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Morgan Ward, an oyster farmer, was sitting on the tailgate of his truck on the sand flats of Dennis, excited.
“Oysters are best in fall and winter,” Ward said, recorded by a video camera. “Make them a Thanksgiving tradition … Cook them, fry them, roast them. They are magic, they are delicious, they bring people together.”
Ward, in the documentary film “Tide to Table” shown at the Chatham Orpheum Theater last week, wasn’t done with his ode to oysters.
“You are where you eat.”
That phrase, adapted by David Wiley, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, goes a long way toward explaining why 45 species of fish, two squids, 16 sea birds and nine marine mammals can be found in sand lance habitat.
Stephanie Sykes, after a day fishing on the F/V Peggy B II, stood behind a folding table at Nauset Marine East in Orleans with several conch shells and a trap.
She looked at a crowd gathered at the Meet the Fleet event and picked up a flat, mottled brown, oblong object. It was about the size of a thumb and looked leathery.
With vats supplied by Tom Smith, Ray Kane swung past lobster traps at Kurt Martin’s house and pulled a big Chatham Fish and Lobster Truck around the back early Saturday, August 6.
Kane, outreach coordinator at the Fishermen’s Alliance, joined other staff members shoveling ice from Martin’s freezer into additional vats that would later hold scallops from Jesse Rose and the F/V Midnight Our, as well as local haddock.
The refrigerated truck then headed to Aquaculture Resource Corporation in Dennis to pick up thousands of shellfish to offload at the big white tent at the Chatham VFW for the 21st annual Hookers Ball.
Temperatures are increasing, sea levels rising. Ocean currents are unpredictable and marine heatwaves bring us to a climate tipping point. Hurricanes follow hard on the heels of one another, creating temporary dead zones.
Estuarine nurseries are shadows, choked by sea level rise, coastal population growth, armoring the coast, and marsh die offs. Productivity plummets and poisonous plankton blooms proliferate.
Selectman Paul McCormick lives on the south side of Dennis where there are still signs of an ancient weir fishery that began with Native Americans and later helped build the Cape.
He happily answers visitors’ questions about the historic fishery in the context of the industry’s importance today.
Chef Lisa Whelan of Dancing Spoons Catering stood before a crowd of about 70 people, bottles of honey, ginger, and apple cider vinegar arrayed before her and a thick piece of cornmeal-encrusted fish browning on the burner.
Paul Wittenstein, general manager of A.R.C., the shellfish hatchery in Dennis, sat on a stool on “Massachusetts Avenue,” backdropped by a booth full of information.
A skate plan, an ecosystem update, fisheries protections in wind lease areas, criminal charges, and the fate of sea clammers were just a few of the items discussed by the New England Fishery Management Council in February – and that was just day one of a three-day meeting.
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