February 28, 2024 — A few local business owners in Gloucester are hoping to expand the image of who is a fisherman. Melissa and Donna Marshall are two of those women. They own Cape Ann Fresh Catch, the largest community-supported fishery in the country. Donna started working with the CSF in 2009 when it was founded. When Melissa took the reins, she expanded Cape Ann Fresh Catch to include a smokehouse, Twin Light Smokehouse. Smoking fish is another way that the CSF can reduce waste.

Read the full release at WCVB

September 29, 2023 — Traditions and new thinking make Gloucester thrive

In Gloucester, Mass., it is easy to get the impression that its recognition as one of America’s oldest seaports is something that residents and those who make a living here do not take for granted. It is also not hard to feel far away from Boston – even though only around 20 nautical miles (or 40 miles by car) separate the cities.

Locals you meet in Gloucester are likely to mention the annual St. Peter’s Fiesta, where crowds have gathered since 1927 to celebrate St. Peter, the patron saint of netmakers, shipbuilders, and fishermen. For some, the centerpiece of the city-wide party is The Greasy Pole contest, where men of all ages, from teenagers to elders, climb out along a greased-up telephone pole extending from the pier, 25 feet above the surface of the ocean to capture an Italian flag at the end – without slipping and dropping into the water below.

While the St. Peter’s tradition brings together the close-knit community, there are other local connections and networks running throughout the city of about 32,000 residents, including some multigenerational women. The women are all active within the fishing industry and their leadership, advocacy, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit are central to Gloucester’s evolving fishing culture and community.

Read the full article the National Fisherman

September 29, 2023 — The feeling in Gloucester is of multiple layers of support for a fisheries tradition and honoring of the past, while simultaneously facing a new future, and how that all fits together with issues that other working harbors and cities are confronting.

Around every corner of the city, there is public art and interpretive trails, much of it connected to fishing. On the Greater Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce building is The Fish Workers Mural (featuring fishermen and quarry workers) organized by the organization Awesome Gloucester. The organization also helped create The Doryman’s Mural, in an exterior wall of the Dory Shop on the Maritime Gloucester campus. It commemorates the role dorymen played in the area.

The impressive legacy and efforts of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives, many women, and the group’s longtime president Angela Sanfillipo are on full display at the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wife Memorial, which is situated on a stretch of waterfront road that wraps around the city’s western harbor. The bronze statue depicts a woman facing out toward the sea, with a baby in her left arm, and her hand on the back of a young boy. The monument honors the women who have been, and continue to be, the soul of fishing communities.

The Fishermen’s Wife Memorial took over a decade to be fully realized. It was unveiled in the summer of 2001 after more than $700,000 was raised for its completion. For some, the sculpture complements the nearby Man at the Wheel sculpture built in 1925, a bronze fisherman braced at the wheel on the sloping deck of his ship, looking out to Gloucester Harbor. The heavily visited site memorializes the thousands of fishermen lost at sea in the first three centuries of Gloucester’s history.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman