Forget Melville, science makes it an easier life

Sitting in the wheelhouse of the Muriel Grace, an elegant 132-foot trawler, is Paul Healy. Outside the grey sea breaks against the boat. Healy and crew are heading out - they'll be at sea for up to 12 days, beaming for haddock, cod, hake, whiting - the demersal species.

Healy, skipper of the Dutch-owned vessel, is at the helm. Sitting with his feet up on the edge of the console, he eyes the bank of radar, video and satellite screens. Nearby are mobile phones, faxes and various other pieces of electronic equipment.

It's not a tall ship, but a mean, clean machine. Below, the 2,000-horse power engine is humming away as they move out. Each year they fish for five to six months in the Irish Sea. Later in the year they move to the Scilly Isles for five to six months. As skipper, Healy's job is partly about being a personnel manager. "You have to pick the lads. You've got to decide where to go. You have to be an accountant, know what the catch is worth. You can't afford to fall down on the job. You have to be a lawyer and secretary rolled into one as well."

Never mind Kipling, Melville and Conrad - life on the high seas is not that tough, he says. "The electronic equipment makes it a good bit easier. My wife finds it tough when we're fishing out of Cornwall and I'm gone for 30 days.

"But, it's great to be your own boss. You're the skipper. It's nice in the summer-time. You see some beautiful sunrises and sunsets - and sometimes you get no break in between.

"There's a great sense of achievement if it's a nice trip. You'd be delighted coming home with a good catch. You get other trips where you don't do so well."

Healy has worked out of Howth on the Muriel Grace for eight years. An unlikely fisherman, he grew up in Drumcondra - "with its well-known fishing harbour," he jokes. As a boy he had holidays in Killybegs, Co Donegal - "I saw the boats coming in and out. I did a few trips in the summer with some of them. It was a big adventure."

Healy went to St Vincent's CBS in Glasnevin. After the Inter Cert, he applied to join one of BIM's training schemes. He went to Greencastle for three months to the National Fishery Training School and did a fishing deckhand course in 1981.

As part of the course he was sent to Killybegs and worked on the Skifjord for a couple of months. "A few months later when I was up in college," he recalls, "the boat and all five crew members went down. It makes you think - but when you're young you think you're invincible.

"Every job has a degree of risk. We don't have a huge rate of casualty, nothing like the construction industry."

After Greencastle, he worked on the Silver King for about three to four years, fishing out of Castletownbere. In 1985 he went back to Greencastle to study for his mate's ticket.

He did the exam in the Mercantile Marine Office in Dublin, in subjects such as navigation, stability and electronics. "It was quite tough," he says.

He was successful and then he went to Spain to fish out of La Coruna. "It was a different way of life. Weather didn't stop them. They were great seamen. I learned a lot from them. Of course, they had the boat for it. We'd spent between 11 and 17 days at sea at a time. It was an eye-opener."

He spent two years working with the Spanish crew and then it was back to Greencastle to get his `Skipper Full' certificate in 1987. He went to Fleetwood Nautical College in Lancashire to finish his studies and sit the exams. At 21 he was one of the youngest ever to get the full skipper certificate. Back at Howth, he started working on the Silver Harvest and after three years he was asked to skipper the Muriel Grace. He has no regrets.

"I like the life," he says. "It's nice to come home, everything is new again. Once you go into it you'll rarely leave it. There's a camraderie with the crew. It's hard to explain but we all have one thing in mind - to make a few bob and come back in again."