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Unloading frozen blocks of fish off factory fishing trawlers. In short, these trawlers catch the fish (by trawling the ocean floor), produce the fish onboard (fish fillets), pack the product (in 25 and 50 kg blocks), and store them in large freezing rooms. Then when the capacity is full, they dock, and the product is unloaded. Usually some company offers this loading/unloading service. The product was the either placed in freezing warehouse, or loaded directly onto trucks. The trawlers we unloaded, would usually carry 300 - 500 metric tons of fish. When I worked, we'd get around $0.03 pr kg fish unloaded, so a 300 metric tonne assignment would result in $9000 split on 10-15 people. Some days we'd unload 500-700 metric ton. That would be very long days - but the work had to be done, as the there were ships standing in queue. The main problem with automation is that all the ships look a bit different, and there are so many edge cases there. Sometimes the blocks are frozen together, and you'll have to use a crowbar to get them loose. Sometimes the blocks have shifted due to rough seas. It can be a fucking mess, other times it's nice and straightforward. The largest boats do have conveyer belt, so the longshoremen are just throwing blocks on the belt, and the other crew is on land putting said blocks onto pallets. But 9 out of 10 times, there's a crew in the freezer loading blocks onto pallets, and then the pallets are brought up from the ship, and sorted on land. People work surprisingly fast. As for the vessels, it's just a cost of doing business. |