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Although it was more than a decade ago, Aubrey Ellertson Church has clear memories of standing at the Chatham Fish Pier with other fisheries observers waiting to be picked up by boats they were assigned to that day.
Church lived outside of Boston at the time, working out of ports from Maine to New Jersey gathering data about fishing trips used to help monitor the health of fisheries.
“I remember Chatham being a cool port to go into,” she said.
Caitlin “Caity” Townsend sat in a shaft of sunlight and turned over a lichen-colored, plastic knife handle imprinted with the word “Waterhaul.”
The five-inch object was created from recycled fishing gear and represents the strength and tradition of commercial fisheries as well as its sustainable future – like Townsend herself.
Andrew Spalt sat at a corner table at Fishermen’s View, a popular restaurant along the Cape Cod Canal in Sandwich, with a tortilla-chip ringed bowl of Jonah Crab hummus in front of him and a Jonah Crab melt sandwich in his hand.
The waitress came by and they chatted about the owners, Bob and Denny Colbert, who have been catching Jonah crab for decades and prepare it a host of different ways – Jonah Crab nachos anyone?
Scott MacAllister is in the throes of groundfish season. He has been working 16-hour days, barely sleeping during the hours he has before waking up in the middle of the night to set off from Chatham Fish Pier once again.
So he is exhausted, but running on adrenaline and what seems like a perennially great attitude, when he makes it to his first set of gillnets that have been soaking overnight. This set, like yesterday’s, didn’t have a ton of fish. There are three sets, 15 nets in each, but this is an inauspicious beginning; the first few 300-foot nets come up almost empty or with fish looking like grey pajamas, all floppy and soft. Hag fish, red and snakelike, slide across the deck – they have eaten all the meat.
When Sasha Tomasek-Little came to the Cape more than five years ago from farm country in Connecticut, she was struck by the ocean and fishermen who build their lives on it.
“It was mind-blowing how hard they work and the brotherhood,” Tomasek-Little said.
She was surprised the industry wasn’t celebrated more. Coming from a marketing and public relations background it seemed to her there is a wealth of knowledge and stories to share, along with the local catch.
Fresh off a weekend pop-up raw bar serving oysters from their farm, lobster rolls from their Sea State food truck, and “Small Boats, Big Taste” haddock chowder from the Fishermen’s Alliance, Pat and Jenny Ross stood in their market in Bourne as fishermen showed up at the back door with fresh local product.
“This wasn’t on the life plan,” laughed Pat, who grew up in Bourne but only shellfished recreationally, occasionally, with his dad.
Both Pat and Jenny went to art school before they met, Pat for photography in Boston, Jenny for design in New York. They met at a Halloween party in 2009.
Captain Scott Rorro was on his boat, the Ernest and Michael, getting ready for back-to-back scallop trips when a couple from Lowell peered down from MacMillan Wharf in Provincetown. Rorro invited them aboard.
Standing in bright sunshine, Rorro answered a string of questions and said although he is a day-boat fisherman now, he had been on trips lasting two weeks or longer. The visitors, impressed, said fishermen must be the epitome of rugged.
The sun was blazing hot, but everyone at the Bass River Farmers Market was smiling as they approached Denice Lapierre at the F/V Isabel and Lilee tent to pick up scallops or put in an order for fish.
They stop to talk about most anything:
The weather.
Moms, dads, brothers, sisters, kids, a nephew’s golf game.
New friends, old friends, mutual friends.
New homes and hometowns.
Youth and old age.
Pre-school, colleges, senior living.
And a lot about recipes.
As soon as he was old enough to ride a bicycle around Barnstable, Connor Rogan was fishing. After he got his driver’s license it was easier and he started working on charter boats when he was 16.
“Once I started making money at it I was like, ‘Wow, this is perfect,’” he said.
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