I first met my friend Shannon at Verla's house. Verla was living in an abandoned work camp that was on some of her family's property and she let people like Shannon and myself stay there when we were between boats if we helped with expenses. Shannon and I became good friends and one year we went to Hawaii for a vacation together. I am not a drinking person, but Shannon wanted to celebrate being in Hawaii with a pineapple drink, so we stopped at one of those bars by the beach and ordered up a couple of pineapples. When Shannon looked at her drink she realized that the poor pineapple had been sacrificed just so that she could get drunk. She started musing about how a million pineapples a year must be destroyed in this fashion just so that people could have one of these famous Hawaiian beverages. I just looked at my guilt-ridden friend in amazement! "Have you forgotten what we do for a living?" I asked Shannon. "We are fisherwomen and we have destroyed millions of sea creatures just so we could make the money to come here. And on top of that what we do for a living is destroying the ecosystem of the Bering Sea, and here you are worried about a couple of pineapples?" "You're right," answered Shannon, "I am being pretty hypocritical." "Yes you are," I agreed, "after all, you are having an attack of conscience over commercially raised fruit, not some endangered species of the rain forest!" But I couldn't help but remember a time when Shannon came home drunk and found some live king crab sitting on a table outside the front door of our home in Unalaska. Someone had given the crab to Verla and she was inside heating up water in preparation for cooking the crustaceans. Shannon began making a fuss about how the poor things were dying and began to apply mouth to mouth resuscitation to one of the creatures. Knowing Shannon's drinking habits, I was sure it only took a couple of breaths and the crab was soon feeling no pain. It was probably drunk out of its simple little mind. But Shannon insisted on freeing the crabs and because Verla loved her so, she let our friend take the crabs to the bay and release them into the water. But everyone watched carefully to make sure that Shannon didn't stumble in her efforts and join the creatures in the water. And then there is my friend Jo, who is so tender of heart. Someone gave her a few king crab to eat. But when she got them home she was unsure as to how to butcher them, since they were still alive. She called the friend who had given her the crab and got directions on how to prepare them. But when Jo looked into the beady little eyes on their stalks and watched the nervous stroking movements of their mouth parts her hunger failed and so did her resolve to kill them. Jo took the crab to the bay and released them back into the water. However, the place she chose to do so was the same place where Shannon had released her crab, just across from our old dwelling place. The police station is up on a ridge above the bay and an officer was watching Jo with her bucket. When she turned to leave, there was the officer who had come down to ask if she had just dumped any toxic wastes into the bay. Jo told the officer that she had just instituted the Unalaska branch of the Crab Liberation Army and that in honor of this society she had just freed the first of many crab to come. The officer laughed as she described the events leading up to her actions and let her go with a commendation.
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