Over the Bar

Even after a year that will be remembered as one of the most challenging in our lifetimes, there are good things to hold onto and play forward.

Scallops. Most everybody loves them, so much so that the scallop fishery is considered among the most lucrative in the world, making New Bedford the port with the highest value of fishing landings in the United States every year for the past two decades.

People old enough to remember 1968 tell me that for upheaval, crisis, confrontation, and angry division, the year we are living through now most closely resembles that momentous one. My guess is that history books will agree.

The old line about legislation and sausage being similar – you don’t really want to look too hard at how either of them is made – comes to mind for fishing regulations too. It can be quite a process.

Every year around Hookers Ball time we create a video to share with people under the tent, part recap, part celebration, always providing glimpses of some of the great fishermen and personalities we work with.

Last month in this space, I mentioned that the team here at the Fishermen’s Alliance has been thinking hard about ways we can help keep the local fishing fleet on the water, and help others hurt by the economic fallout raining down as we try to beat back a deadly virus.

Our goal is clear: Keep the independent, small-boat, historic fishing fleet of the Cape and Islands alive and well.

We are, as any mariner would describe it, in uncharted territory.

The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, then called the Hook Fishermen’s Association, formed in 1991 at a crisis moment.