When it comes to breadth and depth, few fisheries education programs today can rival the University of Rhode Island's two-year Fisheries and Marine Technology degree program, which ran for almost 20 years from 1967 to 1985. "The market doesn't need it anymore," said Dr. Joe DeAlteris, who was hired in 1983 to transition the associate degree program to a four-year bachelor's degree. "Most of what we taught back then is obsolete now, anyway."
True enough. Technology has replaced many of the skills taught in the intensive, 19-credit-per-semester program. "We taught students how to make nets, for example," said DeAlteris. "Nobody makes their own nets now. A lot of times, they don't even repair them; they bring them to a net loft. And who uses celestial navigation?"
Andreas Holmsen, a Norwegian resource economist, and Bert Hillier, a retired fisherman from Newfoundland, started the associate degree program in 1967. Besides navigation and net building, students learned everything that would be expected of them on a commercial fishing vessel. Courses included vessel safety and stability, COLREGS rules of the road, diesel and hydraulic engineering, welding, fish processing and preservation, commercial fishing gear types, and the micro- and macroeconomic basics needed to run a business. But by 1985, New England fisheries were contracting, and the Fisheries and Marine Technology program was folded into a broader bachelor's degree major.
Nonetheless, the original program left its mark on the industry, with graduates going on to become vessel captains, regulators, fish buyers, and consultants. DeAlteris noted that, like himself, many past graduates are retired now, but more than a few from the last class of 1985 are still active in the industry.
"That program was the greatest," said Monhegan, Maine, lobsterman Mattie Thomson, a 1985 graduate. "A lot of guys from our class and before are still in the business, or they were the last I talked to them," he said, rattling off a half a dozen names from a cohort of about twelve. "And you're writing about this — Joe Simmons was the fisheries minister or something [director of fisheries] down in St. Kitts."
Nine out of 12 adds up to 75 percent of one class active in or retired from the fishing industry. Earlier graduates who made an impact include Dennis Frappier, who, along with a classmate, helped start the Rhode Island gear company Trawlworks and later ran the Portland Fish Exchange in Maine.
"There are still programs out there that teach the important stuff," said DeAlteris. "Fred Mattera has a one-month apprenticeship program going on at the University's East Farm, and there are others."
"I didn't go to URI," said Fred Mattera. "But when I started fishing, I had to compete with those guys, and they knew a lot more than I did. They came aboard knowing how to splice and mend and navigate. I had to learn all that the hard way. I worked for four months on a boat before I got a full share." As with similar programs around the country, Mattera is doing what he can to send qualified deckhands to an industry hungry for workers. But he acknowledged that the two-year URI program was the gold standard of training.
