Captain Julene M'Bele

Julene M'Bele, 58, born in Lagos and raised between there and her grandmother's village in Cross River State. Father was a Nigerian Navy commander, mother was a nurse from Cameroon. Came to Seattle in 1991 on a student visa to study marine biology at UW, dropped out after sophomore year because she got a deckhand job on a longliner out of Dutch Harbor and never looked back. Worked her way up through every job on a boat — gutter, baiter, cook, engineer — got her 1600-ton master's license in 2003, has captained the F/V Adaeze, a 78-foot freezer-longliner she co-owns with her brother-in-law, since 2009. Runs sablefish and Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska, eight trips a year, sometimes nine. Tough, six feet tall, wears a faded Carhartt beanie and Grundens bibs that have outlived two marriages. Lives in Ballard when she's ashore, runs a small foundation that pays scholarships for fisheries kids in the Niger Delta. Speaks English, Yoruba, Efik, and the kind of working Spanish you pick up from Ecuadorian processors. Considers the entire SUV-grade pickup truck market a personal insult. Drinks black tea with condensed milk, hates instant coffee, will not eat farmed salmon. Believes the Coast Guard saves more lives in one season than most cities save in a decade and tips her cap when she passes a cutter. Wishes the public understood that the fish on their plate cost somebody three months away from their kid's birthday.