Crossing the bar in heroic and tragic moments
As of December, Coast Guard Station Chatham has become a “heavy weather station” instead of the “surf station” it has been since inauguration in 1872. According to the Coast Guard, this new heavy weather designation means Coast Guard crews can only set out if the surf on the Chatham bar is less than eight feet. If it is more than eight feet, rescue vessels can be launched from Stage Harbor and helicopters can be deployed from the Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod located in Sandwich...
Once around the horn
Along with tacking up the new calendar and remembering to write 2019 in the checkbook, we have another reason to mark a year’s passing: This issue marks the beginning of the second year of this enterprising little emagazine. I confess I would have missed the anniversary if it hadn’t been called to my attention, which is nowhere near as important (or hazardous) as missing my wedding anniversary, for example, but still … Looking back 12 months can be a scary exercise, but in this case when I re-read my first “Over the Bar,” I didn’t cringe...
Fishing Communities, unite!
Since 2015, our Alliance has been joining hands with small-port fishing organizations around the country as part of a group that’s called, appropriately enough, the Fishing Communities Coalition. This FCC is a cool endeavor. From Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, Maine to California, we now have a way to join forces, compare challenges, share successes, and celebrate common goals...
Zia’s customers are beneficiaries of her fishing heritage
When she was 14 years old, Zia Auch moved from Maine to live year-round in Wellfleet, the town where she was born. “I feel like there are mountain people and ocean people and I am an ocean person,” Auch, now 29, says. A few years later, she was a junior at Nauset High and her dad, Gerald, would be away for weeks at a time scalloping and landing the catch in Ocean City, Maryland...
Preparing for the future of ocean farming
Chris Schillaci looked out at a sea of mostly plaid shirts, stuffed behind rows of cafeteria-style tables, who had come together after a day outside. “You can make a living and stay on the Cape with an acre oyster grant,” the aquaculture specialist for the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries said. The crowd of primarily oyster farmers looked back...
Monkfish makes the menu, thanks in part to fishermen-funded science
There was a time not long ago when fishermen tried to get rid of big-jawed, sharp-toothed prehistoric-looking monkfish by kicking them out the scuppers. Now they steam 100 miles in often ugly weather to find them, bringing up thousands of pounds in weighted gillnets. “It makes up a fair part of my year, about a third of my income,” said Nick Muto, captain of the Dawn T...
When Brewster’s Captains Roamed the Seas
With a coastline known today for its acres of tidal flats, Brewster nevertheless was the village of choice for sea captains during the clipper ship era. “The peak year of 1850 saw 50 clipper captains living in Brewster,” says Sally Cabot Gunning, With a coastline known today for its acres of tidal flats, Brewster nevertheless was the village of choice for sea captains during the clipper ship era...
Standing on the shoulders of the past, Sam Linnell looks to the future
When Tim Linnell bought his first fishing boat he brought his six-year-old son Sam up to Maine to pick it up. “He was climbing all over it,” Tim remembers, “throwing lines overboard.” Less than 20 years later, Sam brought his dad and another captain, Mark Liska, up to Gloucester to see the commercial vessel he was buying. “This is what I love to do...
Outsmarting ocean acidification
Although it was years ago, Dan Martino well remembers how hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest watched their shellfish seed die, ravaged by ocean acidification. “The shellfish basically dissolved in front of their eyes,” Martino says. “The ocean water had grown too acidic.” When Dan and his brother Greg got their oyster grant on Martha’s Vineyard in 2014, and became the first oyster farm in Oak Bluffs history, that memory became even more sinister...
