I’m traveling this week, calling in from Gloucester, Massachusetts. I’m here to talk about fish, or more accurately, the lack of fish. Fish or no fish? Gloucester is a prototypical American fishing community. It’s on Cape Ann, north of Boston. Ethnic neighborhoods of clapboard houses end at the water’s edge, at the wharves, but there are very few fishing vessels working out of Gloucester anymore.
For 500 years, the Gloucester fleet worked the Georges Bank, living off what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of cod, hake and haddock.
When I was a boy, I read and reread Captains Courageous, about stoic men like Discobolus Troop, who coaxed from the waters not just their livelihood, but a culture. Their supply of fish was inexhaustible, it replenished itself with the flow of the tides and the seasons.
Then, in the early 1960s, industrial fishing arrived on the Georges Bank. Every year’s catch set a new record, but not for Gloucester. The big boats all flew foreign flags and processed their catches at sea. Within a decade, the boom was over. The world’s most fecund fishing ground, inexhaustible for five centuries, was daunted and depleted.
The federal government banned foreign factory trawlers in 1976, congressional recognition of the obvious. Then the Gloucester fleet played a role in its own demise. Hoping to gain back some of the economic ground lost to the foreign industrial boats, the Gloucester fleet hit the Georges Bank hard and in the early 1990s, the Georges Bank went down, hard. Gloucester went down with it.
Have you ever walked up a flight of stairs in the dark and misjudged the number of steps? Your feet keep on climbing and you stumble as you try to hoist your weight on something you expect to be there but is not. That’s the feeling I get as I walk through the streets of Gloucester. Suddenly, the next step is not there.
Fish or no fish? The families of Gloucester work hard, as they always have. Tourism, at least in the summer months, brings a few dollars into town. The attraction for tourists, or course, is that Gloucester is, or was, a fishing community. There are still a few boats at the wharves and they still bring in a few tons of fish, but I keep running into the phrase “our maritime heritage” – it sounds of the past tense. No one seems to want to say “our maritime culture” – it may already be too late.
But Gloucester is not without hope. Given time, fish stocks may recover. Everyone is hoping they will. But now, American factory trawlers are talking about coming to New England. The fishing families of Cape Ann pin their hopes on a community fishing future; they want to give their children a chance to work these waters. If the trawlers return, that may be impossible.
The feeling I get in the streets of Gloucester is not an unusual one. I’ve felt it in the farming communities of the plains, the factory towns of the Great Lakes and the steel towns of the Ohio Valley.
Remembering the past, anxious for the future, present tense in Gloucester is about holding on, holding on.
Fish or No Fish?
I’m traveling this week, calling in from Gloucester, Massachusetts. I’m here to talk about fish, or more accurately, the lack of fish. Fish or no fish? Gloucester is a prototypical American fishing community. It’s on Cape Ann, north of Boston. Ethnic neighborhoods of clapboard houses end at the water’s edge, at the wharves, but there are very few fishing vessels working out of Gloucester anymore.
For 500 years, the Gloucester fleet worked the Georges Bank, living off what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of cod, hake and haddock.
When I was a boy, I read and reread Captains Courageous, about stoic men like Discobolus Troop, who coaxed from the waters not just their livelihood, but a culture. Their supply of fish was inexhaustible, it replenished itself with the flow of the tides and the seasons.
Then, in the early 1960s, industrial fishing arrived on the Georges Bank. Every year’s catch set a new record, but not for Gloucester. The big boats all flew foreign flags and processed their catches at sea. Within a decade, the boom was over. The world’s most fecund fishing ground, inexhaustible for five centuries, was daunted and depleted.
The federal government banned foreign factory trawlers in 1976, congressional recognition of the obvious. Then the Gloucester fleet played a role in its own demise. Hoping to gain back some of the economic ground lost to the foreign industrial boats, the Gloucester fleet hit the Georges Bank hard and in the early 1990s, the Georges Bank went down, hard. Gloucester went down with it.
Have you ever walked up a flight of stairs in the dark and misjudged the number of steps? Your feet keep on climbing and you stumble as you try to hoist your weight on something you expect to be there but is not. That’s the feeling I get as I walk through the streets of Gloucester. Suddenly, the next step is not there.
Fish or no fish? The families of Gloucester work hard, as they always have. Tourism, at least in the summer months, brings a few dollars into town. The attraction for tourists, or course, is that Gloucester is, or was, a fishing community. There are still a few boats at the wharves and they still bring in a few tons of fish, but I keep running into the phrase “our maritime heritage” – it sounds of the past tense. No one seems to want to say “our maritime culture” – it may already be too late.
But Gloucester is not without hope. Given time, fish stocks may recover. Everyone is hoping they will. But now, American factory trawlers are talking about coming to New England. The fishing families of Cape Ann pin their hopes on a community fishing future; they want to give their children a chance to work these waters. If the trawlers return, that may be impossible.
The feeling I get in the streets of Gloucester is not an unusual one. I’ve felt it in the farming communities of the plains, the factory towns of the Great Lakes and the steel towns of the Ohio Valley.
Remembering the past, anxious for the future, present tense in Gloucester is about holding on, holding on.