The People's Fish
by Paul Molyneaux
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Glenn Libby hefts a big codfish onto the cutting table at Port Clyde Fresh Catch, in Port Clyde, Maine. Holding the fish by its head he slides his knife down its backbone, then slices along the ribs, and peels off a thick filet. “Welcome to the Socialist Utopia,” he says, referring to a comment someone made about his new business plan: Community Supported Fisheries (CSF). The plan is simple enough, people all around mid-coast Maine sign up to buy “shares” from the Libby family’s company, Port Clyde Fresh Catch, and in return receive weekly deliveries of fish.
Initiatives like CSF’s have begun as acts of desperation for fishing communities looking at “a lack of fish, and business failure,” as Libby describes it. “We got tired of complaining so we thought we ought to try something different.”
Three generations of Libby’s work in the fishing business in Port Clyde. Family members run three of the twelve boats in the Midcoast Fishermen’s Co-op, which supplies the fish for the CSF. “Nowadays you have to have all kinds of technology to catch less fish than we used to catch with primitive gear,” says Libby. “Our idea was, let’s cut back on the gear and have a gear restricted area. But one of the problems was we didn’t have enough buy-in from the fishermen. We realized we had to make it worth their while to be onboard, and that’s what started us down the marketing road.”
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New England ground fishermen have taken a new course in the preservation of fishing rights and the communities that depend on them. Consumers have called for a local supply of fresh seafood and fishermen are delivering. Community Supported Fisheries are developing in New England and other coastal states. Hauling a net and mixed catch on deck. Top right. Packing fish in ice. Bottom right. ©Photos by Will Hyler |
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Rolling Stones, Wampanoags, and Stripers
Part I: A conversation with Buddy Vanderhoop
by Nicole Galland
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The renowned fishing charter captain and member of the Wampanoag Tribe talks frankly about growing up fishing on the Island, his celebrity clients, shooting cormorants, and his tribal roots.
William Diamond Vanderhoop Jr., universally known as Buddy, is the proprietor of Tomahawk Charters in Aquinnah and one of the more colorful members of the Wampanoag Tribe. We sat down last fall after the Martha’s Vineyard Striped Bass and Bluefish Derby at his home on Old South Road in Aquinnah, which he built twenty-eight years ago and now shares with his wife of thirteen years, Lisa, and their dog, Amos. (Lisa, a photographer, is best known on the Island for her Vineyard Seadogs calendars.) Buddy, age fifty-eight, has three grown daughters: Heather Nicole, Amy, and Emily, who live out West.
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| Keith Richards after a successful morning of fishing and drinking. Photo by Lisa Vanderhoop |
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