Captain Eric Hesse
By Doreen Leggett
On a mid-summer night, more than 400 people filled a big white tent behind the Harwich Community Center, drinking champagne, eating everything from dogfish and scallops to oysters and clams, bidding on excursions and auction items, and raising more than $350,000 for the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance.
The evening’s success – and the non-profit’s success – can be traced back to a few fishermen getting together in Captain Fred Bennett’s workshop 35 years ago when their livelihoods and the 400-year-old tradition the Cape was built on was under threat.
Captain Eric Hesse, who has been fishing for close to 40 years, was in the crowd and remembered getting involved more than three decades ago.
“I believe strongly that we need to have group representation if we want to move forward. We have found a lot more success that way than before, when we were just calling people individually and raising hell,” Hesse said in the annual celebration video played at the ball.
“We grew from basically a one-man shop back in the 1990s. Now it’s a critical part of New England’s fishery voices.”
CEO John Pappalardo emphasized the power of banding together and stepping forward in his speech to the crowd that gathered August 1 for the 25th anniversary of Hookers Ball. Throughout the organization’s history people haven’t just cared; they have acted, he said.
“Thirty-five years ago, a handful of Cape Cod fishermen decided this place was worth organizing around. No money. No proof it would work. Just each other and enough conviction to put their names on it,” Pappalardo said. “That’s the difference between good intentions and results.”
He noted before his speech that, prior to the Fishermen’s Alliance even having a name, the same, small group of commercial fishermen walked into Cape Cod Five for a loan. They did not have the financial history required to secure that loan, but they all offered to sign personally. That wouldn’t have been enough if the loan officer hadn’t taken a chance and approved it.
“Everything this organization has built since – the Fisheries Trust, our advocacy work, fishermen training, economic development and education initiatives – started the same way that loan did: with people who had no guarantee, only belief,” Pappalardo said.
Bennett, captured on video speaking from his home in Chatham, said local fishermen saw their catches declining and knew why. They just couldn’t prove it:
“Habitat loss, every time.”
Concerns about habitat led the group to “punch above its weight” Pappalardo said, and advocate for the Sustainable Fisheries Act in 1996. Since then, science has been at the heart of the work done by the Fishermen’s Alliance, using the collective power of fishermen to improve fisheries management.
“Small-boat fishermen wanted to make certain assertions about what we saw on the water and what we felt our gear was capable in terms of stewardship of resources… so we essentially had to put our money where our mouth is and that is why we got involved in science,” said Hesse in the video.
Commercial fishing doesn’t disappear all at once, Pappalardo said. It happens one quiet decision at time, a commercial slip going to a recreational user, a fisherman losing the spot he stored gear, a market not selling local fish, a young person moving off Cape, a bad regulatory decision left unchallenged.
But the reverse is true. Small decisions, small acts of faith, steadily build up the industry. Pappalardo told the crowd that although the arithmetic is tight, young people are still getting into the business to join fishermen who have kept it going for a half century, or longer.
More than 15 fishermen representing ports up and down the Cape as well as a variety of fisheries, lent their voices to the video played at the ball.
Here are just a few:
“Hi, my name is John Our I have been fishing for 47 years. I am second generation and the name of my fishing vessel is the Miss Fitz. And this time of the year we target skate and dogfish and in the fall I target mackerel.”
“Hey, my name is Tim Linnell. I own the Perry’s Pride II. I fish for skates and dogfish in the summer. I fish with all three of my sons periodically, but mostly Jonas.”
“Hi, my name is Jake Angelo. I have been fishing my entire life. I fish for many species … out of Cotuit and Barnstable Harbor. My boat’s name is the Cornerstone and I also own Barnstable Seafood Company.”
“Hi, my name is Greg Connors I have been fishing out of the Chatham Fish Pier for 39 years. The name of my boat is the Constance Sea.”
“My name is Zachary Bennett, Fred Bennett’s grandson. I have been fishing for 18 years now. Currently I am sea scalloping. I have the fishing vessel Helltown and we are fishing out of Provincetown.”
The original group built an organization that outlasts them, an alliance that is still steered by fishermen after 35 years but relies on the community, Pappalardo said.
“My father, Bob Luce, got me into fishing as a teenager,” said Tom Luce, who has been fishing for almost 40 years. “He, pretty much, is one of the original founders that started the Fishermen’s Alliance and, he is not here anymore, but he is definitely here in spirit, and I think he is pretty proud of how things have materialized.”