Finally, a herring hearing with a shot at real change
Some of us are old enough to remember when large foreign factory ships, often working in pairs, trawling nets the size of football fields between them, fished our waters so hard that they practically wiped out herring on Georges Bank. We saw what happened to the rest of the ecosystem; our fishermen took the hit. National outrage was so strong that Congress created what came to be called the 200-mile limit, forcing foreign boats to stay that far away...
When it comes to managing fish, check out their ears
Located in Pocasset, a few miles away from the heart of the research mecca that is Woods Hole, sits a boxy, industrial building with old “rockhopper” fishing gear – nets built to drag the bottom with big tires bouncing over rocks – piled outside and a cavernous space inside where fishing nets are fixed and prepped to be used in scientific studies...
Decade after decade, Tom Smith stays keeps connected to the sea -- and his customers
Leaving Hyannis Harbor just before 5 a.m., Captain Tom Smith arrives on Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound a few hours later and pulls alongside a boat with three fishermen trying to use rods to reel in bluefish. They aren’t having much luck. Smith commiserates; no one has seen many bluefish this year. “They are hiding in caves – that’s the joke,” says Smith...
‘Sears Folly’ turns out to be well worth its salt
In her 1957 hit “Old Cape Cod,” Patti Page extols the virtues of our salty air, but how often do we think about the value salt has had here, and its once vital role in the commercial fishing industry? From the early days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony salt was critical for ensuring the stability of offshore catches, which in turn drove the economy...
Chinese fisheries officials come to Chatham looking for advice
When Li Quianyun, director of the Bureau of Fisheries’ Division of Fishing Gear and Fishing Gear Management in China, visited Captain Nick Muto’s boat at the Chatham Fish Pier, she asked a lot of questions about the four cameras he has on his vessel, the Dawn T. Li, head of a delegation including about a dozen government officials and academics, was very curious about electronic monitoring and whether recording the catch of fishermen helps improve science and management...
Shipshape language
Living on the Cape and Islands, we know we are surrounded by water even if sometimes we take that blessing for granted. But the experiences of people who live and work on the sea influence and define a much broader world, far beyond shoreline communities. And there’s no better way to realize and appreciate how influential seafaring life is to our whole culture than by turning to words themselves, the amazing tools that make humans unique, that we use to define how we see ourselves...
A Farmer’s Market brings on the lobster
A middle-aged man wearing a striped polo and khaki shorts was strolling through the farmer’s market in Brewster. He passed stalls of vegetables, looked at the honey, and after he passed a display of local yarn he did a double take.He had just seen a sign advertising fresh lobsters for $8 a pound.“Are you here all the time?” he asked.
Electronic monitoring first seen as a pariah, converts more fishermen
Captain Eric Hesse had left his home port of Chatham and was fishing out of Gloucester because it was closer to where the haddock were biting, and also closer to his buyer.After driving two and a half hours in his pick-up truck, he was carrying gear to his boat, F/V Tenacious II, when he passed Chris McGuire who was talking to one of the Gloucester captains...
Where and how to bring windpower to the shore
“These animals are pumping 50 gallons of water a day,” says Yarmouth aquaculture farmer Ed Janiunas of his oysters in Lewis Bay, the harbor that straddles Yarmouth and Barnstable and is the maritime gateway to Hyannis. “So anything upsetting the habitat and creating a whole lot of silt in the water could kill every oyster out there.” This disturbance of the natural environment in and around his three-acre grant, located off a little isthmus near Great Island, is what concerns Janiunas when he contemplates the impact of the Vineyard Wind offshore wind turbine project...
When bird dung, aka guano, powered Falmouth’s economy
There is a common refrain among Cape Cod locals that (during the summer months at least) no one wants to have to drive “over the bridge.” So it is all the more impressive to realize that 160 years ago, local ship captains typically ventured to the far side of the globe. Sometimes their mission was, in retrospect, surprising, even bizarre --- for example, to mine bird dung and bring it back to Woods Hole...
