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By Doreen Leggett
Captain Mark Leach has been fishing for close to 40 years and has many opportunities to try different baits, when it comes to lobster they often don’t work.
He and his son Sean, now a captain himself, recently had the opportunity to experiment again, this time with Asian carp.
“More options are better than no options,” said Sean. “No one has actually cracked the code on this, but we’ll see.”
During an unseasonably cold February week in San Diego, California, hundreds of people from across the country gathered to explore how to protect one of the country’s greatest assets – working waterfronts — and talk about success stories like these:
The 100 percent Great Lakes Initiative aims to demonstrate how 100 percent of commercially-caught fish from the Great Lakes can be used for different purposes beyond just food. Fancy a whitefish skin wallet? Collagen-serum moisturizer?
With waterfront property a red-hot commodity, Maine legislators passed a bill that allows owners who protect commercial fishing wharves and other working waterfronts up to 40 percent off their tax bill.
Fishermen in Kodiak, Alaska were getting crushed by the low price of fish and high cost of fuel, so they made investments and now 99.9 percent of their electricity is renewable.
Fisherman Will Nicolai, a tall, long-haired, easygoing 21-year-old, has two older siblings engaged in high finance, but the Sturgis West graduate tried college (two colleges) and decided that wasn’t for him.
Captain Eric Hesse has a degree in physics and a graduate degree in civil engineering, but the lure of harpooning bluefin tuna and longlining for groundfish was too strong.
Jake Angelo of Barnstable Seafood Company went to Massachusetts Maritime Academy, toyed with being a private yacht captain, but found his dream job on the water fishing for black sea bass and clams.
There is no one way to get into commercial fishing and opportunities abound if you know how to work hard, the trio told dozens who stopped in at the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance table at WaterWORKS at Cape Cod Community College.
On an unseasonably warm fall day, fisherman Denny Colbert stood with researcher George Maynard looking at an image on his phone showing warm water punching into two spots along the edge of the Outer Continental Shelf.
Colbert, who owns three fishing boats, has seen “warm core rings” that spin off from the Gulf Stream yank his lobster and crab gear around, ruining what would have been profitable fishing trips.
With draggers and lobster boats behind him at the Sandwich Marina, the popular Fishermen’s View restaurant and seafood market beside, State Representative Dylan Fernandes presented Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance with $500,000 to continue its work to support the industry.
“Fishing is deeply embedded in the history and identity of the Cape and Islands and supports thousands of jobs within the Blue Economy,” said Fernandes. “This funding helps sustain local commercial fishing and support fishing families across the region.”
Fernandes, D-Falmouth, said working in the House of Representatives he often sees the wooden “sacred cod” hanging over the chamber, hung in 1748, a continual reminder of how important the fishing industry is to Massachusetts.
The Rose family has a long history on the Outer Cape, and a fishing heritage that extends back centuries.
“Our family, since the Mayflower, has been eating clams,” said Keith Rose, who captains the sea clammer F/V Kimberly Ann.
Rose looked out at the crowd of close to a hundred people gathered at the Fishermen’s Alliance for Meet the Fleet and smiled.
“If they found clams in Provincetown they wouldn’t have sailed to Plymouth,” he said to laughter.
One piece of advice passed around for decades in Chatham, attributed to old salt Charles “Tiggie” Peluso: No matter how good things are going, no matter how much money you are making, never, ever, sell your shellfishing skiff.
Peluso meant that in tough times, Chatham residents could always scratch or dredge up enough money to get by on the strength of the town’s wild fishery.
Meghna Marjadi looked at a map of proposed wind farms off the Cape, areas she is studying to see how turbine arrays would impact fishermen.
“These are now changed. The maps are changing every couple of weeks,” said Marjadi, a researcher at UMass Dartmouth, who is using data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fishery Science Center.
Marjadi, speaking at a Small Boats. Big Science. event at the Fishermen’s Alliance, said efforts to install wind energy off the coast of New England have accelerated, outpacing scientific research designed to gauge its effects.
Capitol Hill Ocean Week in Washington DC, held earlier this month, focused on leadership, and when it comes to addressing challenges posed by climate change the right kind of leaders matter.
“Climate action (should be) led by people in boots, not people in suits,” offered Sarah Schumann, who fishes in Rhode Island and Alaska.
Schumann, part of the ‘Leaders at the Helm of Climate-Ready Fisheries,’ said environmentalism has changed from a cause to a career: Decisions on how to address the existential threat are too often made by people who aren’t made “uncomfortable” by climate change, rather than those who experience impacts every day.
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