Have you eaten jelly balls?
Not per se.
Off the deck or anything.
But they say if you ever eat an egg roll that you've had jelly ball.
An egg roll.
It'll take the flavor of anything that is put with.
You have a pound of hamburger here and you've got a pound of processed jelly balls.
You mix it together and you'll never know the difference.
But you made that pound of hamburger go to £2.
It's a food additive.
Let that sink in for a second.
A pound of jelly fish can turn a pound of hamburger into £2 of hamburger.
That's something to chew on.
Well, it looks like it's going to be a beautiful morning.
Sun's coming up in the east.
Food's coming up to the south.
Oh, God. It's overhead and we are right on the cusp of having a ball.
You're dreaming. I am.
And then, just like that, indestructible, Pat is getting very excited.
We in the balls.
We are in them, Dick.
They're all. Water.
Job of now.
Time is money.
Lots of jelly balls.
Trying it.
Out. And when we pull it up, we'll see if we got us a few.
First thing you want to do when you think you're in the balls is make sure you are
really in the balls.
This little guy is called a trinette.
So is that promising or not enough?
Oh, it's close.
We're going to run just a little bit further.
So that's it? That's our guy.
I mean, it's fascinating.
Diabolically simple yet incredibly complicated.
Complicated to comprehend.
Dangerous to harvest.
On a fish boat. There's always something heavy flying through the air, hoping to crack
you in the skull.
I'm hooked.
Speaking of danger, what do you do when a critical rope slips through a critical pulley
and needs to be quickly?
Rethreaded. Oh, he's doing it.
What the heck? Don't look at me.
Get indestructible, Pat.
The old guy with all the broken bones.
He'll fix it. He's now going to try and get over top of these lights.
His ultimate goal is to thread that rope through that pulley.
Now, what's interesting is Pat fell out of a tree about two years ago, broke his back,
broke his neck, broke his sternum, broke his ribs, and now he's gone ahead, climb at about
25ft in the air on very slippery steel.
He's not tied off. The man's fearless.
I'll let you pull me up with that whip line right there.
Okay. I don't know if you heard that, but what Pat just said was, pull me up with that
whip line. Now, I think that means he's going to come down and then he's going to tie
himself off and we're going to hoist him up.
Are you okay with me doing this?
No. Duh.
Oh, man, That does not instill confidence.
Brandon, I got you, babe.
Mike's cousin, Brandon, is on the crane.
Oh. No, no.
Mike's father in law, Pat.
He's in the rope. I don't.
Feel right. Does it?
It doesn't feel right.
I'm just going to take a very quick moment to say to you, with all the sincerity I can
muster, don't try this at home.
Hey, hold up. Ha ha ha.
You magnificent bastard.
I can flip it.
All right, Come on down.
Come on, Mike.
You're next.
Thanks, but no thanks.
This is one job better left to Pat.
Damn, Pat, I think you just stole the show.
All right, then. Where were we?
Oh, yeah. Falling for jellies.
Oh, see, look at that. That's a lot of that's a lot of jellies floating around.
One right there. We need plenty of one right there.
At long last, we see enough balls to get busy.
My job. Do what I'm told.
Try not to get in the way.
It feels heavy. Pull.
Pull. Can't pull no more.
All right. There's a lot of pulling on a jelly ball boat.
Tying up every chance you get.
A lot of pulling and tugging.
Almost there. Running until you block.
Did I mention the tugging and the pulling?
Thank you. You're welcome.
So what's all that tugging and pulling get you?
All right, now let that thing roll towards you.
It'd be unforgiving.
Don't let it roll toward me.
All right. There you go. Now grab your long rope.
Now that.
My friends, is a heavy smack.
This one right there. Yep.
Grab it. Snap.
Seems simple, right?
Just yank the rope.
How'd you do it? But of course, nothing is simple on a jelly ball boat.
Everything requires a very specific technique.
Or maybe just a little teamwork.
We'll see. Ready? Yeah.
These boom trawl nets can bring up thousands of pounds of balls per load.
But still, it'll take a whole lot of loads to reach the boat's 50 ton capacity.
So that was a fairly successful first run.
It wasn't too.
Bad. Looks like you've been doing it your whole life.
Yeah.
Give her a hard snack.
There you go.
Like anything else, practice makes perfect.
And like most dirty jobs, once the work starts, you can see exactly how you're doing.
It's called immediate feedback and it's gratifying.
And if you like the sight of £8,000 of jelly balls slipping and sliding into a dark and
dirty hole, then this, my friends, is the job for you.
So not as good as the last one, but not terrible.
Oh, yeah, I saw that.
So you get the idea. Let's go in.
Black sack fills up.
Hoist it up. Empty it out.
Wait 20 minutes. Do it again.
Now for that, what you do is you wait about 20 minutes and you do it again.
At which point you wait another 20 minutes and then do it again.
Well, you got to be happier with that one, huh?
No, no, no.
I need twice as many and half the time.
When's the last time you've actually been happy, Captain?
Oh.
That's a good question.
After that, well, you want to wait another 20 minutes to go on and do it again?
Then a little later, specifically 20 minutes later, you do it again.
Which begs the question, what does one do during the 20 minutes while you're waiting to
do it again? Well, if you're me, you sit down and try and get a sense of why Mike
Boone does what he does.
Permission to enter the inner sanctum.
Permission granted.
May I sit here?
Sure. Well, first of all, tell me what happened to your chair.
Oh, I'm pretty sure it come out of a car, and I already had a few miles on it.
Why do you call it little man?
This is my little brother.
That's what they always called him.
And that's what they all wanted to name the boat.
So what's it like, man?
You're the fourth generation of Boone to be in these waters.
And I don't. Honestly, I, I it's kind of hard to describe, man.
It's, I guess the only thing I've ever done.
It's all I know.
That's all. I've been in ocean my whole life.
I never really thought of doing anything else.
You love it. You got to do to do it.
Absolutely. Got to.
I'm pretty sure that's common with any fisherman.
Hands on is about a dying breed.
Your first memories are, I'm sure, if your dad and your family working.
Yeah. Don't feel like hard work to me, but it's the only thing I know.
You know.
Edison summed it up like this.
Opportunity is missed by most because it's usually dressed in overalls looking like
work. Point being, you can make a great living jelly balling, but you'll earn every
penny. There's simply no shortcut.
You got to get your hands dirty.
Which brings us back to the dock where this story began 24 hours ago.
There, the jelly balls enter phase two of their journey to a stomach on the other side
of the planet.