Cod_ A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky [73]
Schooners in Gloucester harbor, early twentieth century. (Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts)
Instead, small boats come in with the strange new catches. A gillnetter arrives with a small load of herring, quickly shoveled up, unloaded, weighed, and iced. The next boat in, Russell Sherman’s seventy-foot trawler, has its story told by the birds that do not even bother to follow the vessel. Even they are not interested in a few flatfish and some monkfish, another species New Englanders recently learned to keep. “Just scraps, but at least my boat leaves the dock,” Russell says. “I’m not going to use up my days with these fish. I’m fishing three-inch mesh. I’ll wait until winter and then put on six-inch mesh and go after them [cod]. It’s not worthwhile to change until winter.”
Such sad tales turn fishermen’s talk toward cod. Dave Molloy, operating the forklift, says, “You want to know about cod, I’ll tell you.” He puts up his hand and pretends to whisper. “There ain’t no more.”
“It’s coming back,” Russell insists. “They should have done this twenty years ago. We’d have cod out our assholes by now. We should have used six-inch mesh twenty years ago. Like Iceland did.”
“I said that years ago before the magnimity imported” (translation: before the importance was realized), another fishermen asserts in that language which is found only along the southern New England coast. While Russell Sherman gets into a conversation with an older Sicilian fisherman about his struggle to lose weight, Nicki Avelas, another former fisherman, who is a part owner in the seafood company, tallies up the small catch. Nicki’s big blond dog follows the action closely and finds good bits to eat. After Russell finishes unloading and gets his receipt, he hoses down his deck and shoves off.
“See you tomorrow,” says Dave Molloy, tossing him his bowline. As the boat putters out of Gloucester harbor disappearing behind a row of idle bottom draggers, Dave shakes his head and says, “That guy hasn’t made a dime all summer.” It is September.
Waiting for the next boat, they grumble, as everyone in Gloucester is doing this week, about a large Russian factory ship in the harbor. It is no longer allowed to fish U.S. waters, but it came in to buy from fishermen. For all their complaining, the fishermen always sell to them. One fisherman accuses the ship of flying the red flag higher than that of the United States, even while in port. He insists he has seen this and does not seem to know that Russia doesn’t use a red flag anymore.
A fifty-foot three-man gillnetter comes in. The captain, Cecil, is almost as wide as he is tall, his blond hair lighter than his weatherbeaten face. One of the three crewmen is his son, a young man with the same build. They have been out following the tuna boats, which throw over chum. The dogfish chase the chum, and they, having set their nets overnight in the tuna grounds, are now coming in with their deck packed with bleeding little sharks. Dogfish pay only thirteen cents a pound, seventeen for the larger ones, and most of this catch is small. As Cecil works the ropes and a huge crate of the slimy catch swings over the pier, someone jokingly shouts, “There it is, fish-and-chips for London.”
Gloucestermen claim that bluefin tuna had been running well and that all the talk about it being rare was a ploy by sports fishermen. “Environmentalists and sports fishermen. It’s a highbrow thing.” Enough tuna is getting landed so that it serves as the logo for Old Port Seafood. As long as fishermen can catch a fish, they resist the idea that the species is in trouble. But with cod, they all recognize that there is a problem. Except Nicki, who argues, “There’s lots of cod out there. If