Santoro hopes science will protect his business plan
Domenic Santoro, like many in Chatham, dug for clams off Monomoy from the moment he was old enough and has bounced around from fishery to fishery since. “I feel like I have to reinvent myself every five years,” he says. He’s been fluke fishing, dredging for quahogs, surf clamming. But there has been a constant; early in his career he started musseling, with a boat and a small dredge that he and his brother Frank put together...
Temperature readings can tell many tales
“When I first started fishing, I didn’t realize how important water temperature could be,” says Greg Walinski, “but obviously it plays a big role in everything we do.” Walinski’s Cape Cod-based vessel Alicia Ann is one of 28 boats from Maine to Rhode Island outfitted with temperature sensors as part of an ongoing program from NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center Oceanography Branch...
Fish for Families makes its latest distribution
This year, the Family Pantry of Cape Cod expects to serve 10,000 clients and distribute 100,000 bags of groceries valued at $4.2 million. “We call ourselves a sustaining pantry,” said Christine Menard, the dynamic director of the Harwich facility, meaning that the pantry’s clients do not fit a stereotype of people in total collapse. “They are landscapers, fishermen, nurse assistant ...
When “Tiny’s” fishnet was all the fashion
“Mackerel rejoice. Sardines fling their shining scales in the air. There is joy in the pools where minnows swim. Fish-net, their oldest and deadliest enemy, has become a fashion. Women – to the astonishment of the fish – are actually wrapping themselves up in the stuff. Deliberately.” -- From an article in “Picture Post,” a leading international magazine of the era, May 3, 1939 The reason for this whimsical, ersatz fish celebration was the success of a remarkable Cape Cod business that linked our fishing community to the world in a unique way – using fish net as fabric to create high women’s fashion...
Alumni revisited: Catching up with Azure
Southern California native Azure Cygler (neé Westwood) had just finished getting her undergraduate degree in marine biology at University of California Santa Cruz in 1999 when she happened to meet Mark Pappalardo, brother of Fishermen’s Alliance CEO John Pappalardo. “I was getting interested in wild harvest fisheries issues and he told me his brother was doing some of the same work on Cape Cod,’ recalls Cygler...
A box of ocean called 537
Of all things on this big old planet that could be divided and put into boxes, the ocean is the least likely. Yet people find ways to box off and subdivide even the waves, and once you push past holistic and romantic objections, there are reasons for it: We are at a point in our relationship to the world where (like it or not) we need management, we need to understand our impacts and where to focus and avoid...
PHOTO GALLERY: Fishnet Fashion
Picture a fancy gown worn by a top model, sold in the late 1930s at one of the most famous luxury department stores of the time. A handwritten note on the page, signed by Bergdorf Goodman, reads: “lovely, new and strange.” Strange indeed, the gown was created out of real fishnet, produced at a company known across the globe, headquartered in North Truro...
Miss Fitz gets a facelift for the future
The parking lot at Ryder’s Cove boatyard was virtually empty on a cold March morning when several pickup trucks pulled in and waited with engines running. Soon a trailered boat so white it was temporarily blinding in sunlight pulled around the corner. “I don’t even think she was that white when I originally had her built,” said John Our of his boat Miss Fitz...
Hearing is believing: Our oceans are getting louder
Chris Clark has made a life of listening to whales and was invited to a Congressional hearing to speak on the threat seismic testing for oil reserves poses to the highly endangered North Atlantic Right Whale. The repetitive loud explosions, comparable to how the launch of the space shuttle sounds to bystanders, has been shown to make a mess of how whales communicate, feed and breed...
From wampum to nitrogen, third graders view the world through shellfish
Many people notice shells in tide pools or at the edge of the sea and don’t give them another thought. Not Max Furman. “I think, What are they doing in their shell? Are they trying to find food?” Furman says he has never eaten shellfish, but he knows they are important to the way the Cape’s environment works. Just how important he isn’t sure, but the Harwich third grader is about to find out...
