Salt in Our Blood: The Memoir of a Fisherman's Wife

THE DEADLIEST CATCH: CRABBING
ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS BUSINESSES IN THE WORLD

Newport, OR—Salt In Our Blood: The Memoir of a Fisherman's Wife, written by Michele Longo Eder, published by Dancing Moon Press, is a personal account from a fisherman's wife - from inside this dangerous yet alluring profession. Crabbing, as an industry, has navigated through many political, economical, and cultural changes, in the last 40 years. But the fishing industry remains a closed society. Not many outsiders know what the workday looks like to a commercial fisherman and his family, nor what it takes to actually harvest the bounty of the ocean. Michele, an attorney married for 20 years to a fisherman living in Newport, Oregon, gave herself the task of keeping a journal to record the day-to-day adventurous and dangerous life.

Michele began writing on Monday, December 11, 2000. "Four-thirty a.m. I'm awake. The F/V Michele Ann is being loaded with the last of its crab pots, ready to leave Newport and head north to Astoria, a port on the Columbia River."

But in December 2001 personal tragedy struck the Eder family and their crew, sending them on a path of hopelessness and despair, and ultimately questioning their love of the sea. This book gives the reader a unique insight of living and working on the edge of danger.

"I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea... All of us have, in our veins, the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, we aregoing back from whence we came."

President John F. Kennedy
Newport, Rhode Island
September 14, 1962