Vote results
Quick summary:
[X] Magikarp Catch and Release won with 51 votes.
Mareanie (Merry) Christmas! ...Hm. Mareanie Christmurr? Yeah that works. Mareanie Christmurr! I hope your holiday is going well and I hope you enjoy! This is a bit of a set-up chapter, but we always have one of those at the start of every mission. |
The decision you make is ultimately a close one, split between joining Gretchen in Sootopolis and accompanying the Magikarp catch and release group.
On the one hand, you would enjoy being with Gretchen, and the conditions found in Sootopolis are, by this point, fairly standard for your skill-set.
On the other hand, though, you have worked on fishing boats for most of your childhood, and you're exceptionally familiar with Magikarp as a species. If they need someone to help point out the problematic specimens, you're pretty much perfectly suited for the role, and you won't need to spend any time learning on your feet.
That is what ultimately sways you over: as much as being with Gretchen would be lovely, giving you a familiar anchor to work with, the sea calls to you, and you can't bring yourself to overlook a request for help with collecting Magikarp—not this time, at least.
Tapping in your confirmation, the terminal spits out a screen that lists departure information: you're due to leave an hour from now, and the meeting site is a room a floor below you, on the same level as the ship's main deck. The mission blurb requests that you arrive twenty minutes before departure, to help with moving supplies. You're starting to see a pattern, there; if you had to guess, that entire stretch of hallway with rooms is used for pre-mission meet-ups and little else.
You quickly take a picture of the terminal screen, before logging out.
Stepping back, you find Shou and Suzume giving you inquisitive looks. You're surprised neither of them was reading over your shoulder, to be honest.
"So?" Suzume asks, one eyebrow raised.
"I'm going fishing," you say with maybe a
little too much satisfaction in your voice. "There's an ongoing effort to collect Magikarp and catch any that seem to be close to evolution for relocation out into international waters, given the recent upswing in stress evolutions."
A flicker of disappointment washes over both Suzume's and Shou's faces, but it's gone almost as soon as it appeared, replaced with acceptance.
"You know your way around that kind of thing, right?" Suzume asks, a little hesitant.
You nod. "I was raised a fisher, Suzume. My family's been catching 'Karp since they set foot on Orre. I'll be safe."
Something relaxes in the angle of Suzume's jaw, and she offers you a small smile. "Well, that's all I can hope for."
"Do good work out there," Shou offers quietly.
"You two stay safe, alright?" you tell them, moving your gaze between both of them. While the words
are for both of them, you're saying this more for Shou's sake than anything else. From your experience with the man, he has a habit of throwing himself into the most challenging - and by extension, dangerous - part of any given mission.
Suzume slips forward and wraps you in a quick hug, barely more than a single firm squeeze, before she separates. "You too," she insists. "I'll be in contact as soon as I get settled out there. We can share updates."
You see Shou nod out of the corner of your eye.
"I'll probably have more time for it than you will," you admit. Fishing is physically exhausting work, no matter the method, but that work tends to come in bursts, with relatively long periods separating them. Given you expect to be tethered to a ship for the next week or more, you're sure you can find time to shoot off some messages.
After a few more well-wishes and goodbyes, your group separates, and the three of you spill out into the corridors of the ship, heading out.
After waiting in a conveniently-placed seating area a little ways off from the room, you make your way over.
The hallway this time around is
crowded. What seems to be a middling-sized battalion of mechanics clog the space, and what few nuggets you can make out of the ambient conversation seems to indicate they're on shift change and eager for an early lunch.
With the sheer number of people in your way, it takes you a little while - and some undignified squeezing - to find your way up to the door, and when you finally do, you find it already open. Fearful of being swept back out into a tide of mechanics, you don't hesitate as you close the rest of the distance and slip inside.
The meeting room is the same as most of the others you've seen on this vessel, being decently-sized and occupied by a single large table at the centre, with chairs strewn haphazardly around it. Three people are already present inside, and your gaze swings to them as soon as you take notice of their presence.
Two of the three people stand side-by-side, staring down at a phone. One is a man somewhere in his late forties to early fifties, with warm brown skin, a bald head, and a distinct claw scar running from behind one slightly mangled ear all the way up to the crown of his skull. He is built, for lack of a better word,
tough. It's hard to put any better descriptor to the man: his body is not particularly large, being not that much taller than you, but there's a wiry strength to his build that his ranger uniform can't quite contain, paired with the same general sturdiness of well-cured leather.
The other person next to him is a woman around your age, taller than you by easily half-a-head, possibly more. She's pale-skinned with a night sky's worth of freckles dusting her forehead, cheekbones and nose. Pin-straight silky black hair reaches as far down as her mid-back, and blunt, choppy bangs frame dark eyes. Her cheekbones are high, her mouth thin and pursed, and she has both arms folded behind her back in a stance you can only describe as
aggressively professional.
The last of the three people is sitting at the table, reading a thick, weathered tome of a book. He looks to be maybe five or ten years older than you, with a wide-shouldered build clad visibly in muscle. He is distinctly more top heavy than anything else, with stout arms and a body that, approximately, has the general silhouette of an upside down triangle. His skin is pale, though dusted with faded freckles, while his hair is as black as the woman's, and nearly as long, but is pulled back into a tightly-wound bun on the base of his skull. Pale blue, almond-shaped eyes sit beneath one of the bushiest sets of eyebrows you've seen that haven't taken the leap and formed a unibrow, though it is a fairly close thing.
The oldest of the group looks up from the phone and towards you, orange eyes glinting with curiosity. You see the others stirring too, looking towards you.
"Is this the Magikarp group?" you ask.
The dark-skinned man's face spills into a smile. "That would be us, yes," he confirms, voice slow, ponderous, but not terribly deep. "I am Noriaki Siregar, and I'm both the leader of this mission and the captain of the ship you'll be on for the next week. It's good to meet you..."
As he trails off, you realize he's waiting for a name.
"Kylie Parsons," you finish for him, stepping deeper into the room now that you're confident you actually got the right place.
"Kylie, then," he confirms genially. "We're just waiting on one other, now that you're here."
You resist the urge to frown. "I'm not late or anything, am I?" You're pretty sure you read the time right, but you don't want to pull out your P★DA to check.
"No, no, nothing of the sort; these two simply arrived early," Noriaki says soothingly, gesturing towards both the woman and the other man in the room. "Speaking of, children these days—come now, you two, introduce yourselves properly."
The woman is the first to step forward, a look of amusement flashing over her face at the needling. She steps up to you, then extends one hand out for you to take.
You do, shaking her hand.
"I am Bai Sugiyama," she tells you, releasing your hand. She's got quite the grip to her, an understated strength. "I'm from Johto, where I specialize in Gyarados management as a continuation of my family's traditional work rearing them."
You smile. "I'm glad to hear we have someone well-versed in handling Gyarados. I'm not unequipped to do that, but I'll admit, I'm more familiar with Magikarp than I am their evolution."
"Oh?" Bai prods, eyes sharp with interest.
You nod. "My family's been fishing for a very long time, and I spent my childhood working on the ships, helping catch 'Karp. I figured the experience would be helpful for this mission."
"That's good to hear! The more of us that know the ins and outs of fishing, the quicker we get this done," a voice interrupts, and you turn to find the muscular, pale man walking closer, having risen from his seat at some point. He offers you a relaxed smile and a wave of one thick, calloused hand. "Haywood Shinkawa, from Sinnoh. I've no family history with fishing, but I've been helping manage the fisheries around Iron Island for years now. I actually came to Hoenn to get more experience in working in warmer waters, but after Groudon and Kyogre appeared... well, I decided to stick around. It was the least I could do."
"You wouldn't happen to have been part of the group that Suzume Maekawa was, were you?" you ask, curious.
Recognition flashes over Haywood's face, and his smile widens. "You know her?" he asks.
"The two of us are friends," you explain. "She recently adopted a very violent Lotad by the name of Frisbee."
"I'm glad to hear she's doing well for herself," Haywood says, relief plain in his voice. "She was one of the recent graduates who came with us for the exchange, a handful 'em. Lot of us felt bad about them getting cut loose in Hoenn once shit hit the fan—I think we all get they're fully-grown adults, but we were meant to be their mentors, and they're still our juniors, y'know? Anyway, s'good to meet you."
"You as well—"
"
I knew you sounded familiar!" a new voice interjects in Galarian.
You jolt, turning back towards the door to find a tall, tanned-skin man stepping inside. His head is a mess of blonde hair that refuses to sit flat and hangs slightly over narrow eyebrows and a deceptively delicate looking face. If not for the combination of his height and his distinctly muscular, athletic build, you'd think he was four or five years younger than you.
It's an appearance you instantly recognize, and one that leaves you baffled.
"
...Ceric?" you blurt, less of a question and more of an exclamation of surprise.
Ceric Nelks was a classmate of yours back at ranger school, and was one of the more social members of your year. You'd shared a lot of your electives with him, particularly the ones focusing on aquatic and nautical topics, though the two of you hadn't really spent much time around each other. From what you remember, Ceric is Haglanni and hails from Phenac, and he mostly hung out with other people similarly from Phenac or the neighbouring cities and towns situated on the Great Phenac Oasis.
Beyond that? You mostly remember him being known for running large study groups.
"
Hey Kylie, good to see a familiar face," Ceric greets, resting one hand on his hip. "
Is Lazza around?" he asks, panning his head this-way-and-that.
The question hits harder than it is almost certainly intended to, and you end up hesitating as you spend a moment stewing in your own head. "
No, she's still back in east Orre," you say slowly.
And I haven't spoken to her since I left Orre goes unsaid, but sits front and centre in your mind like an itch you can't quite reach.
"
Oh," Ceric replies quietly.
It takes you a moment to pick it out of his tone, but when you do, you realize with dawning offence that he's apparently not sure what to do with the information that you're here solo, rather than with Lazza.
The offence soon manages to storm the intelligent parts of your brain - currently busy trying to divine what it is about you that would lead people to believe you'd never go somewhere without Lazza - and you open your mouth to say something probably ill-advised when someone sharply clears their throat behind you.
Turning back around, you find Noriaki smiling at the two of you. It doesn't quite reach his eyes, which promptly snuffs out your annoyance.
"It's good to see the two of you know each other," he says slowly, tone pointedly neutral, "but you'll have time to catch up later. Now that everyone is here, we have work to do."
"Wait, Ceric, are you—" you start, turning back to him.
Ceric nods eagerly. "Magikarp team, right?" he asks, more at Noriaki than you. His Daugo is as close to perfect as you can probably get without living in Konrin, with a very controlled accent that only comes out in certain vowels.
"That would be us, yes. I am Noriaki Siregar, the leader of this mission.
In any event," he chides, a little more sharply than before. "As we are all here, including our last member, Ceric, there are supplies we need to move from the Redeemer to the ship we'll be on. If you're ready..?"
You spare another glance at Ceric, who has straightened up under scrutiny, before turning your full attention back to Noriaki. Surprises aside, he's right: you have a job to do, and you ought to get to doing it.
"I'm good to go," you confirm, gripping the strap of your bag.
Noriaki claps his hands together. "Wonderful. Then let's be off; the supplies are already ready on the main deck, we just need to get them into the baskets and down to the ship."
With a deep breath, you lower the last box down, letting it drop onto the main deck and snatching your fingers away before they can be crushed.
"That should be the last of it," you declare, pulling yourself upright.
This last box joins a larger cluster, ranging in size from a shopping bag to taller than you. The process to get all the supplies down had been pretty complicated, and had taken nearly the entire twenty minutes before the official 'start' of the mission. Whoever eyeballed giving the group twenty minutes extra to get everything in order knew what they were doing, clearly.
The others are scattered around the boxes, resting or inspecting them. Ceric in particular you can only see by his hair, which sticks up from behind a row of particularly tall boxes like the bobbing tail of some elusive Pokemon.
"Good work, everyone," Noriaki declares, sounding satisfied. Noriaki, on claims that it is 'his boat, his burden' had carried more than any of you, but shows vanishingly little evidence of that labour; he's not even winded. "Now that everything is at least here, let me show you around. The weather seems to be holding steady, so we don't have to worry about getting these into shelter just yet."
The weather is... not great at the moment, but he's right about there being no hints of rain. It's overcast, the kind of thick, low-fog overcast that's reminiscent of home, and the seas are slightly restless, with choppy waves licking at the vessel, but you haven't felt even a single raindrop in all the time you've spent outside.
Noriaki gestures for you all to follow, a wide sweep of one hand, before he turns around and starts moving away from the boxes.
After a moment, everyone follows after, with Ceric in particular needing to jog out from behind the maze of boxes to catch up. He falls into pace next to you, shooting you a quick smile.
You take the opportunity to look around, absorbing the sight of your surroundings.
The ship you'll be on for the next week is quite the large fishing vessel, designed for netting catch by the looks of it. The front of the ship is dominated by a large, multi-floor interior, big enough to probably qualify as a multi-story house. A tall metal crane sits further towards the back, just past the mid-point of the deck, and it's joined by several other large pieces of machinery scattered around its base. At the very back of the ship is a ramp with a reasonably-sized skiff sitting on it, tethered to the larger vessel by a line of chain as thick as your bicep.
The vessel itself might be painted in Union colours, but you can tell - half from instinct, half from simply knowing what to look for - that this
was once a commercial fishing vessel, one which got plenty of use and was well-maintained by your standards. How it ended up in the hands of the Union is not something you know, though; the Union prefers to refurbish second-hand vehicles whenever possible, and helps pad their fleets by buying up any it can get its hands on.
It is, if nothing else, more likely that they bought the vessel than it is that it was claimed after its owner was arrested. From what you understand, that's generally something the Union only does if they're feeling spiteful.
Ahead of you, Noriaki slows to a stop, and you fall into place next to him. There, at the back of the boat - separating the skiff from the rest of the main deck - is a large, open pool, currently full of water. It's deep enough that you're fairly certain the pool reaches almost through the entire hull of the ship, and it's wide enough that it leaves only a small walkway between it and the edge of the vessel. The pool is surrounded on almost all sides - with a single gap near the centre - by a railing that reaches up to your waist, which just barely might be enough to stop someone from falling into it. You suspect the railing may exist more to keep things in than it does to keep people out.
The modifications done to this ship are most obvious here: the pool is clearly not part of the original design, with signs of welding around the edges and slightly different materials used in creating it. Saying that, though, the welds are
very good, if not terribly subtle. Whoever worked on this knew what they were doing, which really makes sense, given you don't just carve a hole this big into a ship and leave it floating afterwards if you're bad at your job.
"This is our catch pool," Noriaki explains after a moment to let you all stare at it. He turns his head to look at you, smiling slightly. "Once a catch of Magikarp is properly netted, they will be moved into this pool for observation. Any Magikarp that show signs of being near-evolution are captured, while the rest will be released. The bottom of this pool can open up, and has a mechanism to flush both the water and the Magikarp out as it does, before it will refill with ocean water. This lets us avoid putting too much strain on the Magikarp, as we might if we had to repeatedly expose them to open air."
You nod thoughtfully. Your own family's boat is much smaller than this, but it does have a somewhat crude, if similar-in-intention system: a hole in the deck which leads to a refrigerated compartment below. Magikarp are caught using the net, hauled onboard, then sorted into the hole, tossing out any already-dead Magikarp or any that show signs of evolution. Once it got back to dock, there was an outlet pipe you could open up that would drain Magikarp out of the compartment and generally into things like crates or barrels for transportation.
This is a similar idea, just with the caveat that, given this ship isn't meant for commercial fishing, this method doesn't kill the Magikarp by freezing them solid.
"We'll go into greater detail about how this works in a little while," Noriaki tells you all, before turning back around. "Until then, let's head back to the cabin, shall we?"
Not waiting a moment longer, Noriaki's off again, and you all follow him as he guides you over to one of the doors leading into the interior of the ship. There's others you can see, accessible from scaffold-like metal stairs winding their way up the walls of the structure, but you don't have much time to eyeball them before you're herded inside.
You find yourself in an open space with little in it, besides some shelves, a few terminals, and some rigging to help strap supplies down.
Noriaki gestures off to one side, towards an open archway. "Through there is the mess hall and kitchen. We won't be eating rations while out at sea, which I am thankful for, but we will need to establish a cooking rotation, as we do not have a dedicated one on-board," he explains, before pointing further down the open space, towards the very back, where a metal, spiral staircase leads directly up. "The second floor consists of my own room, the piloting area, and a rec room. We have satellite television, though it tends to be spotty in bad weather, so your mileage will vary, especially at this time of the year. Next to the stairs, you'll find a whiteboard with 'weirdest catch of the day' written on it. I set that up on the advice of a friend a few years back, when we mainly used this vessel for scientific studies. It gives people something to talk about on quiet days, so feel free to jot anything down you come across if you feel like it."
"Is there a lot of weird catches?" Ceric asks, squinting in the direction of the stairs.
"Oh, countless," Noriaki confirms. "That's part of fishing, no matter the method. You'll get a Pokemon with weird coloration, or some weird plant, or even Pokemon who have no right being caught the way they did. If you'll keep following me..."
Noriaki leads you further down the open space, then off to one side, where a hallway branches off from about the mid-point of the space and continues on until it reaches what must be the far wall of the interior. On either side of the hallway are doors: eight on one side, evenly spread across the wall, though clustered close enough together they surely can't be big, and two on the other.
"Your cabins," he explains, "and a pair of bathrooms. Pick whichever cabin you like, then go and get yourself situated. I'll go get this boat moving, so we can get this mission started, and when you're done, come upstairs and we'll get to talking about what you get to look forward to for the next ten days."
With that, Noriaki departs.
The remaining four of you share a few looks, before Bai steps forward and heads down the hallway. The rest of you follow after in single-file, unfortunately out of necessity; the hallway really
is that narrow, and you're all carrying gear with you. Before long, the line slows to a stop, and you find yourself standing in front of a door.
Reaching out, you pop it open and stick your head inside.
It's... about what you expected: extremely small, closer in dimensions to a closet than a room, but that's sleeping space on ships for you. The ceiling is nearly as low as the top of the door, which is already short enough that it feels cramped, which means some of your coworkers are definitely not going to be able to stand fully upright. On your left is a narrow bed recessed into a wall of storage compartments, and on your right is just a wall. There's no chair or table, and the space between the two 'walls' of your room is barely large enough for you to stand in without bumping up against something. There's two sources of light present: an overhead light, currently off and controlled by a switch clinging to the doorframe, and a porthole at the far end, staring out into the water.
You're glad they gave you the porthole, at least. It makes the room feel marginally less cramped than it is.
Slipping inside, you nudge the door shut behind you. It's definitely too small to be especially comfortable in, and while B.B. could sleep
on you if he was out at night, he isn't about to be able to sleep with you in the bed. You might have to keep your Pokemon in their 'balls overnight, not that you think they'll mind that much.
Still, you've definitely slept in worse conditions, up to and including a tarp thrown over gravel, so even if the bed you're staring at is thin, you're certain you can work with that.
Tossing your bag onto the bed, you crouch down and start unpacking.
Clearing the last few steps up to the second floor, you pan your head around, taking it all in.
The piloting area for the ship is pushed up against the other end of the space to where you are, positioned such that it stares out through what is functionally a wall-sized glass window. Out beyond it, you can see a great deal of open sea and not much else.
Noriaki sits in a chair up there, posture relaxed as the vessel continues to cut through the waves and carry you ever onward.
You find the other walls are bedecked with wide windows as well, if less so than the front wall. To your right, you can see Ever Grande City and the island it sits on slowly growing smaller as the ship continues to crawl away, though you suspect, especially from this high up, it will be a while before you can't see it anymore.
The space is L-shaped, and it's on the 'tail' of that shape where you find the rec room, separated by another archway. From your current position, you can't see much, but it looks to have several couches surrounding a table with a television mounted on one wall. It can't be that large of a space, but it's still enough to give people a place to go and relax, you suppose.
The others are all here; Ceric is staring down at a terminal with a fixed, curious look on his face, while Bai stands off to one side, looking out through a window. Haywood is sitting in a chair with what you're fairly certain is a Prinplup leaning against one of his legs as the man works large fingers through the feathers around the Pokemon's head.
"Oh—hey, Noriaki, Kylie's here!" Ceric calls out.
"Ah, good, we can get to the discussion, then," Noriaki says, swivelling in his seat to look back at you. "Now, show of hands here, who has worked on a fishing boat before?"
Your hand goes up, as does Bai's and Haywood's.
"And who among you are familiar with Magikarp fishing?"
None of the hands move.
"Good. One last question: who here is familiar with purse seine fishing?"
Bai's hand drops.
Noriaki hums. "An explanation is in order, then. Kylie, you've worked on a fishing vessel before; tell us what purse seine fishing is."
You blink, feeling a little singled out, but decide to just roll with it. "Purse seine fishing is the most common form of commercial fishing, as far as I understand, chosen for its combination of high-yield catches and low by-catch rate. It's done by laying out a net around a school of fish; the net has floaters at one end and weights at the other, which means when it's put out to sea, it forms a vertical wall. There's a second line - a 'purse' line - which acts as a drawstring, and is found in the bottom portion of the net. The net is deployed behind a fishing vessel and then guided around a given school of fish, and once in position, the drawstring is pulled, closing the bottom and preventing the school from escaping. Once that's done, the net is hauled in with the catch."
Your family uses purse seine fishing, though not on the scale this vessel does. There's a few other methods that also get a lot of use by fishers, from what you understand, particularly for fish that don't school, but given the ubiquity of Magikarp and Feebas, it's less common.
"Well put," Noriaki praises. "That is to be our method as well, though there are more steps to it on a vessel of this size. Specifically, once we use the net to catch a school of fish, we will then use a brailer - a metal ring with netting attached to it - to collect and then move the Magikarp over to the pool in batches. This is done in part for safety reasons, but it's also there to let us introduce Magikarp at our own pace and will make it easier to pick out any aberrant behaviour or qualities."
You've never used a brailer before, but you aren't unfamiliar with it or the concept in general. It's just not particularly useful on a smaller scale.
"We aren't going to be aggressive in our catching tactics, I should stress," Noriaki continues, turning back to the ocean ahead of him. "We will likely come across, and catch, some larger schools, but we will also be making detours to collect smaller schools, all of which will be tracked using our radar system; the one that Ceric has been so focused on. We want to take this steady and safe, with as few opportunities for things to go awry; while many of you have likely already internalized this from your own experiences, let me reaffirm it: Magikarp fishing is safe until it isn't, and then it is deadly. Patience and respect for the craft are the keys to ensuring we do not need to be rescued, and so long as we continue to do this work, we can prune the current rise in Gyarados evolutions prompting more Gyarados to evolve, and we will stabilize Hoenn's Magikarp population one step at a time."
"So, what roles will we be doing, then?" Bai asks, looking towards Noriaki.
"That depends on you," Noriaki tells her. "We're still a ways out from where I expect us to find some schools to try to collect, so you have time to consider. That said, we do need some roles filled, and first among them is we need someone focused on the net as we both deploy and reel it in. The net is the key to any catch, and if it clumps up, gets tangled, or catches on something and tears, an attempt can very easily fail, and when that happens, the school - and sometimes other nearby schools - will scatter. We will also need someone who will focus on moving the brailer and leading the others in doing so; the longer Magikarp stay out of water, and the more you have to handle them, the more their behaviours tend to become erratic, and it can make identifying problematic Magikarp more difficult. An ideal brailer run should be a quick scoop followed by only a few seconds in the air before they're dumped in the pool. Finally, there's the skiff; the skiff will take the far end of the net and act as an anchor for it, keeping it in position as we draw the net around the school. The person in the skiff will be responsible for making sure the net doesn't tangle up on their end, but also for observing any activity in the school and around the net itself, including anything that might have gotten snagged by the net that we don't want, or signs of danger. It is perhaps the least physically taxing job, but it's the most mentally straining, as your attention must be focused at all times to ensure the safety of the catch, yourself, and the vessel. Once everything is done, we'll get the skiff back up onto the ramp, then go about moving Magikarp into the pool and observing."
You take a moment to digest that.
"You'll have ten days to experience all of these roles, and I do prefer people not stick to a single role without good reason; I intend to leave everyone who does this mission more equipped for nautical work than they were coming in," Noriaki explains patiently. "And there will also be work between all of this, with the exception of the person on the skiff. The brailer isn't always out, the net doesn't always need to be straightened, so on. I advise you to choose, for now, the role here you're most comfortable with, so we can get to know each other's rhythms and strengths, but again, take your time in deciding, and don't feel like you can't step beyond your comfort zone, if you feel like you can do it."
Choice:
Where does Kylie position herself for the first catch of the mission?
[ ] You will pilot the skiff
A key and important role, crucial for both anchoring the end of the net and ensuring the deployed portion of the net is holding steady. This role is the most mentally taxing, but the least physically, and you should expect to spend much of your time staring down at the water or hanging over the edge to move the net.
[ ] You will lead the brailer
A middle-ground choice: while you're not familiar with operating one specifically, you know what needs to be done and how it is generally done. In this case, you'll be dragging a net-covered hoop attached to an overhead pulley around, using it to scoop up Magikarp and then quickly deposit them in the pool before they can begin to panic and die. Hesitation is absolutely unacceptable in this role, and your hand-eye coordination will be tested. Expect equal amounts of physical and mental strain from this, if not as severe as the other options.
[ ] You'll handle the net
The most physically demanding job, and one you're well-familiar with. Your job is simple, if exhausting: make sure that, as the net is pulled out and reeled in, it doesn't tangle, clump, tear or get messed up otherwise. This will involve a lot of hauling on a net attached to lead weights, and while assisted by the hydraulic mechanism in the crane on the ship, it will be taxing on your body.
[ ] You'll move between roles
Due to your hefty experience in helping out on a ship, you're more than competent enough to fill any role, and you can take this to its logical conclusion by moving between whatever job seems to need your help the most, with the exception of the skiff, which you will be unable to access once it is out on the ocean. This is likely to be the most thoroughly exhausting experience, needing to potentially trouble-shoot issues as they appear, but it's a role you can certainly do with a great deal of competency.
