Fish Tales

Michael Chute has been shellfishing his entire life and loves it, but when he got his first aquaculture farm it was a grind.
“I found a lot of ways to do it wrong,” Chute said.
He was fighting time and tide, constantly under pressure, feeling he was involved in a solitary pursuit. It wasn’t suiting him, “keeping your head down and not looking up,” said Chute, who has never met a stranger.

Last year on July 4, Captain Jesse Rose stopped at PJs Family Restaurant on Route 6 in Wellfleet, where he worked as a teenager.
“He gave us some minced clams for our chowder,” said owner Brian Reeves, who has known Rose for decades. “We were having such a hard time finding good product, we tasted it and were like, ‘Woah, that’s legit!’
“We dumped everything else,” Reeves said with a laugh. “His clams are way more tender, and definitely sweeter.”

Bradley Louw, a commercial fisherman for 15 years, was running on four hours of sleep in two days when he landed in Washington, D.C. during the week before the Memorial Day crush.
He had two days of 14 meetings scheduled with legislative offices and had bought a new shirt and tie, tag still on.
“It’s the only knot I don’t know how to tie,” the captain said with a laugh.

Everyone in Jamaica has a nickname, a familiar name. For Anthony Hill it’s “Jelly,” and has been ever since he was little.
The name carried to Cape Cod, where he met his wife Sarah Robin 20 years ago and the two carved a life first working in Provincetown then owning and running the Flying Fish Restaurant in Wellfleet, busting ass season by season, investing in community and property, living what some might call the American Dream, understanding that the dream is not simple, easy, or clichéd.
“All de while,” as they say in Jamaica, Jelly kept Jamaican roots and aspirations.

Steve Gennodie, owner of Chatham Pier Fish Market, was flying to Florida recently and saw an in-flight advertisement for scallops – from Japan.

“It’s a frozen, farm-raised product. It is just comical,” he said.

But Hokkaido Bay scallops sell for at least $3 less a pound than the ones buys fresh from Cape fishermen.  

When Japanese scallops are cooked it becomes clear local scallops are much better, but how do you get the average person to buy more expensive fish?

With river herring populations rebounding, Harwich selectmen heard a proposal to open that town’s Herring River to harvest.
“This is a legacy,” said Selectman Don Howell, a member of the board when they shut the run down in 2004 because of low numbers. “We are good stewards.”
While the town has done its part, too many river herring heading to runs across the Cape are being caught offshore, beyond the limits of town and state regulations.
Ray Kane, outreach coordinator at the Fishermen’s Alliance, was at the Harwich meeting in early February. He supported Brad Chase from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and Don Yannuzzi, natural resources director in Harwich, in developing a re-opening plan.

Sam Bradford, tall and lanky, stood in a crowded hallway at the Lobster Trap in Bourne, dwarfed by hundreds of stacked white boxes printed with lobster in red letters and destined for places all over the world. 
Bradford, chief financial officer at Mac’s Seafood, had climbed the narrow stairs from the concrete floor below where lobsters were being sorted in an enormous, chilly room.
“We have a really good system; they are grading for shell quality and size,” Bradford said as gray crates filled with lobsters moved along watery tracks in a tank that can hold 100,000 pounds. “We have a 20- to 25-person crew during the day and eight at night. The first job is to pack the international stuff.”