Pescador's Wake (27 page)

My thanks to the following for assistance with this novel: Sophie Hamley, for her enthusiasm and insight; Jo Butler, for her sensitive and considered editing; Peter Bishop and Linda Funnell for the wonderful opportunity that is the Varuna HarperCollins Awards for Manuscript Development; the Macquarie Group Foundation for the LongLines Program; Arts Tasmania; the Tasmanian Writers' Centre and Rosie Dub and Janice Bird, for their early comments on the manuscript.

And for their expertise in matters relating to illegal fishing, the toothfish fishery, fisheries science, seamanship, maritime electronics, the United Nations International Law of the Sea, naval operations and medicine, my thanks to: Martin Exel and David Carter (Austral Fisheries Pty Ltd); Darby Ross; Graham Robertson, Dick Williams and Steve Nicol (Australian Antarctic Division); Keith Sainsbury, Matt Sherlock, Don McKenzie and Al Graham (CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research); Marcus Haward (University of Tasmania, School of Government); Commander Andrew McCrindell (Royal Australian Navy); and Scott Wilson (general practitioner). For information on Uruguay and Spanish language, thanks to Hermes Morales Grosskopf,
Victoria Villar Vidal and Mauricio Duarte. For information on Russian language, thanks to Helen Kaminskaya. Any errors are my own.

Various sources were used to draw information for the novel. They include:
Mysteries of the Deep,
edited by Joseph J. Thorndike, Jr;
Ocean Enough and Time
by James Gorman;
Antarctica: An Encyclopedia from Abbott Ice Shelf to Zooplankton,
edited by Mary Trewby; ‘Extinction, survival or recovery of large predatory fishes' in the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series B
in 2005 by Ransom Myers and Boris Worm; ‘Rapid Worldwide Depletion of Predatory Fish Communities' in
Nature
423 in 2003 by Ransom Myers and Boris Worm; COLTO and TRAFFIC websites; ‘
South America on a Shoestring
', Lonely Planet Guide, and ‘Viarsa captain praises justice system', Australian Associated Press, 7 November 2005; ‘Report of Members' Activities in the Convention Area: Australia 2002-03 (CCAMLR)',

Personal thanks to my family, particularly my parents Susan and Robert Bleakley, and friends. Heartfelt thanks, of course, to my husband, Craig Johnson, for his unwavering support and belief in this book, and to my children for their inspiration and patience.

Katherine Johnson was born in Brisbane, Australia, in 1971. She has a Bachelor of Arts (Journalism) and holds an honours degree in marine science. Katherine now lives in Tasmania with her husband and two children, and has worked as a science journalist for a government marine research agency. Her non-fiction articles have been published internationally.

Pescador's Wake,
which won a HarperCollins Varuna Award for Manuscript Development in 2007, is her first novel.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Celebrating New Writing

The HarperCollins Varuna Awards for Manuscript Development has been a successful and productive program since 2000 in developing manuscripts of fiction and narrative non-fiction.

The program provides five new or emerging writers each year with the experience of working closely with a senior in-house editor from HarperCollins Publishers on the development of a manuscript at Varuna, the Writers' House in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. The awards aim to give practical assistance to writers to bring their work to publication.

Many books have resulted from the program since its inception in 2000. One of the writers from that year, Ian Townsend, was selected on the basis of a thriller he was writing. At a certain point, he realised that this book was a practice book, and that he was ready for the real thing. With the support of his editor, he worked on a new idea that became the novel
Affection. Affection
was longlisted for the 2007 Dublin IMPAC literary award, and shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book, the Foundation of Australian Literary Studies' Colin Roderick
Award for the best Australian book of 2005, and the 2005 Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction in the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. His new novel,
The Devil's Eye,
was published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2008.

Other recent HarperCollins Varuna Awards publications include Pip Newling's memoir
Knockabout Girl,
Mark O'Flynn's novel
Grass Dogs,
and Kim Huynh's memoir
Where the Sea Takes Us.
In addition to
Pescador's Wake,
in 2009 Siew Siang Tay's sensitive and subtle exploration of the world of a mail-order bride,
Handpicked,
will be released.

For more information visit:

www.varuna.com.au/harpercollinspathways.html