on David versus Goliath as an
[2:30] Speaker 3: environmental group begins legal action against Exon Mobil. The Conservation
[2:34] Speaker 3: Law Foundation is alleging petroleum giant knowingly work to discredit
[2:38] Speaker 3: climate change science for more than three decades. Suit goes
[2:41] Speaker 3: on to say the Fortune five hundred company has caused
[2:44] Speaker 3: extensive environmental damage like in this area along the Mystic
[2:47] Speaker 3: River in Chelsea and Everett.
[2:49] Speaker 1: The suit alleges that Exxon is putting several coastal towns
[2:53] Speaker 1: at risk of toxic exposures by not adequately updating its
[2:57] Speaker 1: facility in the face of rising sea levels and increase
[3:00] Speaker 1: to extreme weather. Exon has filed multiple motions to dismiss
[3:03] Speaker 1: the case, but the judges ruled in favor of the
[3:06] Speaker 1: Conservation Law Foundation. Now Exon spokespeople are saying the storage
[3:10] Speaker 1: facility is prepared for sea level rise. The company says
[3:13] Speaker 1: it has quote engineered its facilities robustly with extreme weather
[3:17] Speaker 1: events in mind and can manage the risk. That all
[3:20] Speaker 1: reminded me of a random job I had in my
[3:23] Speaker 1: early twenties. I worked in the marketing department of an
[3:25] Speaker 1: engineering firm and Yeah, it was as interesting as it sounds.
[3:29] Speaker 1: My job was to write case studies, and the firm
[3:32] Speaker 1: just so happened to have done quite a bit of
[3:34] Speaker 1: work for the oil and gas industry. I remembered writing
[3:37] Speaker 1: about projects where they had helped to engineer offshore oil
[3:40] Speaker 1: platforms to make them resilient to sea level rise. That
[3:44] Speaker 1: job was a long time ago, so I reached out
[3:46] Speaker 1: to the guy who had headed up that department to
[3:48] Speaker 1: ask when exactly the oil companies had started to work
[3:51] Speaker 1: on this stuff. He wrote back right away, Oh, oil
[3:55] Speaker 1: and gas folks have always been big on this. I
[3:57] Speaker 1: don't have a specific date, but pretty much from the
[3:59] Speaker 1: bating of their existence. So while oil companies were protecting
[4:04] Speaker 1: their assets, everyone else took a thirty year break from
[4:07] Speaker 1: paying attention to climate change. And they did so in
[4:10] Speaker 1: part because oil companies convinced them to, not just through
[4:14] Speaker 1: their own direct communications, but through an extensive, decades long
[4:18] Speaker 1: propaganda campaign that served to undermine the science and promote
[4:22] Speaker 1: the message that climate science and climate models were just
[4:25] Speaker 1: too uncertain to inform regulations or anyone's future plans. Science
[4:30] Speaker 1: that the oil companies themselves were, at the same time
[4:34] Speaker 1: relying on extensively. Now, as sea levels rise and the
[4:38] Speaker 1: oceans warm up, some communities and industries are really feeling
[4:42] Speaker 1: the consequences of those decades. One group in particular has
[4:46] Speaker 1: decided to take matters into their own hands. That's the
[4:49] Speaker 1: story we're going to follow this season. I'm Ami Westervelt.
[4:52] Speaker 1: Welcome to the second season of DRILLT. We're calling it
[4:56] Speaker 1: hot water.
[5:00] Speaker 4: All communities across America there's a sense of being forgotten
[5:04] Speaker 4: and left behind.
[5:05] Speaker 3: Our downtown used to be a precious place.
[5:09] Speaker 5: It died, it died. What good does an insurance car
[5:13] Speaker 5: do if there aren't any doctors in town?
[5:15] Speaker 1: And this is the situation in much of rural America. Democrats,
[5:19] Speaker 1: we really have failed to be in rural America. When
[5:22] Speaker 1: we talk about rural America these days, we don't usually
[5:26] Speaker 1: mean coastal towns. In fact, most people think coastal is
[5:30] Speaker 1: the opposite of rural America. Coastal elites and all that.
[5:34] Speaker 1: But despite their size and cultural influence, La San Francisco, Portland,
[5:38] Speaker 1: and Seattle are not all the coastal West has to offer.
[5:42] Speaker 1: Between these big urban hubs are dozens of small fishing
[5:46] Speaker 1: towns where life revolves around seasons, and currents. Towns like
[5:51] Speaker 1: Crescent City, way up at the northern tip of California
[5:54] Speaker 1: near the Oregon border. Crescent City has a few claims
[5:58] Speaker 1: to fame. For one, it's the soonami capital of the
[6:01] Speaker 1: Continental United States. The town was pretty well destroyed by
[6:04] Speaker 1: a tsunami in nineteen sixty four, and the harbor was
[6:07] Speaker 1: totaled by another one in twenty eleven. It's also absolutely
[6:14] Speaker 1: covered in sea lions certain times of the year, like
[6:16] Speaker 1: when I visited in March. And despite the fact that
[6:19] Speaker 1: a tsunami could destroy your boat, its harbor is one
[6:22] Speaker 1: of the biggest crab ports on the West Coast. Almost
[6:26] Speaker 1: everyone in Crescent City has some connection to the harbor.
[6:30] Speaker 1: I meet Ben Platt on the docks early on a
[6:33] Speaker 1: Sunday morning. He's running late because the time just changed,
[6:36] Speaker 1: but he's also anxious, because that's just the deal for
[6:39] Speaker 1: crabbers these days. With his flannel shirt and his baseball
[6:42] Speaker 1: cap and stubble, he looks like a fisherman straight out
[6:45] Speaker 1: of Central Casting, but his story and his take on
[6:48] Speaker 1: the world is a little less expected. Ben lives a
[6:51] Speaker 1: few hundred miles south of here, but he keeps his
[6:53] Speaker 1: boat in Crescent City. Because it allows him to not
[6:56] Speaker 1: only crab out of Crescent City and ports south, but
[6:59] Speaker 1: also had to Washington and Alaska for tuna and when possible, salmon.
[7:04] Speaker 1: He grew up in another coastal town just like this one,
[7:07] Speaker 1: but a few hundred miles south, called Point Arena. It's
[7:10] Speaker 1: a tiny, one dock town, the sort of place where
[7:13] Speaker 1: kids could cut school early to fish.
[7:15] Speaker 6: You could get out of school back then. My brother
[7:17] Speaker 6: would get out like a month or so early. They'd
[7:20] Speaker 6: let him get out so he could go work on
[7:21] Speaker 6: a boat. And so he started working on other boats
[7:24] Speaker 6: other than the family boat when he was like twelve.
[7:27] Speaker 1: Ben is in his fifties, so we're not talking about
[7:29] Speaker 1: something that happened one hundred years ago. This is fairly
[7:32] Speaker 1: recent history. He and his brother Dan started going out
[7:35] Speaker 1: with their dad, Buzz, on his boat when they were
[7:37] Speaker 1: about nine. Dan eventually joined the Marines and spent the
[7:40] Speaker 1: rest of his life on boats, but Ben liked school.
[7:43] Speaker 1: He went off to college at Humboldt State in northern
[7:45] Speaker 1: California and then made his way to La.
[7:52] Speaker 6: I worked in the film business there in la for
[7:54] Speaker 6: about eight years, and I also I was playing music
[7:58] Speaker 6: shows and frock bands that was really why I was there.
[8:00] Speaker 6: I was pursuing that dream and that went pretty good
[8:04] Speaker 6: for a while, actually, but I went from drinking to drugging,
[8:16] Speaker 6: and that became a big problem for me. So I
[8:18] Speaker 6: have almost twenty two years clean and sober now. But
[8:21] Speaker 6: when I hit bot On, my was homeless in Los Angeles.
[8:25] Speaker 6: I was in and out of jail and a lot
[8:26] Speaker 6: of trouble, and in my last day there, I almost died.
[8:30] Speaker 6: I got in a fight and got stabbed and I
[8:32] Speaker 6: almost bled out, and so that was kind of that
[8:34] Speaker 6: was my wake up call. And so I followed my
[8:38] Speaker 6: dad's suggestion and just kind of went back with them to.
[8:41] Speaker 2: Poor brag.
[8:49] Speaker 1: Ben went to what he describes as sort of a
[8:51] Speaker 1: bargain basement rehab.
[8:52] Speaker 6: There wasn't even really counselors or anything, but it was
[8:55] Speaker 6: a safe place to be for someone that was trying
[8:57] Speaker 6: to recover from drug addiction.
[8:59] Speaker 1: On pass is from rehab, he'd go fishing with his
[9:02] Speaker 1: dad and I had been injured.
[9:03] Speaker 6: I had very little use in my left hand and
[9:06] Speaker 6: arm I had been going fishing with him a little
[9:08] Speaker 6: bit and it helped a lot to use my hand
[9:11] Speaker 6: and stuff. And I loved spending time with my dad
[9:13] Speaker 6: again because I'd been out of touch for quite a while.
[9:26] Speaker 6: So I stayed there for a year, and then my
[9:27] Speaker 6: dad died pretty suddenly. He had a few different boats,
[9:31] Speaker 6: He had a couple of skiffs, he was doing live
[9:33] Speaker 6: rock cod, he was rebuilding his big boat. I was
[9:36] Speaker 6: doing a new repower on the engine, and so I
[9:39] Speaker 6: moved into town at that point with a year cleaning
[9:41] Speaker 6: sober to help my step moom out. And so I
[9:44] Speaker 6: was like, well, there's this leaky old skiff with an
[9:47] Speaker 6: outboard motor that doesn't run very well in a trailer
[9:49] Speaker 6: and a little pickup truck, and so I tried it
[9:52] Speaker 6: and did well at that, and then I actually sank
[9:55] Speaker 6: that first boat and was fishing out of a kayak
[9:58] Speaker 6: for a while with a friend of mine. We had
[10:00] Speaker 6: little live wells in the back of our pickup trucks
[10:03] Speaker 6: with little air pomps, and we were selling to the
[10:05] Speaker 6: live Asian market live rockid all hook and line, and
[10:09] Speaker 6: it was pretty cool. It was like sport fishing, but
[10:11] Speaker 6: making money at it. And then I got a better boat.
[10:14] Speaker 6: I got a Boston whaler with a little bit better
[10:16] Speaker 6: engine on it, and eventually rendered my own little alley
[10:20] Speaker 6: house in Fort Bragg.
[10:22] Speaker 1: When I talked about on the phone before heading up
[10:25] Speaker 1: to Crescent City. He told me that the fishing community
[10:27] Speaker 1: had sort of been his salvation at a pretty dark
[10:29] Speaker 1: point in his life. That if you work hard and
[10:32] Speaker 1: you're loyal, this community has your back. It's one of
[10:35] Speaker 1: those communities where you're either part of it or you're
[10:38] Speaker 1: someone who's never pissed in saltwater. Just taking a little
[10:51] Speaker 1: break here to tell you about a show that I
[10:53] Speaker 1: have in regular rotation, Latina to Latina, profiles a different
[10:57] Speaker 1: woman each week, touching on everything from their personal histories
[11:00] Speaker 1: to their professional triumphs. You might recognize host and ace
[11:04] Speaker 1: interviewer Elicia Menandez from PBS's I'm Important Company. She does
[11:09] Speaker 1: a great job on this show too. Listeners of Drilled
[11:12] Speaker 1: should particularly check out the recent interview with climate scientist
[11:16] Speaker 1: turned environmental justice advocate Nicole Hernandez. She's really fascinating on
[11:21] Speaker 1: everything from how her background has informed her work and
[11:24] Speaker 1: how the Latino community in particular understands and is responding
[11:28] Speaker 1: to climate change. Hernandez has been instrumental in getting people
[11:32] Speaker 1: to understand what happens during quote unquote sunny day floods
[11:36] Speaker 1: in Miami, and she's just really really interesting to listen to,
[11:39] Speaker 1: So check that out. Rest The episodes are great too.
[11:41] Speaker 1: You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Radio Public, really wherever
[11:46] Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, and it's great to check it out.
[11:50] Speaker 1: I also want to recommend a website that does a
[11:53] Speaker 1: great job of keeping track of all the various climate
[11:56] Speaker 1: lawsuits happening right now. Climate Liability News sent me to
[12:00] Speaker 1: the Courtroom Climate science tutorial where I first got the
[12:03] Speaker 1: idea to do Drilled. Their reporters are really on top
[12:06] Speaker 1: of this stuff in a way that no one else is,
[12:08] Speaker 1: so it's a great one stop shop if you want
[12:10] Speaker 1: to know what's happening with these cases. Okay, back to
[12:13] Speaker 1: the show. There are plenty of fisher women up and
[12:23] Speaker 1: down this coast too, who are also integral parts of
[12:26] Speaker 1: the community, perhaps none more so than Lori French down
[12:30] Speaker 1: in morro Bay, about five hundred miles south of Crescent City. Well,
[12:35] Speaker 1: Ben fits a lot of the images you might have
[12:37] Speaker 1: in your head about a fisherman. He's also a college educated,
[12:40] Speaker 1: fairly left leaning, and he told me I.
[12:43] Speaker 6: Come from long line of Jewish liberal activists.
[12:46] Speaker 1: Politically, he's a representative of about half the fleet. Laurie's
[12:50] Speaker 1: more conservative, more representative of the other half of the fleet,
[12:54] Speaker 1: and over the past several months, at least a dozen
[12:56] Speaker 1: people told me if I wanted to understand West Coast fishing,
[13:00] Speaker 1: I had to talk to Lorie French.
[13:03] Speaker 5: You know, there's only like six or seven crabbers down here. Yeah,
[13:06] Speaker 5: most of us are old school. We have We've been
[13:09] Speaker 5: in for generation.
[13:10] Speaker 1: Laurie's husband, Jeff, has fished all his life, and now
[13:13] Speaker 1: one of her sons, Lauren, is a commercial fisherman too.
[13:16] Speaker 1: When I asked to meet her and Jeff after talking
[13:18] Speaker 1: to them on the phone, she said Jeff doesn't talk
[13:20] Speaker 1: to reporters, that he and his brother and her son
[13:23] Speaker 1: had appointed her the family spokesperson. She suggested we meet
[13:27] Speaker 1: at a Mexican restaurant in more Obey because her friend
[13:30] Speaker 1: owns it and she needed to coordinate with him around
[13:32] Speaker 1: the annual crab feed. Laurie's sort of a community caretaker.
[13:37] Speaker 1: She's big on gatherings and she does a lot to
[13:39] Speaker 1: support the fishing community up and down the coast. She's
[13:42] Speaker 1: also fairly conservative politically, although she never identified herself as
[13:46] Speaker 1: aligned with any particular political party, But she says a
[13:49] Speaker 1: lot of things like this. For example, when talking about
[13:52] Speaker 1: the federal government.
[13:53] Speaker 5: It was like the government brought a wind of it,
[13:54] Speaker 5: and this is going to sound really bad, but he
[13:57] Speaker 5: was like, oh, look a new crisis.
[14:00] Speaker 1: She raised an eyebrow when she heard that my kids
[14:02] Speaker 1: can't really swim yet. Her sons have all been swimming
[14:04] Speaker 1: since they could walk, of course, although they didn't grow
[14:06] Speaker 1: up fishing on their dad's boat quite the way Ben
[14:09] Speaker 1: and his brother did.
[14:10] Speaker 5: No, why not. Some of my husband's policy was like
[14:12] Speaker 5: his dad's policy, your only kids wants to be a kid,
[14:16] Speaker 5: and they concentrated on being kids, which is fine.
[14:19] Speaker 1: Lorie's son, Lauren, went to school for architecture and still
[14:22] Speaker 1: loves it, but graduated at the peak of the Great
[14:25] Speaker 1: Recession and couldn't find a job, so he started fishing
[14:28] Speaker 1: with his dad. Laurie says he still moves between the
[14:31] Speaker 1: two worlds, picking up jobs in the building industry between
[14:33] Speaker 1: fishing seasons.
[14:34] Speaker 5: He loves architecture still, but he likes fishing too. He
[14:38] Speaker 5: likes the freedom.
[14:38] Speaker 3: In metaphor, its it's.
[14:39] Speaker 5: You know, the first time he actually worked nine to five,
[14:42] Speaker 5: became mommies like a freaking exhausted. Yeah, I guess this
[14:47] Speaker 5: is harhard. Yeah, I like what you guess this. You
[14:50] Speaker 5: know Monday through Friday things. I said, you realize when
[14:53] Speaker 5: you're on the boat you work twenty four to seven
[14:55] Speaker 5: for it's so totally different.
[14:57] Speaker 1: Though it is totally different. I saw that after just
[15:01] Speaker 1: one day on a boat. Just like lots of industries
[15:04] Speaker 1: have their own shorthand their own particular window onto the world,
[15:08] Speaker 1: fishermen tend to hang together because they understand each other's
[15:11] Speaker 1: lives in a way that other people just can't really,
[15:14] Speaker 1: and a big part of what makes them who they
[15:16] Speaker 1: are is being able to weather storms literally and figuratively.
[15:21] Speaker 1: Fishing for dungeness crab is one of the most dangerous
[15:24] Speaker 1: occupations in the country, even more so than that other
[15:27] Speaker 1: type of crab fishing most Americans are familiar with. You
[15:37] Speaker 1: might remember that opening montage from the Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch.
[15:41] Speaker 1: Let me tell you King crabs got nothing on dungeness.
[15:45] Speaker 1: But lately the tsunamis, market fluctuations and the daily grind
[15:49] Speaker 1: are the least of their problems. In fact, Ben and
[15:52] Speaker 1: Laurie and hundreds of other California fishing families like them
[15:55] Speaker 1: could be facing their biggest challenge yet, and it started
[15:59] Speaker 1: about four years ago. Our unseasonably warm weather is also
[16:03] Speaker 1: feeding the biggest algae bloom on the West Coast in decades.
[16:07] Speaker 7: This sea lion is having seizures poisoned from demoic acid,
[16:12] Speaker 7: a deadly natural toxin, being found in very high levels
[16:15] Speaker 7: from California to Washington State.
[16:18] Speaker 3: It's not unusual to have warm patches of ocean water,
[16:21] Speaker 3: but this one's much larger and hotter than normal by
[16:24] Speaker 3: up to seven degrees fahrenheit.
[16:26] Speaker 1: A patch of warm water something scientists started calling very scientifically.
[16:31] Speaker 1: The blob appeared on the Pacific Coast in the spring
[16:35] Speaker 1: of twenty fifteen. Warm currents are normal, of course, but
[16:39] Speaker 1: this was a huge mass of unusually warm water, and
[16:43] Speaker 1: it encouraged an abnormal amount of algae to grow and
[16:46] Speaker 1: then to stick around. Algal blooms would typically start to
[16:49] Speaker 1: dissipate in the summer, but these stuck around till fall,
[16:52] Speaker 1: when the crab season would usually start.
[16:54] Speaker 8: In California, fishing season for the dungeness crab has been
[16:57] Speaker 8: delayed due to high levels of a dangerous neurotype. It's
[17:01] Speaker 8: an environmental problem. Scientists blame warmer waters and an economic one.
[17:05] Speaker 8: Dungeonus crab is a sixty million dollars a year industry.
[17:08] Speaker 1: The season was delayed that year because the algae had
[17:11] Speaker 1: led to a build up of what's called demoic acid,
[17:14] Speaker 1: a potent neurotoxin in crabs. It was particularly bad timing
[17:18] Speaker 1: for Ben.
[17:19] Speaker 6: We had just bought the house that year, so taken
[17:23] Speaker 6: on the biggest debt of our life. I'd had a
[17:25] Speaker 6: good crab season the winner that we bought the home,
[17:28] Speaker 6: but then I elected to take the whole summer off
[17:31] Speaker 6: and spend all this money, and then we had the
[17:33] Speaker 6: democ acid closure. So I'd had my crew come to
[17:36] Speaker 6: Windsor to have a gear yard there. So we spent
[17:39] Speaker 6: about a month doing gear work, and then we had
[17:42] Speaker 6: this shutdown.
[17:43] Speaker 1: And Laurie was worried about both her own family and
[17:46] Speaker 1: the broader community.
[17:47] Speaker 5: We took a pretty hard hit, and that's money that
[17:49] Speaker 5: we'll never make up again.
[17:51] Speaker 6: Guys with families, the deckhands had no backup.
[17:54] Speaker 1: Demoic Acid was first found in muscles off Canada's Prince
[17:58] Speaker 1: Edward Island and nineteen eighties, when it made a group
[18:01] Speaker 1: of people violently ill. Some were vomiting excessively some experienced
[18:06] Speaker 1: amnesia along with the intestinal issues, and four became so
[18:09] Speaker 1: ill they died. Food safety regulations emerged after the outbreak,
[18:14] Speaker 1: which quickly spread to all crustaceans and shellfish in North America.
[18:18] Speaker 1: Since then, crab have been tested every year for tomobik acid,
[18:21] Speaker 1: but in Ben and Laurie's neck of the woods, it
[18:23] Speaker 1: had never been an issue before twenty fifteen, and it
[18:26] Speaker 1: wasn't just a brief delay or inconvenience. This was the
[18:29] Speaker 1: beginning of a new reality for crabbers, one that would
[18:33] Speaker 1: bring heavy losses, legal battles, and a sort of persistent dread,
[18:37] Speaker 1: the sense that, no matter how hard they tried to
[18:40] Speaker 1: hold on, their lives were slipping away from them.
[18:42] Speaker 6: So what's happening now lately, three out of the last
[18:45] Speaker 6: four years, is we're asking these guys to sit around
[18:48] Speaker 6: and either make no money or make hardly any money
[18:51] Speaker 6: doing part time jobs. But they have to be on
[18:54] Speaker 6: call because we never know when the season is going
[18:56] Speaker 6: to start, So it's really hard for them to work
[18:58] Speaker 6: during these closures, and our boats are sitting idle for three,
[19:01] Speaker 6: four or five months at a time.
[19:03] Speaker 4: Now, next time on drilled, we'll look back at that
[19:16] Speaker 4: fateful twenty fifteen Crab season and the unexpected adversary that
[19:21] Speaker 4: Big Oil created.
[19:22] Speaker 3: It was just awful.
[19:24] Speaker 6: I mean, we couldn't pay the bills.
[19:26] Speaker 1: It was just a nightmare. We almost lost that question.
[19:29] Speaker 5: We need to start doing something.
[19:32] Speaker 6: I see things, you know, I see the tides coming
[19:36] Speaker 6: up higher.
[19:37] Speaker 4: I mean it's squirting through the parking lot down the wharf,
[19:40] Speaker 4: and I never saw that before.
[19:56] Speaker 1: Drilled is produced and distributed by Critical Frequency. The show
[20:00] Speaker 1: was created and reported by me Amy Westervelle. Raka Murthy
[20:05] Speaker 1: is our editorial advisor. An additional editing for this series
[20:09] Speaker 1: was done by Julia Ritchie. The series was mixed by
[20:12] Speaker 1: Bill Lance. Our season two theme song was composed by
[20:16] Speaker 1: Elliott Peltzman. Additional music was contributed by b Beaman and
[20:20] Speaker 1: David Whited. Season two cover art was drawn by Angela Schech.
[20:24] Speaker 1: Drilled is supported in part by a generous grant from
[20:27] Speaker 1: the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. You can listen
[20:31] Speaker 1: and subscribe to Drilled on Apple Podcasts or wherever you
[20:34] Speaker 1: get your podcasts. If you like the show, don't forget
[20:37] Speaker 1: to give us

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