20 women writing about the outdoors

11. Linda Greenlaw

While there’s plenty of nature to be found on dry land, what about the sea? We love to read about mountains and rivers and swamps, to be sure, but the ocean is a vast place. After all, it covers over 70 percent of Earth’s surface. About 97 percent of all water on our planet is in the ocean as well. Doesn’t that deserve a nature book or two?

Linda Greenlaw is an interesting author to add to this canon. While others take a hardline ecological stance, arguing strenuously against overhunting, overfishing and general environmental decay, Greenlaw must necessarily take a more middle-of-the-road view. She is the captain of a commercial fishing boat.

She’s currently the only woman captaining a swordfishing boat on the east coast of the United States. Greenlaw is also commercially successful, routinely making some of the best hauls and most money of any captain in the region. In The Perfect Storm, author Sebastian Junger describes her as “one of the best sea captains, period, on the entire East Coast.”

The Hungry Ocean

Greenlaw received inquiries about writing her own book following the publication of The Perfect Storm. She was captain of the Hannah Boden during the storm in question. In fact, she was the last person to speak with the captain of the doomed Andrea Gail, which sunk in the storm. Unlike in the movie, though, no one knew that the Andrea Gail and its crew were in trouble until they lost radio contact.

Eventually, Greenlaw wrote The Hungry Ocean, published in 1999. It describes a one-month voyage that brings Greenlaw and her crew across bad weather, ocean wildlife and the compounded pressure of 21-hour workdays. Greenlaw also describes the human environment of a fishing boat, painting portraits of her crew with as much detail as she gives to the ocean and the swordfish in its waters.