Gone fishin'

LINKS MAINTAINED: Barry “Baz” Kirk is Maritime New Zealand’s national adviser industry support but he maintains his links with the fishing world through a Facebook page, “Commercial Fishermen Past and Present Come Aboard”. It has 4830 members.

TAKING in the sight of an engine room awash does wonders for your awareness of safety at sea.

Barry “Baz” Kirk was 17 when it happened to him.

“We were between Portland Island and Table Cape, on a big old ex-Scottish trawler called the Golden Grain,” he said.

“I’d gone to bed and the skipper, Bruce Cordiner, had taken the boat. When I woke up I went upstairs to see where we were, and Bruce said we were sinking. I thought he was joking until he told me to go down to the engine room, and I saw the bilge was full of water!”

That incident 35 years ago resonates with Baz’s later work with Coastguard and Maritime New Zealand. A lot of his time has been spent getting alongside commercial operators and recreational boat owners, ensuring they have a focus on safe work practice and have the best possible chance of survival on the water. Since the start of 2013 he has been the national adviser industry support, working in the compliance team of Maritime New Zealand.

On a visit home to Gisborne, he recalled experiences that made an impression.

The Golden Grain had fish on board, but not a full load. She had seen plenty of big seas, but Baz — two years a fisherman by then — wondered whether the 60-foot trawler had enough in her to see them home.

While Bruce Cordiner kept the boat headed for Gisborne, Baz checked the water levels in the engine room, sought reassurance from others on the radio, and thought about what might help stop the water if the leaks got worse.

“Too much water was coming in for us to be able to pump it all out. All we could do was hold the level where it was and keep heading for home.”

It was a relief to chug back into Gisborne’s inner harbour but they had little time to relax.

“We pulled the boat out of the water and helped with the recaulking,” Baz said.

In the recaulking process, they worked with a team to reseal the boat using a fibrous material called oakum that was forced into the seams of the boat’s hull.

“Fishing boat crews don’t just go home and wait for the vessel to be fixed. Engineers might do the specialised stuff but the crew do the painting, cleaning and maintenance.”

In the teeth of a south-easterlyThe “worst hiding” Baz took from the weather came when his first skipper, Danish fisherman Niels Madsen, brought the Natasha down the East Coast into the teeth of a big south-easterly.

“Niels used to fish right until the southerlies would hit, then we’d punch our way down the coast and be home in 10 to 12 hours. This time the weather got worse and worse. Waves coming over the front of the boat took the anchor and a bit of gear. We had to go into Tolaga Bay and stay there for four days.

“Once the weather packed up, Niels didn’t try to stick it out. He’d say you could always come back tomorrow, but you couldn’t if you left it too late to do anything about it.

“It’s just stuff you deal with. It can be a little frightening when it’s happening sometimes, but it’s always more concerning for the skipper than the crew. The skipper has that responsibility . . . you are virtually married to the boat. Even when you’re ashore, if you’re not seeing to maintenance, you’re organising it from home.”

Baz was 15 when he left school. It had never really been his thing. A move from Wharekopae School with its eight to 10 students to Gisborne Intermediate, and a class of nearly 30, was a big change.

But Baz always liked reading, and a teacher at Gisborne Boys’ High School, Rex Maidment, got him interested in creative writing. Not interested enough to keep him at school beyond 15, though.

Possum hunting and fencing for the holidaysIn the holidays he worked for his father, Jim Kirk, possum-hunting or fencing. It was outdoors and its rewards were tangible. Jim worked him hard and paid him well.

Another holiday job was in the box room at Zame’s Manufacturing clothing factory in Peel Street. Owner Ray Zame and his son Kevin got Baz interested in fishing with stories about the Zame family who were commercial fishermen in Gisborne. Baz had met some of them down at the wharf fishing after school.

That interest blossomed into a career when, on yet another holiday job, Baz was working with refrigeration engineer John Fenn on Bob Higham’s new boat the Robert H.

Baz got on well with the skipper, Ashley Gibson, and the rest of the crew and became fired with the adventure of going to sea to fish.

“I had just done School Cert and failed dismally,” Baz said.

He talked to his father about going fishing, and he in turn talked to Bob Higham, who had Kaiti Fishermen Ltd.

One day at home in Einstein Street, Jim Kirk hung up the phone and told Baz to get on his bike and see Bob Higham down at the wharf if he wanted a job.

That meeting produced a piece of advice that stayed with Baz: “Bob told me, ‘Shut your mouth, watch what’s going on around you, and make sure you listen and learn, because it is a dangerous industry’. It was my first lesson about what could happen if I didn’t stay focused.”

Lessons came thick and fast. His mother Yvonne (now Steggall) took him in to town to get a smock (yellow pvc buttonless, hooded raincoat) and seaboots (thigh-high waders), and a few days later he set sail with Niels Madsen at 10pm.

“We got outside Tuahine Point and Niels said, ‘I’m going to bed for two or three hours; you steer on this course’. The minute he disappeared, the boat went all over the place.

“After three hours I went down and woke him up, and got a bollocking. We’d gone about half the distance we should have.

“I wasn’t allowed to go to bed until he’d shown me how to steer. By then I had got the feel of the boat, and Niels taught me how to steer to the compass, how to create a course. He was a good teacher, patient.”

When Niels Madsen became ill two years later, Baz joined the crew of the Marine Maid, inshore trawling for Watties on New Zealand’s East Coast.

His last year as a full-time commercial fisherman was 2004. In the years till then, he had gained his skipper’s ticket at the age of 19, and had experience of a wide range of vessels and fishing.

“I never had my own boat but I ran a lot of other people’s . . . anywhere from 40 to 60 feet, timber, aluminium, fibreglass.”

Apart from those early influences, he recalls Alan Whitley, with whom he worked for eight years and who encouraged him to get his skipper’s ticket; Sid Atkinson, who taught him a lot about fishing techniques; Kevin Fishburn, “probably the calmest person I ever worked with . . . if the fish weren’t here, they were probably over there”; Steve Baistow, as a skipper; and Graham Brown, who had a good attitude and a different outlook on things.

“You didn’t have holidays. If it was a good fishing day, you were out there. When Marie and I got married, we didn’t go for a honeymoon. I was working.”

Teaching at Tairawhiti PolytechnicAbout 1993, Tairawhiti Polytechnic got him to teach at its new maritime school, part-time at first and full-time from 1995 to 2004, and he was programme co-ordinator for his last five years there.

“We gave them the basics in the classroom and put them in the actual environment on the boat, fishing. We had a pretty high attrition rate. Those who were there at the end usually got jobs.”

Baz’s father Jim is a life member and patron of Gisborne Volunteer Coastguard. When Baz was teaching at the maritime school, Jim got his son to go along to a Coastguard meeting.

“I ended up on the committee, then I ended up president and on the training committee.”

Baz played a role in the restructuring of the Coastguard organisation into regions, and was offered the Tauranga-based job of operations manager for the eastern region. Before he left for that position, he too was made a life member of Gisborne Volunteer Coastguard.

He was eastern region operations manager from 2004 to 2012. Until then, Coastguard had been a series of individual units. Baz worked to pull them into one organisation.

The experience of leading a voluntary organisation with uncertain funding and achieving more than expected helped Baz realise he could get results working alongside people helping them to solve problems, rather than standing over them directing.

He joined Maritime New Zealand in 2012 as manager of commercial and recreational liaison, and focused on putting industry information in layman’s terms. After a year, he took on his current role as Maritime New Zealand’s national adviser industry support.

“Working alongside industry and involving them with change seems to work a lot better than just telling industry what to do,” Baz said.

If foreign charter fishing vessels are to remain fishing in New Zealand waters, they must be flagged to New Zealand and fit under New Zealand regulations for manning and other requirements, he says.

“Domestic commercial operators are undergoing a change in the way they manage their safety systems, to meet the new Maritime Rule 19, by entering a compliance regime called Maritime Operator Safety System (MOSS).

“We work with industry to make the transition as seamless as possible but also ensure the safety and compliance standards are being met during the process.”

Maritime New Zealand is continually trying to improve safety awareness and culture in the recreational boating sector, Baz says.

“Coming into the summer boating season we are focusing on older males, 45-plus, who have been our highest-risk demographic for a long time. We are keeping an eye on some emerging risks, too . . . kayaks and stand-up paddleboards, for instance.”

Lakes and rivers pose risks, particularly if the water is cold, as it can be even now in South Island lakes, he says.

“People not wearing lifejackets when they should is still one of our biggest concerns.”