Their eyes were watching cod
A midcoast Maine longline survey keeps tabs on groundfish
By Paul Molyneaux
An hour before dawn on a late summer morning, wind blowing in from the southwest, I arrive with 42-year-old lobsterman Jason Joyce at Burnt Coat Harbor on Swans Island, Maine. Dim shadows of boats lay on their moorings, and under a light near the end of the Joyce family’s wharf, Jason pauses to talk to his father, Carlton Joyce.
“Going longlining today?” Carlton Joyce asks.
“Yeah, going down to one of the closer spots, see if we can set,” says Jason Joyce.
“Might be a little breezy,” his father replies, as he turns and walks away to tend his lobster gear.
Twenty minutes later Jason Joyce has his 38-foot Calvin Beal boat, the Andanamra, a poetic amalgamation of his four children’s names, in alongside the wharf. His sternman, Andy Haney, a 6-foot-2 New Yorker with family ties to the island, has dragged 16 totes of baited longline — “tub trawl” in the New England parlance — from a walk-in freezer out to the derrick used to lower them aboard the boat.
In the course of loading the bait Joyce asks Haney to secure a line. “Just pass her through that loop that makes up herself,” Joyce offers. Haney looks up, perplexed by Joyce’s phrasing, but he figures it out. Joyce’s family has been living on this island since Col. James Swan, a Revolutionary War hero, bought it in 1806. The islanders have habits of thought and language rooted in their long history as fishing people.
But Maine’s inshore groundfish fishery, which at its height in 1859, provided direct employment for more than 8,000 coastal residents, now employs about 70. One high school student I met on the ferry coming over said his plans were to leave the island as soon as he graduated. “We used to have three fish plants here,” he told me. “Now it’s a retirement community.”
Callifornia crabbing: Here's a fun video shot on the decks of the Majestik while catching Dungeness crab off the coast of northern California.
Over 500 lots of seafood processing equipment formerly owned by Adak Seafood will be sold at auction on Tuesday, June 18, starting at 10 a.m. Hawaiian-Aleutian Daylight Time at the Hilton Garden Inn in Anchorage Alaska.
The equipment is located in a recently updated 250,000 square foot state-of-the-art processing facility in Adak, Alaska. Farmington Hills, Mich.-based Hilco Industrial, which conducts 75 machinery and equipment auctions in a wide range of industries annually, will conduct the auction.
Adak Seafood opened originally as Ada Fisheries in Anchorage in 1986. The facility, updated in 2005, is located on the island of Adak, the southernmost city in Alaska near the western end of the Aleutian Islands. The facility processed cod primarily, as well as halibut, blackcod, crab and pollock, Hilco says.
Alaska fisherman and commercial fisheries activist Kevin Adams was elected chairman at the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute board of directors meeting on May 9 in Anchorage.
The governor-appointed board consists of seven members: five seafood processors and two industry representatives actively engaged in commercial fishing. Adams was appointed to fill a harvester seat by Gov. Frank Murkowski in 2004.
With 38 years of fishing experience in Bristol Bay, Adams has long been an active member in the Alaska fishing industry, ASMI says. He has worked for both the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation and the Bering Sea Fisherman's Association, and represents Alaska fishermen on numerous boards.
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