Legacy isn't built in a day
Virginia boatbuilding brothers pay tribute to a long oystering tradition
By Larry Chowning
In 2006 David and Mark Moore started building an oyster boat. This July — six years later — the 30-foot Legacy went into the water at Deep Creek Landing in Newport News, Va.
It’s not that the Moore brothers are slow boatbuilders; it’s just that other things got in the way. “The reason it took so long for us to build it was because we had to build it around our lives,” says David, who owns the boat.
“We both work other jobs, so we worked on the boat mostly during holidays or at nights. But sometimes we would knock off and it was months before either of us could get back to it. It nearly drove me crazy because I love building boats, but finding the time was very difficult.”
To be sure, the Moore family has been tied to boatbuilding and the lucrative James River oyster fishery for a long time. Their father, Billy Moore, who was involved in a documentary and a book on how to build wooden deadrise boats, along with other boatbuilders in the Deep Creek area, taught David and Mark boatbuilding.
The oystering connection goes back to the 1920s when their great-grandfather leased oyster grounds on the James and Warwick rivers. He also owned an oyster buy boat.
For years, Billy, David and Mark built boats primarily for their own use, but they didn’t always get to keep them, especially in the 1980s and ’90s when the market for deadrise oyster boats was strong along the James River. “Every time we got one built, someone would come along wanting to go oystering, usually around Thanksgiving, and offer us a crazy price for it. We would sell it and start another one,” David remembers.
He can reel off a list of those boats. “We built one in 1973, 1976, 1978, 1980, two in 1982, one in 1983, one in 1985, one in 1986, one in 1991 and the last one, besides this one we have just completed, was built in 1993.
“We were pretty busy building boats for a while, but Mark got into commercial contracting and I got into the metal fabrication business, and we just didn’t have time to build boats.”
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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