DONATE
BUY STEW + CHOWDER
By Haynes Mahoney
When it first came to life in March, 1917, the 100-foot stack belching plumes of smoke from its coal-fired engines, buckets of fish rising to freezers in the five-story building, it must have been an incredible disruption to the quiet marshside world of Yarmouth Port at the end of Wharf Lane. The local stockholders hoped the Bay State Freezer Company, Inc. would bring them riches.
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.
Knowing a big-mouthed, extra-terrestrial-looking fish was going to be the focus of her internship, Ana Brown spent time learning about all things monkfish before she landed at the Fishermen’s Alliance this spring.
What struck her most was not that the fish’s oil is used as a cordial in Japan, or that the lure hanging from the fish’s football-shaped forehead may reveal age; she was impressed by how commercial fishermen have pushed for its protection.
“It was the industry that organized and advocated for them and for a management plan,” Brown said. Management of the great-tasting fish has suffered from lack of data. A recent cut in harvest amounts, now postponed, highlighted the need for better information that Brown’s work will help provide.
George Morton moved to Orleans from Central Massachusetts when he was in his 30s. Before he purchased the Rock Harbor Coffee Shop in the 1960s, he became part of the cast of characters who fished out of the port.
Their camaraderie is why Morton became “Cass a Boo Boo” and the restaurant “Cap’n Cass.” It’s also why Michelle Lamy is painstakingly striving to keep the unique personality of the place alive.
“It’s an iconic establishment needing preservation. I’m into preservation,” she said.
Moments before Captain Ken Baughman walked around Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. to talk about the importance of the Young Fishermen’s Development Act, he got a text that he shared at a dozen meetings at various offices.
“Fifteen minutes or so ago my classmate bought a new lobster boat,” he said.
The Bigelow, launched in 2005, is named after a remarkable man, Henry B. Bigelow, who helped create Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. As a scientist he spent a lot of his life on the water trying to understand fish. As a teacher he spent a lot of his life trying to impart that understanding at Harvard University and in books like “Fishes of the Gulf of Maine.”
So it’s fitting that a vessel built with noble intent, to create a platform for the best science to understand species and stocks, climate change, and all kinds of oceanographic realities, would be named for him
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.
“It was a moon tide, flat calm. There wasn’t a ripple to be seen,” said Gordon Peabody. “I knew it was a tuna fin. The fish was behaving a little strangely. I was thinking it was driving tinker mackerel onto the beach.”
e-Magazine PDF’s