The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea

by Sebastian Junger

Since 1650, an estimated ten thousand Gloucestermen have died at sea,

The Grand Banks are so dangerous because they happen to sit on one of the worst storm tracks in the world.

As dangerous as the Grand Banks were, though, Georges Bank—only 180 miles east of Cape Cod—was even worse. There was something so ominous about Georges that fishing captains refused to go near it

Labrador Current

Finally, you want to avoid the dark of the moon when you plan your trips. No one knows why, but for several days before and after, the fish refuse to feed.

More people are killed on fishing boats, per capita, than in any other job in the United States.

wind starts to inch into the southeast. That’s called a backing wind; it goes counterclockwise around the compass and usually means bad weather

Wind is simply air rushing from an area of high pressure to an area of low; the greater the pressure difference, the faster it blows.

The instinct not to breathe underwater is so strong that it overcomes the agony of running out of air. No matter how desperate the drowning person is, he doesn’t inhale until he’s on the verge of losing consciousness. At that point there’s so much carbon dioxide in the blood, and so little oxygen, that chemical sensors in the brain trigger an involuntary breath whether he’s underwater or not. That is called the “break point”; laboratory experiments have shown the break point to come after 87 seconds. It’s a sort of neurological optimism, as if the body were saying, Holding our breath is killing us, and breathing in might not kill us, so we might as well breathe in. If the person hyperventilates first—as free divers do, and as a frantic person might—the break point comes as late as 140 seconds. Hyperventilation initially flushes carbon dioxide out of the system, so it takes that much longer to climb back up to critical levels.

When the first involuntary breath occurs most people are still conscious, which is unfortunate, because the only thing more unpleasant than running out of air is breathing in water.