Men's t-shirt
An anglerfish t-shirt for men with the portrait of Naoko Mochizuki printed on the front. The anglerfish lives on the sea floor and goes around with a light hanging over its head; Naoko boards the damaged ships of Suruga Bay and signs the report that decides whether anyone gets paid. She is from Animal Kinhood, my series of animals living like people.
Foto: Emőke Dénes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)Melanocetus johnsonii
The light a place already has is never any good. I always bring my own.
Meso and bathypelagic zone of tropical and temperate seas worldwide, usually between 200 and 1,500 meters deep, with occasional records a good deal deeper. Permanent darkness, cold and high pressure.
Before going down into a hold she rests the back of her hand against the bulkhead and waits two seconds. If there is water on the other side, your skin knows before your eyes do. Her father taught her that; he was a boilermaker at the harbour repair yard until he was sixty-two. She still does it, with twenty years of the job behind her and half the report already written in her head.
She joined the mutual as an assistant at twenty-three and her first year was all desk work: twelve months copying out other surveyors' reports, correcting their units and assembling photo annexes. That is where she learned the order she uses today, watching which ones came back and why. You can tell her photographs from the others because they are taken a hand's width from the plating, with the lamp set on top of whatever she is measuring.
