July 22, 2021 — At 3:20 a.m. Wednesday, the fishing boat Tradition, its deck awash in flood lights, eased out of the south pier of the Town Dock and headed out into Stonington Harbor. A few minutes later, the Jenna Lynn II followed, gliding through the placid water on the way to its fishing grounds.
The two boats would return Wednesday afternoon to unload their catches on the dock.
This scene has taken place here for more than 250 years as fishermen and lobstermen from the Town Dock and other borough piers have left home in search of fish, lobster and scallops in waters as close as Block Island and Long Island sounds and as far away as Georges Bank and Hudson Canyon.
While they have weathered storms, the loss of 41 fleet members at sea, declining catches and restrictions on how much fish they can land, the aging group of mostly men who make up the Town Dock Fleet now face a set of new challenges that threatens their future and that of the state’s last surviving commercial fleet.
These include the difficulty of luring young people into a grueling but potentially lucrative occupation and the leasing of vast areas of their fishing grounds to offshore wind energy companies that plan to erect hundreds of massive turbines.
“A lot of these men have sacrificed a lot to keep Stonington a viable fishing community,” said Joe Gilbert, who owns four large scallop and fishing boats at the dock.
To a man, they say the general public does not have a good understanding of or appreciation for what they do.