Insane footage of fishing boat stuns Aussies: 'Got seasick just watching this'
Over the loud humming of the boat's engine, a voice can be heard howling in a mixture of glee and trepidation.
"Oooohhh s**t, oohhh f**k," they say.
About 300 hundred kilometres off the southern coast of Australia, the commercial fishing trawler they're on sways like a drunken sailor as it bounces over ginormous waves in the Great Australian Bight.
Vision of the moment was posted to Facebook last week, prompting shock and awe from thousands of fellow Australians.
"No way ... I’m sick just watching this," one person commented. "That looks crazy cool, kudos to those who can still do their job on that roller-coaster," another said.
It's not your typical office but it certainly pays the bills, says Connor, the man who posted the video.
While the conditions look extreme, "it's actually pretty typical" for that part of the world during winter, he told Yahoo News Australia. "As you're surfing the waves like that you can actually end up going completely sideways.
"We were actually heading into port at that stage and that was behind us, but believe it or not we can actually fish in weather like that ... We'll pretty much fish until you can't steer the fishing gear [back] on".
It's not uncommon, he said, to get 50-knot winds and 10 to 12 metre waves as they're trawling for flathead and other fish and sharks in the Bight.
Connor is one half of a pair of mates who started the page to give people a better appreciation of how their seafood gets to the kitchen table.
"We've both worked for a lot of fisheries in Australia and decided to make a page to let people know what we're doing out there," he said.
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"We get asked a lot of questions about what we do and how it all works, so we wanted to give people an understanding of where their seafood comes from in Australia."
The World Bank estimates close to 90 per cent of fish stocks are already fully exploited or overfished, prompting growing concern and emphasis on sustainable fishing practices.
What life is like on a commercial fishing trawler
The crew head out for two weeks at a time, coming back every second Friday to unload the fish. When they're on the boat, it's intense work with the net dropping four times throughout the day and night meaning they're working around the clock and sneaking in some sleep when they can.
"You're probably getting five or six hours of sleep a day, but it's broken into one and two hour bits," Connor explained. "You kind of learn how to function through some extreme tiredness."
But it can definitely be good pay, especially given the chance to have solid breaks in between voyages.
"It's the kind of work where you're working six to eight months a year and then you can have a lot of time off at home... You don't have to work a whole year for a year's pay. But the time you're away is just dedicated to work. You wake up and you're at work," he said.
"And if you study as well and get engineering [certifications] and become a first mate or captain, you can get some really good money."
According to the experienced trawler, deck hands typically make the equivalent of about $60 – $70,000 a year, a first mate and engineer about $100,000, while captains will pull in the equivalent of about $150,000 a year.
But you certainly need to have the stomach for it.
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