Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Fishing Heritage Center Awarded Expand Massachusetts Stories — Story Forward Grant from Mass Humanities to Share the Catch from Casting A Wider Net

January 8, 2026 — The following was released by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center:

New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center (FHC) has been awarded an Expand Massachusetts Stories — Story Forward Grant from Mass Humanities to share the Casting A Wider Net (CAWN) exhibit with the greater New Bedford community in a new initiative called Sharing the Catch. The funding will allow FHC to travel the CAWN exhibit to three sites across New Bedford in 2026, create tie-in programing and curriculum materials, and develop a CAWN digital exhibit on FHC’s website. The exhibit will travel to the Greater New Bedford Community Health Center, the Community Economic Development Center, and Global Learning Charter Public School. This will allow students and community members who were not able to view the exhibit at FHC a new opportunity to learn about and connect to the stories of immigration, labor, and family that are integral to New Bedford’s fishing industry in the spaces they frequent most often, breaking down barriers to access and bringing the archive to life.

The Casting A Wider Net Community Oral History Project was developed to collect and share stories of Cape Verdean, Vietnamese, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Guatemalan, and Salvadoran members of New Bedford’s commercial fishing industry. The project was designed to honor the integral role they play in our food system, build bridges of understanding between newer and older immigrant groups, expand capacity for people to tell their own stories in their own language, and ensure fisheries science and policy is informed by those voices. CAWN provided ethnographic training for nine community members who led the documentation effort. They conducted, transcribed, and translated fourteen interviews in four languages: English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Kriolu. The interviews, interview transcripts, and associated photographs are now publicly accessible on the Center’s online collections database and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Voices Oral History Archive. Learn more about CAWN on FHC’s website: https://fishingheritagecenter.org/programs/community-documentation/.
These interviews provided the basis for the CAWN exhibit which was on display at FHC from November 2024 – June 2025. The exhibit featured photos, videos, and audio excerpts in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Cape Verdean Kriolu, and Vietnamese, and opportunities to reflect on and respond to narrators’ stories. The exhibit then travelled to the Cape Verdean Veterans’ Memorial Hall and was on display during the Cabo Verdean Heritage Month in July to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cape Verde’s independence from Portugal. The exhibit opening featured a panel of Cape Verdean CAWN community ethnographers and narrators who spoke about the project and its significance for New Bedford’s Cape Verdean community. The exhibit remained on display through the end of August 2025.

Project funding for CAWN was provided by: the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a Mass Humanities Expanding Massachusetts Stories Grant, and a New Bedford Creative Wicked Cool Places Grant.

The CAWN traveling exhibit is supported in part by: A Wicked Cool Places grant funded by the City of New Bedford through its Arts, Culture & Tourism Fund, and by the New Bedford Economic Development Council, which receives support in part from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
About New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center. Established in 2016, New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is located at 38 Bethel Street in New Bedford’s Seaport Historic District and is dedicated to preserving and sharing the story of the commercial fishing industry, past, present, and future. Learn more about FHC’s mission and programs by visiting the Center’s website: www.fishingheritagecenter.org

MASSACHUSETTS: Scallopalooza brings New Bedford’s heritage to life

November 7, 2025 — As a crowd of fishermen, their families, and curious onlookers formed, there was something unmistakable in the air: pride. It was the kind that comes from generations of families who have braved the ever-changing weather on the North Atlantic, built a city on the back of hard work, and brought home some of the best scallops in the world.

For one day this past summer, the nation’s top-earning fishing port reminded everyone exactly what New Bedford was built on.

“When we started talking about Scallopalooza, my intention was simple: to celebrate our fishermen,” said Stacy Alexander-Nevells, a board member of the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center (FHC) and manager of Atlantic Shellfish, her family’s business. “It is a hard, thankless life that only those who live it can truly understand. You’d be surprised how many people right here in our local community don’t really know what it takes to bring those scallops to the dock.”

Read the full article at National Fisherman

MASSACHSUETTS: Don’t miss scallop shucking, link squeezing competitions at Scallopalooza. What to know

August 12, 2025 — The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is bringing back a favored tradition with its revival of a scallop shucking competition.

It will be hosting the inaugural Scallopalooza, a scallop celebration and shucking contest and free public event that will be held during the August AHA! Night from 5 to 8 p.m. on Aug. 14.

Over the years, the scallop shucking contest has been a landmark waterfront event in New Bedford and a showcase of New Bedford’s commercial scallop fishery from the Scallop Festival of the 1950s to the Working Waterfront Festival of the 2000s.

Read the full article at The Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford hosts Scallopalooza shucking contest

July 29, 2025 — New Bedford’s long-running tradition of honoring its commercial scallop fishery will take center stage once again on August 14 during “Scallopalooza,” a new community event organized by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center (FHC).

Scheduled from 5-8 p.m. during the city’s August AHA! Night, Scallopalooza will host a shucking contest featuring 15 local scallopers. The competition is set to begin at 6:30 p.m. in the center’s parking lot on Bethel Street, which will close to traffic at 1 p.m. that day for vendor and stage setup.

While the shucking contest is the main draw, the event will also showcase the broader culture and industry that surrounds the region’s scallop fishery, FHC said in a press release. Attendees can expect live music, food vendors, and educational demonstrations and exhibits that highlight the city’s working waterfront. The indie rock band Immuter will kick off the evening with a set at 5 p.m., followed by an artist talk with Michael Medeiros at 5:30 p.m. and a scallop dredge link squeezing demo by Blue Fleet Welding at 6 p.m.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center features new generational fishing exhibit

February 20, 2025 — The popular seafood restaurant and market Turk’s Seafood will be featured this Thursday as the first in a new series of mini exhibits at the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center.

This fishing family’s story kicks off Hauling Back: A Generational Fishing Family Project exhibit.

The Hauling Back exhibit will open this Thursday, Feb. 20, and will present the story of Turk’s Seafood and the Pasquill family.

The first mini exhibit will remain on display through March. Turk’s is closed for the winter, but will reopen March 5.

Read the full article at The Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: A landmark celebration of fishing heritage and community

September 3, 2024 — The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center has installed a striking new landmark in the heart of the City’s Seaport Historic District. Catch the Tradition captures the spirit and enduring legacy of New Bedford, the nation’s most valuable fishing port, and invites visitors to explore the story of commercial fishing, one of the world’s oldest industries, through the Fishing Heritage Center. The public is invited to attend an official unveiling and dedication of the installation on Thursday, September 12 (AHA Night) at 6:00 PM.

Catch the Tradition features an authentic fishing net draped across the entire facade of a historic building at 38 Bethel Street and seven massive documentary images ranging in size, with the largest being 17 feet tall. The images, captured by four emerging and established local photographers (Shareen Davis, Phil Mello, Leia Onofrey, and Peter Pereira), provide a window into the lives of those who work to bring seafood from boat to table.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: NBFHC Awarded Seafood Marketing Grant from Dept. of Marine Fisheries

April 22, 2022 — The following was released by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center: 

New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center was recently awarded a $25,000 grant from the Division of Marine Fisheries’ (DMF) Seafood Marketing Program. The program was launched in 2016 to increase awareness and demand for Massachusetts seafood products and to enhance the viability and stabilize the economic environment for the state’s local commercial fishing and seafood industries and communities.

The Center’s project, A School of Fish: Infusing Sustainable Seafood into Culinary Arts Programs & the Public Palate, will support a year-long partnership with the culinary arts programs at Greater New Bedford Regional-Vocational Technical High School and Bristol Community College. Together, the Center and project partners will produce materials and programs to educate the next generation of chefs and the general public about the local seafood industry with a focus on local, underutilized, and abundant seafood species. “We are thrilled to support the seafood industry by helping to build demand for some of the lesser-known seafood species,” says the Center’s Executive Director, Laura Orleans.  In addition to producing curriculum materials and a digital cookbook, the project will support cooking demonstrations, classes, and a Seafood Throwdown.

“Importantly, these projects will educate and steer consumers towards the Commonwealth’s healthy and sustainable seafood, directly benefiting our economy and historic fishing communities.” Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Ron Amidon says: “The Seafood Marketing Grant Program projects provide further support the for the livelihoods of the many families who rely on commercial fishing, processing, and related business.”

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford is a shining sea of possibilities

November 10, 2021 — Stand here on Leonard’s Wharf, near where the Acushnet River empties into Buzzards Bay, and you’re surrounded by boats with colorful hulls and elaborate rigs. They help power the nation’s most lucrative fishing port, hauling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of scallops, fish, and lobsters from the Atlantic Ocean to be sold worldwide.

Next door, behind a rusty chain-link fence, sits a huge old power plant, long unused. The 29-acre site is one of two on New Bedford’s waterfront that is poised to host the assembly of massive wind turbines that would be shipped out and mounted in the Atlantic Ocean, promising much-needed clean energy for the Northeast.

Whether these two industries — one ages old, the other being birthed on the fly — can coexist in New Bedford harbor and out in the ocean will say a lot about the future of one of the most distinctive places in Eastern Massachusetts, a city that has for most of its 234 years drawn a living from the sea.

“The waterfront has always provided an opportunity for people,” said Laura Orleans, executive director of the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, who has spent a quarter-century telling the stories of New Bedford’s maritime history. “There have been a lot of people from many different cultures who have been very successful making a living on our waterfront.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

MASSACHUSETTS: “Women’s Work,” a new exhibit opens September 9 at the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center

August 25, 2021 — The following was released by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center:

New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is pleased to announce the September 9 opening of its new exhibit, Women’s Work: At Sea, On Shore, At Home, In the Community. The exhibit will shine a light on the many roles women play in commercial fishing communities.

The public is invited to meet the featured photographers at an opening reception from 6:00-8:00 pm September 9; the exhibit will remain on view in the Center’s gallery through March 2022.

Through photographs and oral histories, the exhibit profiles more than sixty women from fishing communities in Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island, and amplifies the voices and experience of women who work in what is often perceived to be a male-dominated world. The exhibit features the photography of Shareen Davis, Markham Starr, and Phil Mello, and draws on oral history interviews conducted over the past 15 years.

Visitors will meet women who work on deck as fishermen and scientists, on shore as welders and electricians, women who own businesses and boats, and women who advocate on behalf of the fishing industry. In addition, the exhibit explores topics ranging from “What do You Call a Woman who Fishes?” to “Women in Myths and Marketing.”

Photographer bios
Shareen Davis is a commercial and fine art photographer, a former photo editor and commercial fisherman and advocate. Her photography conveys political and environmental messages addressing issues of coastal fishing community workers as well as capturing the history, environment, and beauty of Chatham’s coastline. She is a 13th generation Cape Codder and resides in Chatham. Davis and her husband Ernie Eldredge owned a weir fishing business now owned by their daughter.

Markham Starr is a documentary photographer working in New England. Author of more than a dozen books and numerous documentary films, his photographs have been featured in magazines such as LensWork, Yankee, Vermont Magazine, and Rhode Island Monthly, and can be found in numerous museums in New England. His major projects are in the permanent collection at the Library of Congress.

Phillip Mello has worked on the New Bedford waterfront in a variety of capacities for 40+ years and has been taking photographs of fellow waterfront workers since 1975. As an insider with direct knowledge of the fishing industry he has access to what is often a closed community. He was the photographer for the Fishing Heritage Center’s 2016 Archie Green project, Workers on the New Bedford Waterfront. His images for that project are presently on display at the American Folklife Center and archived at the Library of Congress.

The Center is also presenting a year-long series of films, talks, performances, and demonstrations in conjunction with the exhibit, which are designed to engage visitors in exploring the lives, skills, and experiences of women who work in the fishing industry as well as those who are connected through family. Learn more about these programs on the Center’s online calendar, fishingheritagecenter.org/programs/calendar.

Women’s Work: At Sea, On Shore, At Home, In the Community is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Women’s Fisheries Network, the Mass Cultural Council, and the Dartmouth, Fairhaven, Marion, Mattapoisett, New Bedford, and Westport Cultural Councils.

Please contact programs@fishingheritagecenter.org with any questions.

MASSACHUSETTS: Women In Seafood – August 12th!

August 9, 2021 — The following was released by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center:

Join us for a fascinating conversation with Cassie Canastra and Heather Haggerty, two local Women in Seafood!

Thursday, August 12th
7:00 pm to 8:00 pm

Free of Charge

Find out about a day in the life of two women who work in New Bedford’s seafood industry. Cassie Canastra (left) is Director of Operations for BASE Seafood Auction. Heather Haggerty (right) is the owner/operator of Big G Seafoods, a New Bedford based conch business.  This program is part of the Center’s Women’s Work project, a year long exploration of women’s involvement in the fishing community. Women’s work is supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Dartmouth, Fairhaven, Marion, Mattapoisett, New Bedford, and Westport Cultural Councils, and a donation from the Women’s Fisheries Network.

New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is dedicated to preserving and presenting the story of the commercial fishing industry past, present, and future through exhibits, programs, and archives. For more information, visit the Center’s website at fishingheritagecenter.org or email programs@fishingheritagecenter.org.

New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is open Thursday-Sunday, 10:00am-4:00pm. Beginning July 1st, admission is $5/adults; $4/seniors and students; free for children under 12 and Members of the Fishing Heritage Center. Click here for more information.