III. Primary Ports: Community Studies
C. Chatham, Massachusetts Go to map of ports
C1.
Overview of Chatham Groundfishing
C2. Port Infrastructure (Table 12)
C3. Fishing Organizations and Associations
Situated on Cape Cod, between Gloucester and New
Bedford, Chatham's fishing fleet represents, most likely, the future of
fisheries that are able to remain viable in a setting of increasing coastal
gentrification and development of the coast for recreational purposes.
It is, by most accounts, a fleet comprised of smaller vessels than those
in New Bedford, Gloucester, or Portland; its fishers use a wider range
of fishing gears than those in the smaller ports, with fewer relying on
dragger nets and more relying on gillnets, longlines, hand lines, and traps.
This suggests Chatham is a less specialized fleet than the large ports
to the north and south. Chatham fishers, in fact, view the larger fishers
with some disdain, seeing them as primarily responsible for the current
crisis in the fisheries.
By contrast, within Chatham, fishers expressed
far less competition than what we have witnessed in New Bedford and Gloucester.
During our focus group in Chatham, when the issue of conflict arose, we
elicited the following:
"We fish with our monk gear right in with
the lobster gear most of the time, so for the most part we get along.
But there's two or three guys we can't get along with. But for the most
part, we do. And the draggers aren't towing in where we are, because the
lobster scares their fishing. But a scalloper will come through and decide
there's some monkfish and set a few traps. But other than that-with Chatham,
at least where I am, there's a little bit of cooperation."
Another fisher added, "If there's a problem
between the Chatham fishermen, I don't think it's when they're fishing;
I think the biggest problem with Chatham is that the different gear types
don't get together and take on the mobile gear...And the mobile gears,
they hate other, they pay somebody to represent them, and they speak with
one voice to the Council and to Congress and to the state. But Chatham
speaks with a bunch of little voices."
The competition that does exist in Chatham occurs
around gillnetting, which was reported to have increased in the past few
years and is not considered, by fishers using other gears, one of the more
damaging gears in the fishery.
Fishing in Chatham, in any case, occupies an economic
niche within a larger economy based primarily on tourism and seasonal residence.
Chatham is a seasonal community, quite wealthy, with many summer houses
and seasonal tourist cottages and businesses that open only during the
summer. In years past, the seasonal fluctuations in the town's population
were more pronounced, but today more shops and stores remain open through
the year. These provide the bulk of the employment in Chatham, along with
service and construction personnel who staff the motels, bed-and-breakfasts,
and cottages during summer and, usually through the late winter and spring,
repair or make ready for residence the seasonal homes. Summer remains,
of course, the busy season for both fishers in Chatham and those involved
in the tourist industry.
Chatham's attraction as a tourist destination
derives in part from its prominent location at the elbow of Cape Cod and
in part from its maintenance of New England charm. Most houses are
sided with the conventional streaked gray wooden shingles and many are
surrounded by stone walls of the kind Robert Frost claimed made good neighbors.
The long-running television program, Murder She Wrote, set in a
charming New England coastal community, could as easily have been filmed
in Chatham.
Reference to literature and television are not
merely helpful in describing Chatham, they suggest that the town has tried
hard to convey a somewhat removed, romanticized feeling, a fantasy that
has little room for the industrial clutter of a fishing fleet like Gloucester's
or New Bedford's. An obviously industrial fleet deters tourism unless
it remains confined to out of the way harbors that have not yet been zoned
for condominium development.
The aesthetic incompatibility between large vessels
requiring mammoth processing operation and quaint shorelines for shell
collecting and sunbathing accounts for the current character of the Chatham
fishing fleet.* This incompatibility
accounts as well for the downplaying of the fishing crisis in Gloucester
by individuals with vested interests in tourism and the marginalized locations
of commercial fishing in Ocean City, Maryland or Cape May, New Jersey.
*Note by Clay: The Chatham harbor is also too shallow for
large vessels to use comfortably.
Chatham's fleet seems to have grown up with the
community's emphasis on tourism, however, much in the same way the Maine
Lobster fleets have, in general, grown up with recreational sectors of
some of the communities between Portland and Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Evidence of how well integrated the recreational and commercial
sectors are in Chatham was reflected in an interview with a marina owner
there. When asked whether or not the government knew how extensive the
support sector was , he responded:
"I don't think they know how extensive
it is; I know they don't know how extensive it is, I've always told people:
the fishing fleet ends up on Main Street, because without it-for one thing,
the tourists still come to see the fishermen unload their catch, and then
they go up to Main Street to buy their sweaters and hats. They don't
think about that. This town is solely geared for that fishing fleet, and
that's what brings tourists, that and nostalgia is overlooked, as well
as the support group, the baiters and the related businesses in town."
This individual believes that the commercial fishing
industry is more than a merely quaint appendage to an otherwise seasonal
vacation spot, but central to Chatham's character and charm.
Chatham's
fishers depart from a municipal from pier and from a few sheltered harbors
around town, mooring their vessels to poles in the shallows in the same
way lobster boats add a picturesque dimension to nearly all ports of coastal
Maine. Although the Chatham commercial vessel list lists 291 commercial
fishing vessels, reports of active, full-time fishers we interviewed suggested
that only between 75 and 85 full-time fishing vessels fish out of Chatham,
with most of them in the small to medium range, measuring between 30' and
50' in length. Thus, many of those licensed as commercial fishing do so
on a casual or part-time basis. Two recent in-depth studies in North Carolina
(Griffith 1996; Johnson and Orbach 1996) found that only around one in
every four commercially licensed vessels was operated by full time fishers.
Generally, those vessels under 25' are not engaged in commercial fishing,
and most vessels listed on the Chatham list are between 13' and 20' in
length. Those longer than 25' were reported to fall into the following
categories(Table 12).
Obviously, dragging-the principal gear of the
specialized ground fishers-is far less common than gillnetting and longlining
in Chatham. This is due not only to the physical and social characteristics
of the port, but also to market factors. Chatham fishers claimed that they
fish for a quality product, selling primarily fresh fish that is, of course,
in high demand among the tourists and seasonal residents. Longlines, they
claim, are least damaging to fish and gillnets less damaging than draggers;
daily fishing, too, contributes to the emphasis on quality that has developed
here, since fish are landed within hours instead of days of being caught.
Gillnet vessels tend to be somewhat larger, on
average, than longline vessels, with the majority of the latter falling
in the 30' to 40' range and the majority of the former longer than forty
feet. Other vessels included those that specialized in tuna fishing,
a handful of lobster/trap vessels, and three that fished with hooks but
not longlines. These tend to be smaller, with most of them under 30' in
length.
Chatham fishers, in part because of the smaller
size of their vessels, tend to be more constrained by weather and seasonal
considerations than the larger fleets of Gloucester, New Bedford, and Portland.
Many of them take most of the winter off, concentrating their efforts during
the summer and fishing intermittently through the spring and fall.
Some reported that the 88 days at sea regulation would have little impact
on Chatham fishers because during a typical year they fished no more than
100 to 150 days anyway. Some expressed the belief, in any case, that the
88 days at sea would add up to 176 12-hour fishing periods, which, taking
primarily day trips, is about as much as they fish during the course of
a typical year.*
*Note by Clay: Days-at-sea are, in fact, counted in hours
and minutes. Thus, a day trip vessel uses less than a full day-at-sea on
a typical day trip. There is a slightly different rule for day gillnet
vessels than other day vessels, since the gillnets themselves generally
stay in the water even after the vessel is home for the day. Thus, any
day gillnet trip of 3-15 hours counts as 15 hours. A trip of less than
3 hours counts as its exact duration (to allow for setting sail and then
having to turn back suddenly for bad weather). A trip over over 15 hours
also counts its exact duration. Other non-gillnet day vessels count their
exact duration at all times.
Vessel size in Chatham also influences their range:
most do not have the fuel capacity to fish further than fifty miles off
shore, and most fish either in state waters or within twenty to thirty
miles of shore. Chatham fishers also deviate from fishers in the
ports dominated by larger vessels in that they tend to move among different
fisheries and different gears through the course of their lives and over
the course of a single year. Typically, they combine winter shellfishing
(scalloping or clamming) with summer groundfishing; according to several
informants, they complete with many of the part-time and casual commercial
fishermen who depend on shellfishing--particularly clamming--to supplement
annual earned and unearned incomes.
A couple we interviewed exemplify the practice
of moving among fishing, nonfishing employment, and fisheries-related work
through the course of their lives, a common occurrence among fishers like
those in Chatham:
Karen and Allen McPherson (pseudonym) make
most of their earned income by supplying bait to between eight and ten
longliners who fish out of Chatham. Obviously strongly attached
to the lifestyle of a coastal community, Karen and Allen also shellfish
during the winter, something Karen learned from her father when she was
a young girl. The bait supply business, like most businesses in Chatham,
is busiest during the summer months. Karen and Allen hire four additional
employees during these months, not only because of increased longlining
activity but also because Allen sets eel pots during the summer and fishes
for dogfish.
When asked about whether or not the current
crisis would force them to move from Chatham, Allen answered, "No,
no. It would take a little bit more than that to push us out. I've
done a lot of different things in my life, so it's not like I couldn't
switch jobs. I've been in the siding business and I've built houses for
numerous and numerous years. I don't want to have to do it again, but we
always have that option."
Allen's construction background, of course, is
common among fishers and construction is one of the common industries into
which fishers move during off season or times when fishing is poor. In
Chatham, a construction background is doubly important because the winter
and spring months are heavy demand months for construction skills. Yet
Karen and Allen have not confined their options to fishing, bait supply,
and construction. Allen was one of the few we interviewed who expressed
some interest in a aquaculture, perhaps because of his familiarity with
eels. Eels have been receiving a great deal of attention in New England
as a good candidate for aquaculture. Along with urchins, eels have attracted
so many fishers in Maine that crowding has begun to occur.
C3.
Fishing Organizations and Associations
Interviews with Chatham fishers revealed that
the formal organizations representing them include the Cape Cod Hookfisherman's
Association, the Shellfishermen's Association, and the Massachusetts Lobsterman's
Association, but none of the individuals we spoke with expressed a great
deal of enthusiasm about any organized political or lobbying activity to
emerge from the Cape. Principal regulatory concerns among Chatham
fishermen were that ITQs and TACs (Total Allowable Catch limits) would
devastate their fisheries. Several quotes were similar to the following
regarding these two regulatory mechanisms:
"ITQ's would demolish me....From
talking to the man from Alaska who was highliner-he came down to Chatham
to talk to us {about ITQ's}, and I talked to him for quite awhile afterwards-and
from talking to him, if ITQs come, I'm out of the business....Because I'll
probably have such a small quota allotted to me. Because, see, the ITQs
will be directed towards boats like those really big draggers, like the
ones that show the best year and use the best technology first. It rewards
the guys who caught all the fish initially. They'll be given a small amount
of fish to catch; and I'll be given a very, very small amount of fish to
catch, and I'll end up selling my ITQ to probably a company or something
like that."
In terms of conflict and cooperation among fishermen
in Chatham, they portrayed relations within the town's fishing community
and among similar towns along Cape Cod as more cooperative and more agreeable
towards one another than towards fishers from other, more industrialized
ports. This facade of cooperation conceals one source of conflict
within Chatham, however: that which occurs between hook/longline fishers
and gillnetters.
Gillnets were introduced into Chatham in 1978.
The innovation diffused through the community relatively swiftly, yet obviously
not all of the fishers converted to gillnets. We interviewed the man who
claimed to have been among the first to use gillnets in Chatham, and he
justified their use as response to growing competition from draggers based
in the industrial ports:
"The way I analyze it, is that at the
same time were upgrading technologically--if you want to think of it that
way, a pretty good way to think of it--because at the same time were switching
over to gillnetting, the draggers were also making a huge movement.
So we weren't even getting ahead, although it looked pretty good for four
or five years. We were just really sort of--I call it 'joining the 20th
century,' because the way we'd been before, for better or worse, was very
much a pre-industrial outlook on fishing."
Despite the competitive edge gillnetting may have
given some Chatham fishers, others object to its use, making statements
like:
"The gillnetters are farming. You
know what it's like--they set the gear and they own the spot. The Channel
and back in the inshore grounds, all traditional hook spots have been taken
over by the gillnetters. They don't fish here in the winter because the
fish are small, and also they make so much money in the summer that they
don't have to fish in the winter, the majority of them. But they really
take over the grounds; they've got nets on every wreck. They're all good
fishermen, but the LORAN makes them a good fishermen, for one thing. If
you went back to the old days and used your wristwatch, half the guys wouldn't
be able to find their way home. But the gillnets really are a major problem."
As a reflection of the difference between Chatham
fishers' relations with each other and Chatham fisher's relations with
fishers from other ports, a much more frequently mentioned and vociferously
opposed fishing practice than gillnets has been dragging that damages the
bottom, particularly the use of "rock-hoppers," or nets outfitted
to roll across rocky bottoms by means of thick cables and wheels. The
opposition to this gear emerged, usually, in the context of responses to
questions about changes in the resource.
Commonly, in-shore fishers are particularly sensitive
to the conditions of substrates and their effects on fish populations.
This is due, to the ease with which in-shore fishers can feel changes
in the bottom in shallower water, either directly with poles and other
gears or indirectly by encountering snags or recognizing changes in water
color or surface texture. Fishers in North Carolina's sounds or the Chesapeake
Bay, fishing in shallow water environments, tend to cite changes in substrates
frequently in their ethnobiological assessments of resource conditions
(Griffith 1996, 1994; Lawson 1988). Exemplary complaints against rock-hoppers
read as follows:
"A lot of the gillnetters will complain
about the hookers and say they catch all little fish, but that's all that's
left. When the gillnet is really fishing and they've got it working
well and the fish are chasing bait and they're chasing bait at night, they
catch them. I mean, when they catch them, they catch them. They nail them,
they annihilate them, which is something you just can't do. And the next
big change that came around here that was a tremendous was rock-hopper
gear. They guys would drag their rock-hopper gear...They are rubber, about
this big, and they can bounce over the rocks. Before the draggers stayed
on the soft bottom; they could catch enough fish in the soft bottom, there
was enough fish around. And we've seen the draggers out there and I'm over
here on the hard bottom, and the guys would be gillnetting and jigging
on the hard bottom--and the gillnetters would be out in the hard spot.
But then all of sudden, a couple of guys came up with this hard-bottom
gear...But the thing about it was, first the rock-hopper gear worked fairly
well so we had to compete with them momentarily, but they'd still hang
up. But then {late-1980's} things were still surviving and still plentiful.
Everything was still relatively prosperous."
"They got this giant net that...stretches
as far as Gray Hill. I'm thinking, "Oh, my God. This can't be true."
But it was true. They went up to Georges Bank to the spawning grounds
in the wintertime and caught. So we were fishing one February, '87 or '89--I
can't remember when, and the fish didn't show up. And I was talking to
a fellow by the name of McMellon and I said, "The fish didn't show
up," and he said, "They caught them at the pass." Those
guys nailed them, so that was a big change, because there was still
a lot fish in the winter. But these guys really nailed them...They were
wiping them out. And you better remember that there are just a few guys
getting really rich, and you're getting rid of the guys like me, because
I'm getting squeezed out of the fishing, you understand what I'm saying?"
Summarizing the political activity and organizational
practices of Chatham fishers requires few words. There are not powerful
organizations emerging to challenge Amendment # 7 and relatively little
interest or participation in organized political activity.
Community concern over Amendment # 7, gear conflicts, and reduced stocks weigh on the fishers of Chatham. Although not as visibly under duress as fishers in Gloucester, they are worried about the future of the fisheries, but have not developed a political organization to voice these concerns. Lack of organizations stems from a strong spirit of individualism in the fisher population. Conflict with draggers from other ports, and restrictions on fishing areas and days at sea are shared concerns in the Chatham fleet. However, an advantage of the Chatham fishers is their lower capital costs ( no large draggers and crews) and the ability to switch between different stocks, including shellfishing, on a cyclic basis. A most telling sign of stress was demonstrated was when a fisher broke down when discussing restrictions on fishing and declines in stocks. Regardless of adaptive strategies of non-destructive gear and smaller boats, the MGF is perceived to have significantly declined over the last ten years by fishers, and the future remains uncertain.