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“You cooperate with the police, you don’t collaborate,” is a phrase I’ll always remember.
I heard it at a scientific conference years ago when a speaker compared the difference between cooperative and collaborative research. Collaboration implies shared ownership and interest in a specific outcome, while cooperation is when people work in support of another’s goals.
Numbers surfaced at the annual meeting of the Fishermen’s Alliance last month – 504, 2, 7, 3, 12, 25, 10,000, 228,000, 1.7 million, and more. Each is part of a story.
The first several were shared by Policy Manager Aubrey Church, who started in February of last year.
She has spent more than 500 hours in New England Fishery Management Council meetings advocating for the fleets on the Cape, tracking myriad, changing federal regulations. If the hours CEO John Pappalardo and Outreach Coordinator Ray Kane (who is on state and regional committees) are added, the number more than doubles.
Billy Day helps manage a wharf in Machiasport, Maine and makes sure lobsters from the 60 boats that land there, as well as those that arrive in Stueben and Addison, get down to the Lobster Trap in Bourne and then to customers around the world. But the other day he was in the woods.
“He is cutting down some trees. Good, straight, spruce,” said Sam Bradford, chief operating officer of Mac’s Seafood, and Day’s boss.
The trees were going to Addison to repair the wharf that had flooded on Jan. 13 in one of the worst storms Maine has ever seen. Day was going to help rebuild the pier and raise it a couple of feet.
Kayla Boucher, a ninth-grader at Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School, joined by her classmates, had some questions of Captains Ken Baughman and Bradley Louw at the WaterWORKS career day at Cape Cod Community College in mid-January.
What was your longest trip? Six days.
Biggest boat you fished on? 138 feet.
How big is your boat now? Smaller.
Do you oyster farm? No, but it is a sustainable fishery and good for the environment.
How much money do you make? One time I made $56,000 in less than a week.
And one favorite question from Boucher: How far do you have to go out?
“We told her that some of the best fishing grounds in the world are in our backyard,” Baughman said.
As a fishing boat full of silvery mackerel unloaded below, State Representative Dylan Fernandes, up from Falmouth, stood on the Chatham Fish Pier and presented the Fishermen’s Alliance with a $500,000 check, approved in the state budget, to help support and modernize the Cape’s commercial fisheries.
“Fishing is not just an industry on the Cape and Islands. It is woven into the very culture and fabric of our communities,” Rep. Fernandes said on a blustery late November day.
A monument to honor Provincetown and Truro fishermen who lost their lives at sea has been talked about for decades.
“For 47 years. The idea was conceived by Carol Peters, the daughter of a fisherman, in 1976 after the sinking of my father’s boat, the Patricia Marie,” said Lisa King. “It has stalled.”
King, who has the energy of a coiled spring, is determined to make sure the monument happens, and soon. She brought together about a dozen people and created the Fishermen’s Memorial Foundation, which she chairs, because she feels this may be the last chance.
When he was young, Bradley Louw wanted to be a professional windsurfer and found himself chasing waves on the Cape, doing some instructing, living on the wilder side out of his minivan. Louw felt a change was needed:
“I had three choices, the military, jail or commercial fishing. I heard there was good money in commercial fishing, so I chose that. It gave me purpose.”
Warming waters and saltwater intrusions sound worthy of study by oceanographers, but not something that will affect you day to day.
Don’t be too sure.
While in Washington, D.C., Aubrey Church, policy manager at Fishermen’s Alliance, was sitting with representatives of 120-foot trawlers, Alaska Berring Sea Crabbers, Oregon’s distant water fleet, and drift and setnet salmon fishermen – all members of Seafood Harvesters of America.
Seafood Harvesters of America, a national commercial fisheries organization, had long been advised that building alliances between commercial fishermen who don’t always agree pays dividends on Capital Hill.
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