June 25, 2014 — It’s been some rough sailing for the commercial fishing industry, but these Rhode Island women are up for the challenge. Google “women” and “fishing” and up will pop lots of calendar images of smiling ladies in bikinis, cradling impressive marine specimens they probably didn’t catch.
But women have long been part of the seafood industry around the world: mending nets, landing fish, stocking aquaculture ponds, harvesting shellfish, working in markets and processing plants, running seafood companies. Mostly part of small-scale operations in Africa and Asia, women make up nearly half of the 200 million people in the business, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
“Despite their crucial contributions to the fisheries industry and to household livelihoods and nutrition, these women are often invisible to policy makers who have traditionally assumed — mistakenly — that fisheries are a male domain,” states the 2012 report.
In Rhode Island, however, women who work in fisheries are not plentiful. That’s in part likely a reflection of the unprecedented challenges commercial fishing has faced in recent years because of declining fish stocks.
“There isn’t the incentive to get in the business that there used to be,” says Andrea Incollingo, who owns the Bait Company in Point Judith. “I blame that on the regulations. There aren’t even young men coming into the industry.”
Still, she and other women in the Ocean State make at least part of their living catching or selling fish. Not cut out for the nine-to-five, they share a wanderlust, the willingness to work hard and a love of the water and the creatures within.
Some hail from generations of fishermen, while others felt a calling as adults. Often, they’re the only female in a group of men. But whether they describe themselves as fisherman, fisherwoman, fishermom or fisherbabe, once they pull on their gear, it’s not easy to tell the difference.
Read the full story at Rhode Island Monthly