Living With Risk, Loss -- Crab Fishermen `Never Forget The Ones Who Die'

WESTPORT, Grays Harbor County - An urgent Mayday call: "We are taking breakers. Hurry."

The 58-foot crab boat Commander was going down.

Another voice, this one from the crab boat Husker, then was heard on the radio, demanding a response, demanding reassurance.

"As soon as I heard that call, I reached for the radio. Awful, terrible things going through my mind," recalls crab fisherman Dave Ashby, 41, skipper of the Husker.

"I knew my brothers were fishing, I had to raise them. But I couldn't. And it made me sick not knowing."

Three huge breakers crashed into the Commander that night of Dec. 30, smashing the wood plank hull.

Neither Dave's twin, Dan, nor younger brother, Steve, was aboard the boat.

But a man drowned.

"And you never forget the ones who die," says Steve Ashby, 40. "You learn to live with the loss because you got no other choice - they're gone, and you still got a living to make."

Since the opening of the Dungeness crab season two weeks ago, three boats have sunk off Washington's coast. Four men and a boy have died.

A 1984 Coast Guard study showed commercial fishing's death rate was seven times the national average for all industries and twice that of mining, the second most hazardous occupation. And nearly everyone here faces the prospect of losing someone they care for - if they haven't already.

"We always go and we always come back, but our dad went and didn't come back," says Dave Ashby.

"We were little kids then, and we sat there with our mother, we sat there at the kitchen table waiting for him to come home to dinner, and he never did."

Ken Ashby died in 1959 at age 35. His body was never recovered.

MORE SPACE ON MEMORIAL

Near the Westport marina, inscribed on a squat, white obelisk, are the names of 13 other fishermen who never returned.

The monument was erected a year after Ken Ashby drowned. There remains space for more names, including: Jim Watson, Bob Dacque and 15-year-old Donald Watson, who went down with the crab boat Aubrey on Dec. 27; Jerry Garrett, the skipper of the Commander, lost Dec. 30, and Charles Dentalman of the 43-foot Caroline, who died Friday despite a heroic rescue by the Coast Guard.

A Caroline crew member, Mark Larsen, remained in critical condition today at Emanuel Hospital in Portland, said a nursing supervisor.

At 6 a.m. yesterday, fishermen at the Inn of the Westwind cafe were still talking about the lives lost and about survival suits.

Dave Ashby has three survival suits on board the Kaisa, his 47-foot crab boat. But so far, he has never had reason to put one on.

"Whenever I start to push it, really take a chance, I think about Dad," he says. "And then I think about my wife and three kids waiting at home."

There's always some risk, and no point taking any more, Dave Ashby says. Bad weather and rotten luck conspire against crab fishermen often enough.

"There's been many a time, when the weather got nasty, I thought I'd be a young widow," says Karen Ashby, Dave's wife of 23 years. "And I trust Dave. But it's hard for a fisherman not to push it, especially if their kids are hungry."

A lot of people were hungry when the crab season opened, the Ashbys say.

A price strike, then a temporary closure ordered by the Department of Health, delayed the season opening nearly a month.

"The community was really hurt by the delay," says Westport Mayor Doug Merino. "It cost people income, it unsettled the crab market, and it forced a lot of decisions that maybe shouldn't have been made."

`IT'S DANGEROUS WORK'

Poor judgment - worsened by weather or faulty equipment - is likely to have contributed to the loss of life, say Coast Guard officials who continue to investigate the accidents.

"You have to remember, a person doesn't have to make a big mistake out there to get in trouble," says Petty Officer Guy Armstrong of the Coast Guard station at Grays Harbor.

"The crab pots are very heavy, there's a lot of line to get tangled up in, the load can shift unexpectedly. It's dangerous work. No doubt about it."

Even so, the Ashby brothers say they cannot imagine quitting. Ever.

"I tell you what," says Steve Ashby, "I'd rather go crab fishing in bad weather than go to Seattle on the freeway."