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Although Brandon Vieira gets up before dawn, his day usually starts hours before.
“I wake up to 10-15 text messages, maybe a few missed calls,” said Vieira.
Vieira manages the Chatham fish pier operation for Red’s Best, so wants it that way. He has asked fishermen to let him know when they are heading out and what they are bringing in. Sometimes that’s at 2 am.
Decades ago, fishermen knew if they wanted to catch cod they were better off in a skiff; the bearded fish didn’t like the sound of motors.
Years later, the ocean is noisier and scientists are learning how that affects the marine ecosystem.
Aran Mooney, an associate scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has worked on the impact of noise in the ocean for close to 20 years. Then the focus was on Navy sonar, now it’s wind turbines. With one wind farm being built offshore, and seemingly more to come, there are concerns about the fisheries.
At the end of June, traveling up to Freeport, Maine for the most recent New England Fishery Management Council meeting, I found myself thinking back to 2011.
I was a bright-eyed, naive, 20-year-old who had decided after college to become an at-sea monitor and fisheries observer. I headed out of Gloucester on my first multi-day trip on the F/V Lady Jane with Russell Sherman.
With all our modern emphasis on developing wind and solar power, and all the controversy about what offshore turbines might mean for commercial fishing, it’s worth remembering that both innovations harken back centuries, and served as crucial support for Cape Cod’s dominant, historic industry.
As proof, witness Cape Cod saltworks.
Since hundreds of thousands of people have flocked to the Chatham Fish Pier to see commercial fishermen unload their catch, many have seen the sights captured in this gallery. But for us, the excitement and bustle of the fish pier never loses its allure.
People used to say that fish smelled like money. They still do, and the pier feels like community. The fish pier represents pride in the past, values of the present, and promise for the future.
The pier is fishermen leaving wages in the ocean to help tow in a fellow captain; a pre-school girl on the deck leaning over and clapping when she sees fish come flying down the chute; thousands of pounds trucked to markets around the nation and shipped around the world.
When a single federal judge overturned and blocked years of work by many in this community (as well as allies up and down the coast) to stop mid-water trawling near our coast so we can help revive historic herring stocks and runs, it was a body blow. But we promised we’d get off the ropes and into the middle of the ring for another round.
Here we are.
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