Samsun is a city with wet streets, faintly blowing winds, humid air that rots even the iron in the concrete, and water everywhere. It is the city of water with its sea, rivers, lakes and fishermen.
Although I was born in November 1979, my elders had my date of birth registered as 8th January 1980, born in Samsun in order not to create confusion. Along with my date of birth, the residence and the place where I was born are also full of interesting things. I was born in a fifty square meter house in the basement of a three-storey house at Marmara Street Dead End in Samsun Belediye Evleri Neighbourhood. This was a place with both a dead end and a steep slope. After that in my life, both the stalemates and the uphill have never ended. When I was born, my father was in the military (I still experience the paternal deprivation of Freud’s father-child relationship). My mother had a complication while giving birth to me. She was treated at the hospital; my dad was in the military, I, who was new born, was in the arms of the neighbours who were trying to cut my umbilical cord at home. I guess that’s enough.
I was just starting to speak. I said fish to every dish I saw. For me; chicken was fish, meat was fish, and bread was fish. Everyone liked that. When my elders asked me: “Güven, what’s the name of it?”, I was tirelessly saying this was fish, fish. It seems that this love of fish would form the basis of the adventure of fish and fishing that would penetrate right to my bones in the coming years.
I don’t like turbot. My siblings don’t either. You ask why? My grandmother used to grind turbot on the tips of her fingers for her weaned grandchildren, so that they would love and eat fish in the future. I remember very clearly. I was five or six years old. When my grandfather was coming from the fish house, he used to bring the big turbot that he had set aside for home and put them in the kitchen. The turbot was so big (10-12 kilos) that they couldn’t even fit in the sink. My brothers and I used to put our hand in the mouth of the still alive turbot and try to make the fish bite ourselves. This turbot, which often came to the house in those years, later turned into turbot phobia for us. Nowadays, find the turbot and eat it!!!
My parents are from the Black Sea region, my mother’s father is from Trabzon (settled in Terme, Samsun). My father is from Ordu. My mother is from the coast, my father is from the mountain village. One side of me is fish and my other side is hazelnut…
We always grew up at my grandfather’s knee. My grandfather was a fisherman, my uncles were fishermen, the neighbours were all from the Black Sea. My family was large. It was like the movie “Neşeli Günler”. My grandfather’s children and a groom were under the same roof altogether. On the Belediye Evleri Beach, my grandfather had a small fishing boat. His name was also the name of my brother, who is the first grandchild of the family; “Ümit-1”. My grandfather was a fisherman from time immemorial. This relentless passion was transmitted to everyone in the family, and eventually the sons and the groom became fishermen. Business grew and was moved to Fish Market. The next is known. Trolling years, fish sales office, fish shop, a fishery factory. Adventures, memories, memories again…
My childhood passed between the blue sea and the green Toptepe in Belediye Evleri Neighbourhood. I was in the first grade of primary school in my first fishing adventure. I was fishing inland waters! In Toptepe creeks, I prepared fish traps with onion sacks. The next day there was no fish in the trap. There was a crab! I was slowly getting to know the types. I could distinguish between fresh water and salt water. What is a stream, what is a river, what is a lake, what is sea? What lives where? I could distinguish between brook fish and sea fish. The time came and I decided to go fishing with my friends. I was still in the first grade. I ran straight to the seaside as I took the bonito anchor in a chest on my grandparents’ balcony. I threw my fishing rod into the sea from the rocks. The fishing rod did not sink into the water. You ask why? There was no weight on it. I was trying to learn the logic of fishing, then a slap on the back of my neck and my dad… This first fishing adventure, which I realized by escaping secretly from the house, ended that day.
I didn’t give up, I had been admiring the small fishing boats, anglers, and *voliciler on Samsun Belediye Evleri Beach during my primary school years. Samsun Fish House was becoming my site. I was unexpectedly at the port and at my grandfather’s office. Depending on the season, I was either on the boatyard or on the trawler. I used to do everything I could to make sure they didn’t kick me out of here. Mostly cleaning and fetching jobs… I used to watch the fishing boats, the nets in the harbour, the fish, the fish crates. I used to listen to fishing conversations wherever I could. I used to record everything in my mind, in my heart, like a tape recorder.
I was in the fifth grade of primary school and I had a love for reading a book. I read Ömer Seyfettin, Halide Edip, John Steinbeck and all their series. I also loved the story of these books coming to our house. The story was that: My two uncles, Celal and Mehmet, went to Italy as fugitives with the fever of their youth and worked in a circus here. They made very good friends in Italy. For several years, the Italian adventure continued. When they returned home, they had learned Italian and became intellectuals in their own way. Before going to bed at night, my uncles always read a book and went to bed after that. This must have been a method they developed there. After a while, these books were inherited from my uncles and came to our house.
I was in the middle school. I took my school friends and took a boat ride. I was pulling the oars. I didn’t give the helm to anyone. I rowed until I died of exhaustion. At Belediye Evleri Beach, I rented Ömer Aga’s magnificent two-meter chestnut boat named “Papila”. I was the captain. I was very cool. I could row, too. I could also fish. It didn’t matter if it was with trotline or bait. The first fish I caught was horse mackerel. Later on, I fished with bait. I fished meagre for myself and sometimes gar fish and picarel.
The times when I started to know about everything… I was in the sixth grade and I used to travel all over the Black Sea coast with my grandfather. From land snails to froggers; from crayfish catchers to sea snail fishermen… I admired fish factories, large and small aquaculture enterprises, lobsters in fish ponds by the lake, and those who hunt blood leeches. As if this was not the ecosystem of Samsun, but Noah’s Ark in the Northern Hemisphere! Oh, my goodness, what diversity!
The days when I walked alone to Samsun port, boatyard and dock many times… An excessive, unreasonable desire to see the sea, ships, fishing boats… This passion was getting neurotic in me. I got unhappy when I did not see fishing boats. I used to listen to stories about fish and fishing from the great captains in Samsun Fish Market. I listened to the memories of the former captains who hunted dolphins with the Mauser. I was astounded. I said to myself that not only whales were caught in these waters. I was watching the crates of fish on the trawler boats returning from fishing. The turbot, anchovies, shad, huge haddock and my favourite ones, sturgeons… All of them were so alive that they looked like they were blinking and asked, “What’s up?”. Imagine a child who is only twelve years old and knows all the creatures that come out of the sea. Yes, in my secondary school years, I got to know all the species that were caught. In the period when our people were fishing in the Aegean waters, I knew all the seafood products from the sponge to the sturgeon, one of the most special species of the Black Sea, from black caviar to scalloped caviar, from waxy roe to brine.
My grandfather forbade my entry to the port. He also gave strict instructions to the guard. “You will not take this child here.” Of course, this was my mother’s job. My mother told her father: “Father, this child will not study. All his job is the sea, the fish, the boat”. My grandfather couldn’t stand his daughter and the bans were coming. Did I obey the orders? Of course not, and I sneaked into the harbour. I climbed onto the boats at the dock and inhaled the scent of the sea. In those years, I couldn’t learn to swim somehow. I was very afraid of drowning. We used to go to the sea almost every day which was one step away from the neighbourhood. I barely escaped drowning a few times. I guess this fear was because of that. In the following years, I came across something very interesting in the books I read. All great sailors actually didn’t know how to swim. Joshua Slocum, adventurer, scientist, first person to circumnavigate the world alone in his boat “The Spray”; sailor Thor Heyerdahl, my grandfather and my uncle Kenan, who spent their lives in the sea… Neither of them knows how to swim. Don’t you think this is a strange situation?
I was preparing for the end of secondary school and military high school exams. I wanted to be a captain. I applied for the exams of İstanbul Heybeliada Military High School (Naval Academy). I met the prerequisites and my test admission paper came home, but it was in vain. My father didn’t even take me to the exam. There was a pain and an incurable wound inside me. Goodbye to the white uniform and distant ports! For a time, I bowed to the inevitable and I am offended at sea. I crawled into my shell.
The 1990s descended on the country like a dark cloud with all its deprivation and poverty. It was 1994 and this beautiful dream was coming to an end. My grandfather quitted fishing, giving up everything related to it. This last union with the sea seems to be the unfortunate fate of all captains. The sea was slowly being over for us and the income from the sea was not enough to support the whole family. My grandfather disposed of his trawler boat, his office in Samsun Fish Market, his fish shop, and Terme crayfish lakes. For me, a whole fishing empire was over like all empires. I was traumatized. The fish house, the fishermen, the fish crates and the harbour never left my mind.
I graduated from high school in 1997 and my university adventure began after the exam. I won the department of Guidance and Psychological Counselling at Ondokuz Mayıs University in Samsun. I couldn’t get away from the sea again. The university was at seaside. At break, I breathed in the smell of the sea. When I found time, I threw myself to the beach. Even though I didn’t fish, I watched the sea for hours. I couldn’t go to the fishery because we had no one left in the fish market. I had a nasty pain inside me. I was looking at the old black and white photos of fish houses, ports and fishing left from my grandfather. I was counting the cargo ships in the port and chatting with the bonito sellers coming from Perşembe, Ordu around the end of September and the beginning of October. I was watching voliciler, grey mullet sellers from the coast.
The year, 2002 and graduation… When I graduated, I was appointed to Tokat with the result of the Public Personnel Selection Exam. Of course, I had hard times. I had never left the sea in my life. My only connection between Tokat and Samsun was Yeşilırmak. Yeşilırmak, passing through Tokat, empties into the sea from Çarşamba, Samsun. I went to the edge of Yeşilırmak every evening, and I sent greetings from this beautiful river as if greeting the Black Sea.
After a long stay in Tokat, I returned to Samsun, my Black Sea. I was appointed to Çarşamba. From where to where… What did I do during my stay in Tokat? I married my university love. I have two daughters from this marriage. (We are waiting for our third child, Ahmet Aras while I am writing these lines). I had the opportunity to do a lot of research in Tokat. My interest in travel books and biographies started here, probably because of the atmosphere of Tokat. Half of my library was filled with travelogues and biographies. Here I created the infrastructure for the books I would write when I returned to Samsun. While I was working at Tokat Anatolian High School, my office turned into a museum. I was exhibiting sea and fishing photographs here. My students and visitors were admiring these documents and photographs as if they had entered a museum. The idea of writing a book also developed here. My dear elder, researcher and writer Hasan AKAR was following my work and encouraging me to write a book. That’s what happened in the end.
My first bookwork is “The Hidden History of Fishermen from Samsun 1935-2014”. It was published in 2015. I can say that I put my whole heart into this book. It was my firstborn. When the book published and it was slowly progressing, it suddenly became block-busting in the whole country and in a few countries of Europe. Of course, the influence of Doğan Hızlan in that is undeniable. Doğan Hızlan acquired the book on a fair trip and wrote about it in his column. After that, the book wasn’t easily available. I can’t explain how it feels. I was slowly becoming famous. I was called from many parts of Turkey and was giving information about the book.
My second work, “Sturgeon, The Precious of Çarşamba 1905-2016” was published shortly after the first book. “Sturgeon, The Precious of Çarşamba 1905-2016” was really tiring. Here, both the lack of resources and the fieldwork challenged me. I finished this book in Samsun, but it was only published after I was appointed to Bursa. Yes, I am in Bursa. This is where I started my third book and my collection work on the field. Here, I have accelerated my work on climate change and the environment. As a general rule, they say that the closer you are to Istanbul, the closer you are to everything. Yes, it has really happened. I can say that I have reached the sum of my fifteen years of work in five years, here. In this process, I reached many valuable scientists and had the opportunity to work with them.
I am currently in the Marmara Region. I am trying to get to know and discover Marmara, which I have never known. Of course, I do not neglect the Aegean. With its inland water, lakes and sea, Marmara and especially Çanakkale region are very important areas. I’m sailing into unfamiliar waters for new adventures and I’m looking forward to what will happen.
*Voliciler: It is a Turkish fishery term. It means “fishermen releasing nets into the sea all around with boats to turn fish”.