“Oars! Oars!” he intensely whispered, seizing the helm–“gripe your oars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by! Shove him off, you Queequeg–the whale there!–prick him!–hit him! Stand up–stand up, and stay so! Spring, men–pull, men; never mind their backs–scrape them!–scrape away!” (Herman Melville, Moby Dick)

Although I suspect two days on a Dutch flyshooter (English info) is probably going to be somewhat less heroic than a journey around the world on a nineteenth-century whaling vessel.

Yes, I’m finally doing it. After years of teaching students all about the economics of the fishery I’m finally getting on board an actual fishing vessel to see what life’s like on board. Tonight I’m boarding the SL-9 Johanna for a 2-3 day trip on the North Sea.

What do I expect to learn from this? It is easy to think that anything you want to know, you can get from books, journal articles, or interviews with experts. But you can only do that if you know you don’t know – that’s when you ask. If you don’t know you don’t know you wouldn’t ask. And there is a lot of stuff out there you don’t know you don’t know. And then there is the more literary stuff that you will never find in the economics textbooks: how does it feel to be stuck on a boat for days with fellow fishers? What does it sound and smell like? How does it feel to feed the seagulls your very own acidic curry of breakfast and seasickness pills?