Saving Seafood

The Shark Fishermen of New England

August 6, 2015 — MARTHA’S VINEYARD, Mass. — Ever since Steven Spielberg set a shark fin gliding through the waters of a fictional New England town, Martha’s Vineyard has become irrevocably associated with the movie “Jaws.” The photographer Maggie Shannon was born more than a decade after the film was shot on the island, in 1974, but growing up on the Vineyard she had a “Jaws” poster hanging from her wall, and would attend the annual Monster Shark Tournament that took place each July. Since then, the Vineyard—its close-knit year-round community, the legacy of “Jaws,” and the island’s relationship to the many tourists who descend upon it each year—has become a central subject of her work.

For her new series, Shannon joined one of the fishing crews who participated in this year’s Monster Shark event, documenting the bait, the blood, and the physicality involved in hauling sharks from the ocean.

Read the full story at The New Yorker

New England Filmmaker Documents an Industry Under Siege

July 24, 2015 — MASSACHUSETTS — As a kid growing up in Rockport, David Wittkower remembers driving down along the Gloucester waterfront and being greeted by the sight of the expansive Gloucester fishing fleet at port and the scent of fish, either being cooked or unloaded.

That memory stayed with the 55-year-old filmmaker when he returned to visit his parents, Andrew and Mary, about a year-and-a-half ago, especially after what he observed in subsequent nostalgic drives along East Main and Rogers streets.

“Every single day, I would drive down there and think, ‘Well, the entire fleet can’t all be out at once,’” Wittkower said. “I thought, ‘Where are all the boats?’”

That singular thought became the seed for Wittkower’s newest documentary film project on the demise of the once-mighty Gloucester fishing fleet. The working title is “Dead in the Water.”

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times