The Vineyard’s fisher journalist, poet, and folksinger pulls the pieces together
Mark Alan Lovewell drove his silver pickup past the Edgartown Yacht Club, where swordfish used to land, past the marina at Oak Bluffs, which used to be stuffed with commercial fishing vessels, past a seasonal fish market, and on toward Menemsha, a port that has become quieter in recent years. On the way he drove by Morning Glory Farm, successful in large part because of independence and family tradition...
Gulf Stream Orphans in Pleasant Bay
When Owen Nichols and Charlie Beggs set out to study lobster settlement in Pleasant Bay, in 2014, both had already been working on the water for a long time so weren’t easily surprised. But that day they were – twice. First, they found lots and lots of lobsters under a year old, as many or more than in some areas in Maine, where lobsters are supposed to be most fertile...
After 20 years, final step in herring protection at hand
Many across the Cape say that industrial-sized boats have removed enormous amounts of ocean herring from the inshore, leaving whales, cod, tuna and others to look elsewhere. But those who make their living on the sea point out that it isn’t just forage fish that disappear when pairs of big midwater trawlers come through. The boats catch everything in their wake; pollock, striped bass, big fish and small...
Island ingenuity creates a boat for the ages
People are familiar with the long, sleek lines of the whaling dories of old, and the wide-bodied, single-sailed catboats that were designed for commercial fishing before they became a sailor’s favorite. Less well-known are the sturdy Noman’s Land boats native to Martha’s Vineyard, a mainstay of inshore fishing for close to 30 years. “It is a measure of how significant the Noman’s Land boat is in Vineyard culture that it appears on the town seal of Chilmark,” said A...
PHOTO GALLERY: Personalities of Stage Harbor
Stage Harbor has been a working waterfront for close to 300 years and has always had a big role in the history and the success of the town.
We need to do what we can, and then hope
If all goes well in the next month or so, and with one more push from all of us, next spring we will see the beginnings of some big changes off our coast. The first and most obvious thing is what we won’t see: the lights of midwater trawlers, factory boats working in pairs, wiping out schools of forage fish like herring close to shore. What we hope to see next is more subtle: the return of those schools, and then all the bigger fish that feast on plentiful herring like cod, haddock, pollock, striped bass, bluefin tuna, even some species of whale...
An early misstep works out, putting Nick Muto in the wheelhouse
DATELINE: 0420641N, 0671456W, 145.2 Mi SW of Clark's Harbour , NS 400 LB TUNA!!! IN THE CLOSED AREA, WHILE GILLNETTING. CAUGHT IT ON A DISCARDED HADDOCK THIS MORNING! F---ING AWESOME!!! That message, from Captain Nick Muto, arrived in the mailbox of Ray Kane, outreach coordinator at the Fishermen’s Alliance, one early morning while Muto was still on Georges Bank...
The Hookers Ball celebrates consistency, flexibility and perseverance
John Pappalardo is proud of how the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance is well into its second quarter century navigating the tumultuous fisheries world. And he knows why it has survived. Pappalardo, the Fishermen’s Alliance’s chief operating officer, believes the organization is among the most successful in New England, and perhaps the United States, because it follows the lead of its industry members: “Adopting that work ethic day in and day out, year in and year out, has helped protect a resource, a tradition and a way of life on Cape Cod,” said Pappalardo, speaking to a crowd of close to 600 at the sold out Hookers Ball earlier this month...
At the finish, looking back at a time well spent
As I crossed the finish line of the Falmouth Road Race, I was full of emotions: Happy to be done, proud of trekking through the heat and humidity, joyful seeing my son and husband cheering me on, and bittersweet knowing my three-year “run” with the Fishermen’s Alliance is coming to an end. I look back at my time here as director of philanthropy and am proud of it all...
“Deadliest Catch” producer remembers commercial fishing in Chatham
Paul Gasek has a Novi skiff at Sesuit Harbor in Dennis and heads out to fish among the bigger, yacht-like boats that boast an accoutrement of fish-finding electronics. If he catches fish, he throws a buoy on the spot and keeps drifting on it. He calls it “the other GPS,” the Gasek Positioning System. “It’s the oldest analog marker in the book,” he says...
PHOTO GALLERY: Aboard the Pocahontas 1976
This sequence of shots were all taken by Paul Gasek on a two-day trip aboard the Pocahontas, with Dave Jerauld and Ned Crockett in 1976. Although no one knew it then, Gasek would go on to create a reality commercial fishing series that would win an Emmy.
