Food Fighters

It's a tough job but someone's got to climb coconut trees. Meet the food industry's extremists.

Corey Arnold

Job King crab fisherman  
Home base  Domicile Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and Portland, Oregon
Claim to fame photographer; appeared in season two of Deadliest Catch.

Photo: Corey Arnold

“There’s no way to use electronics or anything to find the crab; it’s a guessing game. We start by laying out an 800-pound crab cage every mile to 50 miles on average. We work about 18 hours a day. The cages are baited with ground-up herring and sardines – or codfish that we poke in the guts – in a mesh bag that lets particles leak out. We dump the crab on a sorting table, and throw the keepers into the hold. Last year, our quota was about 80,000 pounds, but we can do that in a good week.

There are a lot of people who want to get into crab fishing now because of Deadliest Catch. A lot of guys try to act macho. They think, I’m a crab fisherman, so I’ve got to swear a lot. Until you do the job, the guy with the toughest image might just fail. So keep your mouth shut and take the orders.” 

Guy Loubrie

Job Wine grower and grape stomper
Home base Preignac, France
Claim to fame His 2003 Sauternes earned a top-three ranking in Sommeliers international magazine.

Photo: David Helman (Guy Loubrie)

“I love wine too much to do things carelessly, so I harvest everything by hand. We cut the grape bunches with shears. We remove the fruit from the stems and then put the grapes in a tank for foot treading. We remove the juice with a bucket. It’s slow, tiring work; it can take an hour to extract 15 buckets of juice. It may be tough, but this process allows the wine to ferment with the grapeseed juice. Using steel machinery would crush the berries and release bad tannins. Instead, we go barefoot and wear shorts since pants would soak up the juice. Hygiene is essential; we wash in clear water with a touch of sulphur. When you do the morning cuvée and the grapes are at 8°C, it’s really cold on the legs.” 

David E. Hackenberg
Job Beekeeper
Home base Lewisburg, Pennsylvania and Dade City, Florida
Claim to fame / Signe distinctif He identified Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Photo: David Yellen (David E. Hackenberg)

“Beekeeping is not like other farming where you sit on a tractor. Honeybees are responsible for one out of every three bites of food we put into our mouths. They transfer pollen from the male flower to the female flower so that we have a fruit; we’re basically talking about plant sex. Most of our bees move 12,000 miles per year on the back of a truck for crop pollination. In February, they get shipped to California to pollinate almonds. They’re in Florida by mid-April to work the citrus, and then they head north to pollinate apples in Pennsylvania. By May, they’re on their way to Maine to pollinate the blueberry crop. A hive or two an acre usually covers it, depending on the density of flowers and how fast the crops need to be pollinated. It’s just totally amazing what a hive of them little girls can do.”

Jean-Luc Baholet
Job Salt producer
Home base France
Claim to fame His co-op helped make artisanal salt popular again.

Photo: Pascal François, Les Salines de Guérande (Salt producer at work)

“We go out to the marshes around 5:30 a.m. and start harvesting the salt with our las, a special rake that has a five-metre-long handle. We rake the salt to the side of shallow pools and bring it up on a small platform. The water flows through a series of shallow pools, evaporating to concentrate the salt until it reaches the last one, which is where we harvest the fleur de sel. We collect it carefully, and leave it to dry on platforms, where it can drain overnight. Then I harvest a little grey salt and finish work around 8:30 p.m. Throughout the season, between June and September, I produce an average of 100 tons of grey salt and five or six tons of fleur de sel. We’re still working like people did 1,000 years ago.”

Paul Richardson
Job Free-climbing coconut harvester 
Home base Cairns, Queensland, Australia
Claim to fame  He invented the Cocotap.

Photo: Gisella Di Fronzo (Paul Richardson)

“When I moved to the tropics 15 years ago, I tasted a coconut of peak ripeness – a ‘champagne’ – and knew I wanted to climb coconut trees. I start by making sure the sand is off my bare feet. Carefully gripping the frond scars – where old fronds have fallen off – with my toes, I walk up until it gets too vertical. Then I put my legs up one at a time, put one hand on the back of the tree and one on the front and frog-walk up until I reach the fronds. Typically, you get six to 10 coconuts on a bunch; half a litre of juice in each is a really good harvest. Resting in the crown of the palm, swaying with the breeze – that’s a peak experience for me. It’s a primal thing.”

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