Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Fishing Heritage Center Launches Exhibit Series

November 14, 2016 — The following was released by the Fishing Heritage Center:

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The Fishing Heritage Center is pleased to announce the opening of New England Fishermen: The Photography of Markham Starr, the first in a series of changing exhibits.  An opening reception will take place on Friday, November 18th at 8 p.m. The Center is wheelchair accessible and located at 38 Bethel Street in New Bedford. Parking is available in the lot adjacent to the Center.  This first exhibit will be on display through January 17th.

The commercial fishing industry in New England has long been an economic mainstay of the region, but has struggled for its very survival over the past two decades. Fearing the loss of yet another traditional working culture, Markham Starr began going to sea to photograph commercial fishermen from ports such as Point Judith, Rhode Island, New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Corea, Maine. His black and white images attempt to place today’s fishermen within the context of the long history of commercial fishing in New England, and preserve something of this important working culture for future generations.

Starr’s work has been translated into a dozen books and has been featured in magazines such as LensWork, The Sun, Vermont Magazine, and Rhode Island Monthly, and won a 2013 national magazine award for the best photographic essay for Yankee Magazine. The photographs from his major projects have been selected for inclusion in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress.

For more information, please contact the Fishing Heritage Center at: info@fishingheritagecenter.org or call (508) 993-8894.

Mark Patinkin: Freedom, danger is in R.I. fisherman’s wheelhouse

May 25, 2016 — I got to wondering what it’s like these days for commercial fishermen so I drove to the Point Judith docks, walked up to the trawler Elizabeth & Katherine and asked the captain, Steven Arnold, if I could come aboard.

It was at 11 a.m. and he’d already put in a long shift with plenty more to go — he’d steamed out for squid at 4:30 a.m. He was back because his net tore on rocks while dragging the bottom of Rhode Island Sound so the crew had come in to repair it.

I climbed over the rail and followed Arnold, 52, to the wheelhouse. He wore jeans, boots, a sweatshirt, hadn’t shaved for a few days and seemed to belong there in the captain’s seat.

Squid is his biggest species but that morning, they weren’t there. He mostly had scup when the net came up torn.

You have good days and bad, Arnold said, but he still loves fishing for the same reasons that first drew him to it after a childhood in South County and two years at New England Tech.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Fishermen, Scientists Collaborate to Collect Climate Data

May 23, 2016 — Fishermen plying the waters off the southern New England coast have noticed significant changes in recent years.  Though generations of commercial fishermen have made their livings on these highly productive waters, now, they say, they are experiencing the impacts of climate change.

“The water is warming up, and we see different species around than we used to,” says Kevin Jones, captain of the F/V Heather Lynn, which operates out of Point Judith, Rhode Island.

To help understand the ongoing changes in their slice of the ocean, Jones and other fishermen in the region are now part of a fleet gathering much-needed climate data for scientists through a partnership with the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

“There has been a lack of consistent measurements in this region, particularly across the continental shelf south of Rhode Island,” says Glen Gawarkiewicz, a physical oceanographer at WHOI and principal investigator on the project. “In order to understand the changes in ocean conditions and how those changes impact ecosystems and the people who depend on them, we need to collect more data, more often.”

The Shelf Research Fleet Project began in 2014 with that goal in mind. The fleet is made up of commercial fishing vessels that are fishing in or transiting through the study area throughout the year.

Read and watch the full story at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute