The Bering Sea was angry that day. The Viking Rover, an Alaskan fishing boat, was pitching and yawing in violent swells. John King, an ivy-league-educated greenhorn from Cape Cod who had spent nearly a year hauling king crabs onto the Rover's deck, wasn't sure if he would make it back to shore alive. Waves heaved the boat onto its side, its stern, its bow. In the process, the vessel lost its rudder and thousands of pounds of crabs in the hold. "That first year [of crabbing] was essentially lost," King recalls.
King made only $8,000 crabbing that first year, 1974. Despite this setback, King, an anthropology major at the University of Pennsylvania, made Alaska his home for the next eight years. It was a fascination with the Alaskan landscape and its indigenous people that initially lured King to the northern state, and fishing that kept him there. The Alaskan fishing ...
