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The first day of a 50-hour Marine Resource Education Program, a presenter said something that stuck with me the entire week:
“I am here teaching this topic to a grandson of someone I worked with in this industry.”
The enduring way of life and deep personal connections commercial fishing provides is one reason I chose to work at the Fishermen’s Alliance, and heck, that’s one of the reasons I have chosen to do almost everything I have done in my life.
If no one catches fish in the ocean, are they still there? Commercial fishermen say yes, but fisheries science has been saying otherwise.
The disconnect between what fishermen experience on the water and the information regulators use to manage stocks has always been a bugaboo, but it’s a particular problem when it comes to monkfish.
Many students who attend WaterWORKS, an annual gathering at Cape Cod Community College, want to hear from different employers in the Blue Economy, explore job and career options from wastewater treatment to mosquito control to tagging sharks.
Not Barnstable High’s Theresa Wait. She knew exactly what she wants to do: commercial fishing.
From 1983 to 2013 the “Maid of the Mist-V” operated as a 72-foot passenger boat that took guests for a tour among the swirling currents and numerous eddies that lie below Niagara Falls, New York. Some boat called the Maid of the Mist had been operating in the rapids below the falls since 1846.
You might be thinking, “What the heck does the Maid of the Mist have to do with Cape Cod and fishing?” Appropriate question. My wife did work for the Maid of the Mist Company when she lived in Lewiston, NY before we met in college. An indirect but significant connection.
A decade ago, the Fishermen’s Alliance was one of the founding members of the Cape’s Blue Economy Foundation because although commercial fishing is the original blue economy, it relies on a constellation of maritime business that help sustain our coastal community. The next generation is also essential to the success of our peninsula, which is why we have been part of the Foundation’s WaterWORKS career fair since it began in 2019. We thought it would be fun to take a look back at the commercial fishermen who spent time at the event over the years and talked to close to 1,000 students about opportunities in the industry.
Our meeting room, what used to be a dilapidated barn beside an old sea captain’s home in Chatham, both handsomely restored thanks to help from so many of you, was full of great people and spirit on Wednesday, January 22.
The occasion? An annual meeting of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance to pull us together and share a sense of life and times.
This moment has become a great tradition. We’ve been doing it for 35 years now, which sometimes I find hard to believe. If I want to boggle my mind, I ponder that this had been happening for 14 percent of the time this nation called the United States has existed.
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