The Non-Pirates of Krawk Island

     On a corner in Warf Wharf, Darina Kelly, a Spotted Kougra aged 45, pauses in her work to warm her hands. She curls the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other and repeats with opposite hands before picking up an oyster and a knife and getting back to shucking. She is one of Krawk Island’s “oyster girls.”

     Krawk Island is well known throughout Neopia as a haven for piracy, and many notable residents, such as Golden Dubloon owner Captain Hackett, and head of the Swashbuckling Academy, Captain Threelegs, have former ties to piracy. However, pirates are not the sole residents of this small island nation. Many residents are employed legitimately. In fact, there are more jobs on Krawk Island than I could possibly cover in one article, from sail-weavers and shipbuilders to the many artists and artisans.

     “Everyone knows a pirate or is related to one or two, even if yer not one yersel,” remarks Marcy Doolittle, 34, an employee of Darina Kelly. Indeed, Krawk Island has a population of just over 4,000 Neopets, most of them pirates. Still, not everyone can be one: there is much work to be done to keep a nation afloat.

     Darina Kelly works at Marge’s Oyster Stand, which has operated on Krawk Island for more than seventy years. The eponymous Marge is Darina’s grandmother, and she spent her youth learning how to shuck oysters under Marge’s tutelage. Kelly employs two other oyster girls: her daughter, Ainsley Kelly, 17, who handles dubloons and occasionally shoos away hungry Petpets, and the already mentioned Doolittle, who also shucks the oysters.

     The term "oyster girl" can describe women like Kelly, who sell ready-to-eat oysters in Warf Wharf’s fish market, or it can describe the divers who harvest them, although it is a bit of a misnomer, as they harvest other shellfish as well. It is a profession held mainly by women, many of them aged. Nisa Gavin, an Orange Techo aged 78, still dives below the waves to harvest oysters. She uses no diving equipment and merely holds her breath, something she can do for up to two minutes. Many oyster girls of the diving variety are aquatic Neopets, such as Tuskaninny or Jetsam, but not exclusively, as with Gavin.

     I ask her how long it took her to train for this job. Gavin shrugs.

     “Me whole life,” she says.

     I stand on the shore and watch as Gavin, with a team made up mostly of aquatic or semi-aquatic Neopets, most of them women and all of them over the age of fifty, head out to dive for shellfish. They are paired up in twos and spread a great distance across the shore. Nisa Gavin’s partner is Fedelm Beatty, a Tuskanniny aged 64. Gavin wears a pair of goggles to aid her vision but no other equipment.

     “Howay,” she says, a word I will hear often on Krawk Island, and learn means “come on.” It is one of many terms I have not heard anywhere else in Neopia.

     The two disappear beneath the waves, and as the seconds tick by, I grow ever more anxious. By the time my anxiety has bloomed into full-blown panic, certain that something has gone wrong this time, out of the thousands of times they have dived, Nisa Gavin and Fedelm Beatty re-emerge with their shells in tow. I try to act as though I have not spent the last ninety seconds panicking, but Gavin is not fooled.

     “The lass has no confidence in me,” she remarks. I assure her that it is not that I doubt her abilities, merely that I am of a nervous disposition.

     But if I thought Gavin’s dive, of which I was merely an observer standing on the shore, was nerve-wracking, I am completely unprepared for the terror that is a fishing boat. Fishing is a major industry on Krawk Island, although most fishermen only work for their respective villages. For this story, I travelled to the southwestern village of Westerly to observe a fishing boat at work.

     I understand beforehand that commercial fishing will be vastly different from the fishing trips with my grandfather to Kiko Lake. To do this, I have to wake up before four in the morning when we head out on the water.

     “Howay!” shouts a gruff Shadow Tonu as I board.

     Though I went to bed earlier than normal the night before, I am the least rested on the boat. Almost immediately after we set out, my stomach begins to turn, and when we are perhaps one kilometre from shore, I lose my modest breakfast. I can tell most of my companions are irritated at having to babysit me while they try to work, though I am doing my best to be unobtrusive. Still, Larkin “Larnikin” McCormack, 56, a Red Krawk and de facto captain, pats my back reassuringly.

     “Food for the fishes, lass,” he tells me as I continue to spill the contents of my already empty stomach.

     Work on a fishing boat is gruelling, and some of the most dangerous work in Neopia. The weather can turn on a dubloon, and the heat, too, gets to be brutal, so it is no wonder that the work day ends at noon.

     As is the case in most small fishing communities on Krawk Island, the Westerly fishermen do not catch more than their village needs. Those off the more built-up southeast will catch more to be sold in Warf Wharf’s fish market.

     Back in Warf Wharf, I ask Kelly if she ever finds pearls while shucking.

     “Well, sure,” she says. “Most oysters make pearls. It’s just that most of the ones ye find are no good. Anyway, people don’t come to Krawk Island for pearls.” Indeed, most of Neopia’s pearls are cultivated in Maraqua. That said, most pearls will pass through Krawk Island sooner or later.

     One of Krawk Island's most well-known residents is well versed in the movement of treasure, though she does not consider herself a pirate. Hannah "the Brave" Foley is an Usul who needs no introduction, and I am lucky enough to speak to her on a break from her shift at the Golden Dubloon. I ask her why she still works there when she is best known for adventuring.

     "Well, I try to quit," she says. "But every time I get back from an adventure, they just hire me again." I ask if she has held any other jobs.

     Hannah tells me that yes, she has had another job: she spent a short period of time harvesting seaweed. She quit after just two weeks. Like waitressing, harvesting seaweed is a more physically taxing job than most Neopians may give it credit for. For Hannah, however, this was not the only, or even main reason for quitting.

     “It’s so tedious!” she says. “It was the most boring thing I’ve ever done.”

     Hannah concurs with Marcy Doolittle’s assertion that everyone on Krawk Island who is not themselves a pirate knows a pirate, with one caveat.

     “It’s way more than one or two,” she says. “My family tree is made up primarily of pirates.”

     The Golden Dubloon has far more employees than the front-facing Hannah, Aisha twins Loretta and Rosetta, and owner Captain Hackett. Most of them are cooks and busboys. One little-seen employee of the Golden Dubloon is Fergal O’Meara, 51, a Purple Yurble who does the laundry. Going into this story, I didn’t realise how much laundry restauranting requires, but it makes sense: there are the napkins, the tablecloths, towels, aprons, and on occasion, the curtains.

     “Me job is to keep folks from thinking about how much work goes into cleaning the place,” he says. “The Golden Dubloon en’t a tavern; it’s a classy establishment, and we keep it shipshape!”

     Fergal is an outlier in the O’Meara family in that he works outside the charming bed and breakfast that they run, albeit only part-time. There, too, is much laundry to be done.

     “I can’t get away from domestic housework,” he jokes.

     Hospitality and tourism is another large industry on Krawk Island, one which has boomed under Governor Gavril McGill. Most of it concentrated on the island’s southeastern side. Tour groups can take visitors to the north shore, though most will only take one close enough to view Smuggler's Cove from a safe distance. The cove has gone unused for many years, but one can never be too careful, especially when one can be held liable.

     Many artists on Krawk Island sell their work to tourists and overseas collectors. Simon Grehan, 62, a retired Pirate Elephante, makes boxes from scraps from shipbuilding, ranging from simple teak wood trinket boxes to more elaborate music boxes with mother-of-pearl inlay. These beautiful boxes feature scenes of ships on crashing seas, elegant Weewoos perched on tree branches, and Krawk Island’s oyster girls (both kinds).

     “Me girls are best-sellers,” he says.

     I confess to Kelly that I have never eaten an oyster, but that I feel I would be remiss if I walked away from this story without having tried one.

     "Well, if ye don't like 'em," she says, "Ye never have to have one again."

     The oysters at Marge's are all served raw, with the option of lemon juice or shallot vinegar. Or, for hardcore purists, completely plain. I opt for lemon juice. Darina Kelly shucks the oyster in under three seconds, squeezes a wedge of lemon over the meat, and hands it to me.

     “Don’t overthink it, lass,” she says. I tip the half shell back and gulp it down before my gag reflex has time to fight me on the matter. The oyster girls at Marge’s applaud, I suspect a bit sarcastically. Unfortunately, I was so focused on getting it down that I am unable to recall any key details, such as texture or flavour. I ate it but failed to taste it.

     The sun is beginning to set over the horizon, and likewise, the oyster season is coming to a close at the time of our interview. In the summer months, the ladies of Marge’s sell ice cream.

     “It tends to surprise people, but we’ve been doing it since me gran ran the place,” Darina Kelly tells me. “Got to make a living somehow.”

     Aye, don’t we all!