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Rob Curtis is proud to be a shellfisherman and can’t imagine doing anything else, but when he and some fellow Bourne comrades see commercial guys from Falmouth selling an abundant catch, they cringe. “We are almost embarrassed to go into the fish market when there are other guys there,” Curtis said.

This winter, when he’s not fishing, Tom Smith will spend time in his backyard replacing some of the webbing in his nets. The nets he uses to catch bluefish are 500 yards long, and he switches out a section of them every year. “I actually enjoy it. It’s like winter therapy,” said Smith, of Orleans. Later this winter, or maybe this spring when Smith is back on the water feeling the bite of the wind, he can take satisfaction thinking about someone being cozy and warm on account of electricity generated from his old nets...

Mario Stark spends his summers helping run his uncle’s boat, the Hindsight, out of Rock Harbor in Orleans. But now he is back at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, and when he saw a booth the Fishermen’s Alliance had set up at the Academy’s bi-annual career fair he immediately walked over.

Lobsterman Rob Martin was out with a crewman years ago when the fellow tried to gaff a sea gull that landed on the boat. Martin told him to cut it out. Not only was it illegal, it was bad luck. Moments later, the stern man was gone.

A partnership between the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance and the Pew Charitable Trusts has been a through line for Peter Baker’s career. Son of a commercial fisherman, Baker was raised in Portland, Oregon but moved east to work in politics. After stints with Senator Bernie Sanders in Vermont and the Sierra Club in North Carolina, Baker accepted a fisheries campaign position at the Alliance in March, 2002...

There was a time when schools like the excellent Cape Cod Vocational Tech in Harwich had courses for aspiring fishermen, much as they do for aspiring builders, plumbers, and electricians. They taught about boats and gear, nets and line, safety and navigation. The Tech even had its own boat to bring students onboard for hands-on work.

Read our latest issue from September 2019!

Mark Alan Lovewell drove his silver pickup past the Edgartown Yacht Club, where swordfish used to land, past the marina at Oak Bluffs, which used to be stuffed with commercial fishing vessels, past a seasonal fish market, and on toward Menemsha, a port that has become quieter in recent years. On the way he drove by Morning Glory Farm, successful in large part because of independence and family tradition...

When Owen Nichols and Charlie Beggs set out to study lobster settlement in Pleasant Bay, in 2014, both had already been working on the water for a long time so weren’t easily surprised. But that day they were – twice. First, they found lots and lots of lobsters under a year old, as many or more than in some areas in Maine, where lobsters are supposed to be most fertile...

Many across the Cape say that industrial-sized boats have removed enormous amounts of ocean herring from the inshore, leaving whales, cod, tuna and others to look elsewhere. But those who make their living on the sea point out that it isn’t just forage fish that disappear when pairs of big midwater trawlers come through. The boats catch everything in their wake; pollock, striped bass, big fish and small...

People are familiar with the long, sleek lines of the whaling dories of old, and the wide-bodied, single-sailed catboats that were designed for commercial fishing before they became a sailor’s favorite. Less well-known are the sturdy Noman’s Land boats native to Martha’s Vineyard, a mainstay of inshore fishing for close to 30 years. “It is a measure of how significant the Noman’s Land boat is in Vineyard culture that it appears on the town seal of Chilmark,” said A...

Stage Harbor has been a working waterfront for close to 300 years and has always had a big role in the history and the success of the town.