Talking To Strangers - The Lost Art of Net-Mending And The Distrust of NOAA

 

 

"Mending Nets For The F/V Harmony"

 

Nikon D800
Nikkor 50.0mm f1.4 lens
Photomator
Snapseed

 

I watched him work on the nets from a respectful distance. He said "Hi!", so I walked closer and we began to talk.  He first became a commercial fisherman at the age of 17. If my memory serves, he worked the boats until he was 32 when he left fishing to drive UPS trucks. He told me that driving delivery trucks was safer, more financially rewarding, and more physically taxing than fishing. He's now enjoying a comfortable retirement thanks to a union pension and other retirement benefits. (Contrast that with the Joe Big-Ass Corporation "pension" that I receive which nets out to less than $1.00 per day.)   I asked him where he learned to mend nets. He said he learned as a boy early in his career. "Back in the day, you couldn't get a full share on a boat unless you knew how to mend nets, so I learned quick. Nowadays there's not many men that have this skill, so they'll call me and other old-timers like me to come fix their nets when they tear them."    We talked about NOAA - the much-hated government agency that both sets fishing quotas for boats AND produces weather forecasts. I asked him why fishermen despised NOAA so much since without them the captains and crews would be essentially blind to onrushing storms while at sea. He told me that fishermen distrust scientists because (he said) they misjudge the health of fish stocks. "They don't know how to fish. They set up on a flat sandy bottom and don't come up with anything, so they say there are no fish. Gloucestermen will fish rocky bottoms and come up with full nets."    I didn't argue with him. I make it a policy to never argue with people I meet on the street.   I have to say though, that I hear several versions of that skeptical view point over and over again from fishermen.. From my point of view - while it may be true that NOAA scientists aren't professional fishermen and as a result will not bring in catches like the professionals do, fishermen can't really argue with the fact that they have to go further and further out to catch fish. They can't argue with the fact that the herring and mackerel populations have been depleted so much that big mid-water trawlers like the Endeavor and the Challenger now sit rusting at the pier and make only a tiny handful of trips a year now while they wait to be sold off.. But - nobody is in any rush to buy them. They can't argue with depleted lobster catches, with more and more of the lobster population making its way to colder Maine waters.. They can't argue with the recent partial collapse of the scallop beds off southern Massachusetts which has driven the retail price of scallops to $55.00 a pound.

 

 

 

 

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