Instead of having fishermen race in these 24-hour sprints, they would be guaranteed a certain amount of fish at the beginning of the year.

He heard about an idea - a new, more leisurely system that protected the fish but didn't put fishermen at risk. JIANG: Clem was on the fishery's council at the time. And a few of us were looking at other ways of doing it. It was murder by government, you might say. The derby the government created led fishermen to take very more risks. Clem Tillion, the 90-year-old, says Carcass's story isn't unique. It's the Coast Guard airplane, and that's when you really think you're going to survive, you know? He and the other crew members waited for the government to come rescue them.ĬARCASS: I'll tell you the most beautiful sound in the world is a C-130 (imitating sound of airplane). The next wave hit us, and we just leaned right over. But a storm was coming, and the waves were getting big.ĬARCASS: All of a sudden we took one, and we're not coming back up, water's all over the deck. He was working as a deckhand on someone else's boat, and the fishing had been good. He's thin, got crazy hair, goes by the name Carcass. Kirk Van Doren is a commercial fisherman. JIANG: Thousands of boats were going out, sometimes during storms. And the guys that took the most risks got lots of money. TILLION: You went roaring out of these storms, and you caught all you could catch. He says on derby days, no matter what the weather was like, you fished - same if you were sick or if your boat wasn't in great shape.

It was called the derby.ĬLEM TILLION: Young men loved the action, the excitement. The government said you just had these 24 hour periods.

JESS JIANG, BYLINE: It used to be if you were a halibut fishermen in Homer, Ak., there were just a few days a year you could go do it. Jess Jiang from the Planet Money podcast explains how fishing got safer. This year, though, the Coastguard says there has not been a single on-the-job fishing fatality. For a long time, Alaska's commercial fishing industry was the deadliest in the country.

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