It arrived to us recently to examine new Murmansk.
Azores left hotel of trust at midnight and went on descent to trawling base. The Spaniard shrank in the autumn coat. Icy midday wind hit into a face. The sleet fell.
“Amazing region! – Azores reflected. – Here all on the contrary: “solar nights”, “night days”. In these regions people choose apartments as windows not on the South, and on the North because a north, flying by over a warm current
Gulf Stream, heats up, and southern – it is cooled over an ice plateau of the tundra. Severe land, heavy climate. But you do not feel all this, even you do not notice – the person is so interesting here and put him”.
Below fires of trawling base burned. Highly cases of fish-processing shops rose. Winch chains rattled. The pier had trawlers. One unloaded, others prepared for departure. Conveyors scurried about: to warehouses – with fish, from warehouses – with salt. Azores quickly passed in the end of pier to the big trawler. There was an outflow, and the board of the trawler rocked almost level with pier. Azores ascended aboard and rose to the captain’s cabin. The captain Makovsky welcomed it and asked to pass in the cabin. Azores entered.
The cabin of the captain consisted of two tiny rooms: office bedroom and drawing room. In the first there was a small written little table, above it – a big oil lamp (on a case of damage of electric lighting), and two chairs attached to a floor by chains (on a rolling case). Now chains drooped, and chairs could be moved. In a niche, behind a curtain – a bed, nearby – an entrance to bathing “room” in which, probably, it was hardly possible to take off clothes. In “drawing room” – an angular sofa and a little table before it. On a little table – a tea service, cookies…
The red varnished tree, the shining copper parts, tooled leather, glass, light, heat, heaters, fans… Here it was silent and with comfort, as in a compartment of pullman cars.
The captain in the cabin disposed. From the coast kicked off. The steamship slowly and carefully began to turn. Azores looked through a big window of a cabin at the coast. Trawlers, the lit windows of the pickling shop, the high, overgrown low birches opposite coast of Kola Bay flashed… Speed of the course increased. Rolling was not.
The captain transferred control to the assistant and came to a cabin. Both are Azores and the captain Makovsky – not bad knew English. As the hospitable owner, the captain gave some tea. The conversation was started. Azores was interested in the underwater TV.
– You saw groupers? – the guest’s captain asked.
– Of course. Big fish with the red eyes which are getting out of orbits – Azores answered.
– And why they red also get out of orbits?
Azores shrugged shoulders. The captain grinned and continued:
– It because grouper very timid fish; having appeared in a trawl, he dies of a fright, and from a fright of an eye at it get out of orbits… I had to hear similar explanations from old fishermen more than once. Certainly, it is the fable. The grouper lives at a depth of many tens of meters. And it began to come across in our trawls only recently when we learned to lower trawls deeply. And here, when the perch is snared and he is quickly pulled out on a surface where pressure is several times lower than for what the perch is adapted, eyes it are poured by blood and leave orbits.
– It is very interesting – Azores noticed – but at what here the TV?
– And here at what. A perch – tasty, useful, fat fish, and it is deeply very difficult to find her! We float by the sea, somewhere under us the most enormous schools of fish – hundreds, thousands of tons float. But we do not see this fish and after many days of heavy swimming often we come back home with empty holds. The people wait from us for fish, and we have a failure behind failure. Frustration of the plan, the administration tears and throws, seamen are nervous…
– But you often lower a trawl and find fish – Azores objected. – I saw what rich catch of the same perches gets to your trawls.
– And how many they do not get, nobody sees it – the captain interrupted. – To one trawler will have the luck to come across a jamb, to another is not present. Game of a blind case. Where it is good? There are days when we tens of times lower a trawl and pull out only seaweed, crabs and stones. The trawl often clings to soil, is torn about sharp stones. We do not see a bottom surface. We catch blindly. However, our scientific researches help us. Perseus surveyed a seabed, studied the course of fish, water temperature at different depths and something other. It helped, but nevertheless the case is not defeated. We live Gulf Stream, and it is whimsical. Sometimes it changes a current a little: sometimes happens warmer, sometimes – colder. And fish visits our coast, disappears, otkochevyvy there where water is warmer. Where last year fish was caught perfectly, today – any catch. And it only because for thousands of kilometers from us, in the Gulf of Mexico, the summer was colder usual or in Iceland the winter became rough. We called to the aid the sonic depth finder and radio lot. The principle of operation of the sonic depth finder is familiar to you? We send under water a sound wave, well, say, explosion of the boss or blow of a bell down. The sound wave reaches a bottom, is reflected and comes back. Knowing sound speed in water, it is possible to determine depth. If the sound comes back quickly, so the sound wave is reflected not by a bottom, but a big congestion of fish. This way is extremely productive and useful, but also it has shortcomings.
Radio lot showing depth on speeds of reflection of a radio beam, and the sonic depth finder everyone “are in own way blind”. To them all the same from what radio beams or a sound wave are reflected. For example, the sonic depth finder showed smaller depth in such place. You think: the sound was reflected from a fish jamb. You will lower a trawl – a uniform small fish. The sound was reflected or from the sunk ship, or from the underwater rock. Other business when we have an opportunity to see what becomes in sea depths. Then we will double, we will treble a catch.
– And the TV will help to reach it?
– We hope.
After tea the captain went to the cabin. Azores remained alone. It began to put the notes in order.
Began to stir the trawler stronger.
“We take to the open sea” – Azores guessed, threw a coat and came to the deck.
Strong wind, sleet, splashes… Strongly swung the trawler.
“And so day and night, in the summer and in the winter, during a calm and during a storm fight against the sea lasts – Azores thought. – It would seem, incredibly hard work. But what at them at all cheerful, cheerful faces! Jokes, laughter, songs…”
The trawler safely cut gray-haired waves, heading for the Bear island. Ginzburg’s assistants in heavy sea boots, in leather jackets ran from a sphere to the captain’s cabin, checking serviceability of wires. The screen of the TV was installed in the captain’s cabin.
Azores approached a sphere.
“Like a stratosphere balloon gondola” – he thought.
– In this sphere there is a radio station? – he asked a question Ginzburg.
– No – that answered. – The image is transferred on wires. In a sphere –
