DONATE
As soon as he was old enough to ride a bicycle around Barnstable, Connor Rogan was fishing. After he got his driver’s license it was easier and he started working on charter boats when he was 16.
“Once I started making money at it I was like, ‘Wow, this is perfect,’” he said.
The waters off the Cape have long been popular for tuna, marlin and sharks, as well as the fishermen that chase them. Recently, those waters have proved attractive for wind energy companies as well, and it’s unclear what that means for the fisheries.
“If you put in hundreds of turbines, what is the cumulative impact?” asked Michael Pierdinock, who serves on the U.S. International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas Advisory Committee.
Temperatures are increasing, sea levels rising. Ocean currents are unpredictable and marine heatwaves bring us to a climate tipping point. Hurricanes follow hard on the heels of one another, creating temporary dead zones.
Estuarine nurseries are shadows, choked by sea level rise, coastal population growth, armoring the coast, and marsh die offs. Productivity plummets and poisonous plankton blooms proliferate.
Bill Crockett wasn’t a bad kid, just mischievous, no fan of school, so he walked away from Fork Union Military Academy when he was 16.
“I read all the wrong books,” he said, like “On the Road,” the anti-establishment, counter-culture novel by Jack Kerouac.
Crockett hitchhiked all over the country, heard about the glories of Chatham from John Summers, and went there. Kerouac said he found his America (and God) on the road; Crockett found his in Chatham in 1961.
“Summertime and the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.”
Most everybody knows those lyrics from George Gershwin, just like most everyone loves the summer. For commercial fishermen summer is far from easy – although the fish may be jumping.
One of our great, fun community successes in recent years has been regular “Meet the Fleet” events, when we pull together fishermen and chefs to share the experience of being on the water, offer insights into different species landed locally, and present a creative transformation of work and fish into beautiful cuisine.
That got me to thinking:
How about we grow the concept, and create a second ongoing series that tries to do similar things but this time with amazing people who explore the biggest ideas of the ocean world, and how they apply to our small corner of it? Put Cape Cod and the fisheries into scientific context, this time with plates full of ideas?
e-Magazine PDF’s