Christopher Seufert photo
By John Pappalardo
If the Cape is anything, it is a place of migration, and migrants.
This time of year that’s obvious. You can look in the air and see where the birds are headed. You can look in the sea and trace fish movements as waters cool. You can even look down the street, and wave to neighbors headed south or back to “the other home.”
There’s long history too, and not just the migrating Pilgrims. Our fishing prowess and fertile waters have brought people here from the Canadian Maritimes, the Azores, mainland Portugal, the Caribbean, up the Eastern seaboard and from inland. We have turned around and sent our own to the Pacific and Far East to hunt whales, trade goods, sometimes to remain or bring home families as well as riches.
In a much more Cape-centric way, I also see that our fishing fleet has a migratory life to it.
The main thing is that the fleet moves in patterns. A captain who spends much of the summer just a few miles from shore might soon be making a 10-hour one-way steam to deepwater canyons far to the south, as he did last year, because that’s where the monkfish like to be. Scallopers who worked open bottom a few miles east might be headed much farther to what they call Closed Area One to fill the dredges – as they did last year. Georges Bank has attracted fishermen for as long as there have been tales, from the Great South Channel into Canada, migrating to chase cod, haddock, halibut – as they’ve done for centuries.
Close to home, a different kind of practical migration occurs, which is why I mention this big context.
We think of fishing boats and captains as having homeports, and there’s truth to that for sure. But for our fleet to be successful, often we need to work out of more than one harbor, take advantage of proximity and access that is varied. If what you’re chasing is in Nantucket Sound, you don’t want to be tied up at Sesuit Harbor on the northside of Dennis; steam around the tip of the Cape or go through the canal just to get there? If what you’re after is on Stellwagen Bank, you want to go from nearby Provincetown, not Hyannis. Sandwich basin is a great launching spot for heading north along Cape Cod Bay or even over to Buzzards, but if it’s the backshore you’re working, or due east, Chatham surely makes a lot more sense.
Given the way our towns are structured, with strong emphasis on the rights and benefits of residents, it can be hard to acknowledge and support the migratory reality of local fishermen. Different towns charge different rates to tie up. Some don’t allow “transients” at all, or boats owned by someone whose home address is the town next door. Some adjust fees and access for commercial work, some don’t. Some recognize the other big migratory pattern, summer people pulling recreational boats off the water for the winter, and allow year-round, hardworking captains to move into otherwise dormant slips and moorings. Others keep those resources closer to the vest.
It’s a hodgepodge that doesn’t always work, and too often forces fishermen to navigate not just through channel buoys into offshore, but among shoals of town regulations and personalities. It denies our migratory nature, and the amazing common history and contributions of fishing from every nook of Cape Cod.
If I could wave a magic wand, I’d wave it twice: First, to create a Cape-wide agreement that commercial fishing boats should have access rights to any and every port, especially during what the tourist economy refers to as “off-season.” Second, to define a single fee structure for moorings and slips that offers commercial vessels an affordable, predictable, daily rate as they land after working their hard magic offshore.
Many of us have embraced the concept of a Blue Economy, emphasizing our relationship to the big blue that surrounds us, directly and indirectly powering and defining our economy. I would welcome Blue thinkers willing to put this county-wide issue on the table.
The best way to begin? Turn to our friends at the Cape Cod Commission to do the groundwork (in this case waterwork) to understand what’s going on town by town, access/fees/policies, and come up with a strong recommendation for a new, supportive standard.
It wouldn’t be rocket science, not even boat science. But it would be great public policy for one peninsula’s historic fleet.
John Pappalardo is CEO of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance