Ex-fishing boats on new course

By JOE ROJAS-BURKE
The Oregonian

STEVEN NEHL / AP Oregon State University professor Bruce Mate stands Nov. 11 on the Pacific Storm, one of three former trawl fishing boats OSU is converting to use as whale-research and oceanography vessels. "It allows us to consider things we'd never thought possible," Mate says.

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"I gave up quite a bit when I gave up that thing," the Coos Bay fisherman says. "My life's work for 12 years."

Hockema's boat, the 84-foot Pacific Storm, is one of 91 vessels retired last year from fishing ever again in a federal buyout meant to prop up the overfished, struggling trawl fishery.

Now the Pacific Storm and two other retired fishing boats are getting a second life worthy of their hardworking past: Henceforth they will travel the Pacific Ocean on voyages of scientific exploration and marine conservation.

Hockema and two other owners have donated or pledged their vessels to Oregon State University, a gift that has stunned and energized researchers.

"It allows us to consider things we'd never thought possible," says Bruce Mate, a professor and director of the marine-mammal research program at Oregon State.

The other boats are the Olympic, a 78-footer donated by Terry Thompson, a Lincoln County commissioner, and a third for which the ownership transfer has not closed.

Already, Mate's group has taken the Pacific Storm on a voyage off California to track endangered blue whales. The researchers tagged 29 whales in a four-week period, double the efficiency of previous trips, Mate says.

In the past, the group had to commute back and forth every day between Half Moon Bay and distant waters traversed by whales. Now it can use the big, seaworthy boat as a mother ship for the smaller, whale-chasing boats, staying at sea for weeks.

With the new fleet, Oregon State University scientists are talking about research voyages north to Arctic waters challenged by global warming, to poorly understood whale hot spots hundreds of miles off the coast of Mexico, and south to a zone of rich upwelling off Costa Rica.

These are vessels hardened for fierce weather, powered by giant diesel engines and generators, and able to carry 10,000 gallons of fuel and nearly as much water. With that capability, Mate has floated the idea of research voyages that will last two or three years, with rotating crews of scientists.
 
Hockema — who learned the fishing trade as a boy aboard his grandfather's boat and who served as captain on his first boat at age 17 — hates to think of his trustworthy Pacific Storm stripped of its fishing identity.

"I caught as much fish as anyone on the coast," says the 39-year-old. "Everybody knew what that boat was."

He retired a second boat in the buyout and sold it to someone who is converting it into a pleasure yacht.

Hockema used the proceeds from the buyout, after paying off boat loans and taxes, to start a new business: excavating foundations for construction.

Mate, the Oregon State University whale researcher, approached Hockema and other fishermen to ask about donating. Mate got the names of all the retiring vessels in the buyout and drew up a short list of the most capable by talking to university marine extension agents and ship surveyors.

As fishing vessels, such boats would be worth $500,000 or more. But after the buyout put 91 retired vessels on the market, boats have sold for as little as $10,000, says Pete Leipzig, executive director of Fishermen's Marketing Association in Eureka, Calif.

Thompson, former owner of the fishing vessel Olympic, handed the boat over to the university fully equipped down to the last wrench. He did it, he says, in part for the tax deduction and to support the university — his alma mater. But he also sees an urgent need for more and better research on marine resources.

"The only way they are going to do that is to get the right equipment," he says.

The expense of chartering large vessels has stood in the way of ocean studies at Oregon State University and all along the West coast.

Mate says it costs about $3,000 a day to charter something comparable to the Pacific Storm. As the owner, daily operating costs for the university run to about $900.

Mate says the generosity of the gifts is overwhelming and even a little intimidating. He and others at the university now must come up with the money to equip and maintain the three vessels, hire crews, secure research grants and organize voyages.

"It involves raising more money than we had planned," Mate says.

No state tax dollars are available. But the boats could become magnets for support. Mate says his group has already submitted two grant proposals that use the value of the boats to solicit matching funds.

One anonymous donor has given more than $80,000 to outfit the Pacific Storm. The boats are likely to be renamed in honor of the biggest donors.