Jake looks at the tuna. It’s still dangling from the line. The gaff is still stuck in its cheek. Its eyes have quietened and shrunk back into its head. Blood seeps from its serrated flank into the water, then spirals away in loose tendrils. Jake watches as they curl through the murk of the seal’s blood. Both are cloudy and brown, he notices. But then again, how would he know what colour it is?

‘Jake?’ His father looks over his shoulder; Jake’s watching the body of the seal bob in the gentle roll of the swell. ‘You right, mate?’ his father barks in disbelief. When Jake doesn’t reply, his father shakes his head and looks at Pete.

‘I’ve got it,’ Pete mutters. He leans out, grasps the pole and pulls the now still tuna up into the boat.

‘Well done, Jakey, you got your first tuna!’ Pete ruffles his hair.

‘Here, hold it up, mate. We’ll get a photo for your mum.’

Jake tries to clear his swollen throat and straighten his wobbling lips into a smile as he heaves the fish up for the camera.

‘Get in there, Shayne,’ Pete says. ‘Let’s get one of you and your boy.’

Jake’s dad wraps his arm around Jake’s shoulder and gives it a bit of a squeeze as Pete takes the photo.

‘Smile, mate,’ Jake’s dad murmurs. ‘You’re a man now.’

‘Whaddaya reckon? Might get filleting straight away?’ Rob says, eyeing the mangled fish still on show in Jake’s arms.

‘Yeah, probably for the best,’ Jake’s father agrees.

As they motor back to the jetty, Jake’s father and uncles groan.

‘What’s wrong?’ Jake asks his father.

‘See the ab boat there?’ Jake’s father says. ‘The bloke who works it—Jem Allenby—is a real prick.’

‘Blood oath,’ Rob mutters.

‘What’s he do?’

‘Thinks he’s some kind of eco-warrior.’

‘What’s an eco-warrior?’ Jake asks, but no one answers him. He thinks it sounds kind of cool, like some kind of fishing superhero. Warrior of the ocean, fighting pirates and sharks and kraken.

As they pull up at the wharf, Jake watches as the eco-warrior heaves crates of abalone over the side of his boat to a man, who then puts them in the back of a truck.

He must be so strong, Jake thinks, to lift those crates. He wonders if his dad could lift them, or his uncles. Probably. Probably he will be able to as well, one day.

The eco-warrior’s boat is the awesomest boat Jake has ever seen. It makes the Bar Crusher look tiny. Jake feels bad immediately for thinking it. But they only have one big motor and a puny auxiliary, and it has two massive Yamaha motors. It would go so fast. You could do anything in a boat like that. It’s exactly the sort of boat an eco-warrior should have.

Rob and Pete climb from their boat to the jetty, and as Jake follows them up, he hears his father’s voice: ‘Oh here we go.’