Love Deep Like The Sea (English)

PACIFIC

Something rammed the stern with full force as the order to haul in the net was called.

Zhenhai instinctively clawed harder at the railing, and so only the clipboard slid across the slippery floor of the ocean trawler instead of the young man himself. Damn.

It was embarrassing enough to stand on the edge of the deck and vomit his own guts out. Not only that, no, now he had to get down on his knees and collect the report with the wrong numbers. Zhenhai looked up. The crew set about hauling in the trawl. Quite carelessly, as if there was nothing to worry about. Hadn't they heard the tremendous rumble?

All sorts of scenarios popped into the young man's head. Another whale that had lost its bearings? Although that was unlikely, whales had become so rare. None had been seen here in the eastern Pacific for a long time. Possibly it was a school of dolphins trying to alert them to something? Or something undiscovered that no human had even glimpsed before....

Actually, Zhenhai knew better. After all, he had wasted many years of his life making his childhood dream a reality through years and years of study. And now there he was.

Marine biologist, unapologetically seasick, pale and dark-eyed at the rail of an deep sea trawler. In his black coat, which kept bumping his collar in the wind, he didn't look like he belonged here anyway.

And it wasn't every day, of course.

Sometimes he was in the office writing expert reports. Sometimes his boss took him along to committees and smaller research projects. Sometimes he had to prepare lectures for the university, which he himself, still as nervous as when he was a student, held in front of a crowd of students whom he secretly wanted to encourage to drop out after all. But who knows, maybe in this crowd sat the one who could do everything differently...

Most of his time, however, was spent right here: in the middle of the ocean, with the deep sea that had always fascinated him right under his feet. On a trawler surrounded by a rough crew and a captain, who was too arrogant for his own good. But it was hard to blame these people. Because even though one of them didn't understand anything about dental hygiene and always stood uncomfortably close to Zhenhai, and the other nudged him with his elbow so that the appraiser, who was pitiful in his eyes, would also develop a sense of togetherness for the crew - it wasn't them who filled their pockets with this dirty business.

Neither did Captain Li, who was by no means a good man. He only believed that he was getting rich from fishing, but those who really profited from it had never seen tuna being pulled onto the fishing deck in their lives. It was a massacre.

Zhenhai had never thought of it as one himself, but now that he knew sustainable fishing was just a thing recorded on paper - now he couldn't see anything but that.

It was already late and dark. Without the bright floodlights on board, one would not have seen one's hand in front of one's eyes. Li had insisted on the last catch. Everyone was tired. No one would make much effort to sort out the bycatch anymore.

The weather had turned ungracious in the last few hours. With this swell, it was almost impossible for Zhenhai not to get seasick.

"Hey kid, you know there are pills for that, right?" one called out to him. He was stocky and had a gap in his teeth when he smiled; actually individual enough to remember his name, but that was one of the weaknesses he worked on in vain. His reserved nature kept him from asking again, and so as soon as one introduced himself to him, the name was immediately forgotten after the first meeting - or the first subsequent word, if it was a particularly complicated one. But if he was completely honest, he had never bothered to remember men's names either. To him, they were like fish in a school. If one pulled, so did the other, and if one laughed, so did the next, and if one went that way, the others followed, and so on....