Final Report

After spending nearly an entire year explaining why I wanted a chance to travel to study cod fisheries, it came as a surprise that the first time I was asked, “so why are you doing this?” I had a hard time finding an answer. As a girl who grew up hundreds of miles from the coast, a lifelong inland dweller, with little knowledge of fishing or marine biology and a pesky tendency to seasickness, it didn’t seem so likely a choice, and I threw myself into the world of fisheries and fisheries management with little preparation. In many ways, though, it was my place as an outsider – a foreigner without experience or background in fisheries – that allowed me to learn from the ground up, not to take anything for granted, to learn without the biases of already knowing what to think. Fishermen learn their trade from fathers and uncles and neighbors and as apprentices, marine biologists go to a university and earn a degree; I talked my way onto boats and asked lots of questions between bouts of feeling queasy.

In addition to not beginning this year as an expert in fisheries, I often found it hard to explain that my goal was also not to become a fisheries expert. Having spent so much time getting to know fishermen, fisheries management sociologists, and fisheries biologists, I have tremendous respect for them as people and for the work they do, but I am convinced that none of these jobs is for me – I want to do something interdisciplinary between science and policy, something where I can apply my love of the unseen undersea world of water chemistry, something that doesn’t require spending quite so much time being seasick. I looked at fisheries management as a model of what works and what doesn’t in creating policy: I got to know a fisheries science structure that fosters extensive international cooperation but is forced to focus on producing specific management-geared reports for government “clients;” I talked with fishermen frustrated by trying to make a living off a resource managed under a clunky bureaucratic structure that is just learning how to give fishermen a say in their own futures; I witnessed attempts to bring together fishermen and scientists to incorporate traditional knowledge and social and economic concerns along with classic science in fisheries research and management recommendations.

I knew from the beginning that I was unlikely to find any new solutions for fisheries management – smart, experienced people have been working on this for years – but observing firsthand how so many places have tried to solve the same problem and how those efforts have played out for people and the resources on which they depend, I have developed my own philosophy of environmental management. I’m convinced that there’s more at stake than possible extinctions or even ecosystem health: there are coastal cultures, family traditions, food sources, and myriad uses both aesthetic and practical for the environmental resources on which we depend. After a year of close consideration, I have lots of specific ideas for fisheries management – getting fishermen involved in basic research, putting all the stakeholders around the table for transparent decision-making, long-term resource allocation plans that won’t consolidate quotas in big companies when the current generation retires. But even more important, I feel like I learned which questions to ask, how to listen to new voices and respect their opinions and weigh their arguments, how my values play out in real-world situations. So even if I don’t apply these lessons to fisheries, I still can take these lessons and apply them: as a better scientist, more in tune with how my research could and should be used; a better educator, helping society understand the relationship between people and the environment; a more conscientious environmental citizen living off limited natural resources.

In many ways, though, the intricacies of fisheries and the lessons of how to design environmental management are just the outer limits of what I learned from this past year. A week after returning to the States, I rediscovered a note I had written to myself a few weeks before leaving for this year-long adventure. Under the heading “Goals for Watson year,” I had written, “1) Give people the benefit of the doubt. Be patient, compassionate, and understanding with everyone and take the time to appreciate the best in people. 2) Be passionate about everything I do, and enjoy the beauty and excitement of each day. 3) Remain positive through setbacks, fear, loneliness, and difficulties both expected and unexpected.” It was a firm reminder of what I had truly set out to – and did – gain from this past year. As much as my focus for the past year has been cod fishing – even when I wasn’t researching fisheries, I chose books to read about fishing communities, learned new ways to cook fish, even knit myself a winter hat with a pattern of fish – the most important lessons I have to take away from this crazy trip have little to do with fishing. The defining feature of this year has been much more my struggle with being on my own far removed from the places and people that make up my sense of home. In the end, I think this is what a Watson is all about – not the Latin names I can recite and my ability to hold a conversation about trawl net designs or even just my sharpened personal environmental philosophy, but the experience of questioning who I am and how to be myself away from my familiar world.

I had not expected at the beginning of this year of travel that I would be homesick, but I hadn’t banked on how much of my own identity was wrapped up in the people and places that define home. Exploring a field where I have little background, without the people I love and who love me, stripped of the context in which I’ve built my outward identity and sense of myself – overcommitted enthusiastic student, contradancer, Jew, friend, even my outward appearance (I left my skirt collection at home) – I was forced to see myself without the support of a past that tells me who I am and reminds me that I am a worthwhile, successful person. I had to get by not on my own merit or anything I’ve earned, but mostly on the good graces of others who offered me experience and information of their own good will. As someone used to being self-sufficient, I was taken aback at home much my sense of self was situational, built on living in a world I know intimately and where I feel comfortable and useful. Instead of proving my independence, leaving my familiar context showed me my dependence on others – both those at home who I missed dearly and those I met abroad whose kindness and hospitality helped me find my way in the places where I felt most lost.

Many travelers leave home armed with devices and advices for how to ward off foreign thieves and rogues and many people I met along the way worried at the idea of a young woman traveling alone, but I found that rather than meeting danger at every turn in new and unfamiliar places, traveling as a lone (and very unthreatening) outsider opened up for me a world of kind, friendly people willing to go out of their way to help a stranger. The shopping mall attendant who talked me through each step of the Icelandic passport photo machine so I could get my visa to go to Denmark – and then gave me the photos for free; the minister’s wife I met at the old saltfish store in Grand Bank, Newfoundland, who invited me home to stay with her family at the rectory only fifteen minutes after meeting me; the woman in the Lofoten Islands who not only gave me a ride to church on Easter Sunday but also translated the entire Norwegian service for me. The people I met and their extraordinary kindness form my most striking memories of many of the places I visited. It is a humbling experience to continually feel indebted to the generosity of others, to constantly remain on the receiving end of help and hospitality with little ability to express my gratitude or return the favor. Traveling in a group of people to look out for each other, or with a surplus of funds to amply provide for expensive solutions to complicated situations, I never would have found myself dependent on the kindness of strangers or fully opened myself to finding the best not only in friends but in people I have never met.

After spending the first nine months of my travels feeling very distinctly an outsider, both as an American abroad and as a newcomer to fisheries, spending my last few months in Newfoundland was in many ways a return to the familiar in the midst of my year of adventure. I felt more comfortable in the world of fishing after nine months of gradually, inexorably gathering knowledge, and after so long traveling, Canada seemed a palpable step closer to home. With the Stanley Cup in progress, Newfoundlanders had something other to say other than “hmm, where’s that?” when I told them I was from Pittsburgh. My accent no longer immediately identified me as a foreigner. I even found a welcoming Jewish community in St. John’s (the first Jews I lived near all year). I also rediscovered the ubiquitous box store strip malls and car dealerships that seem to define North America and experienced my surprise upon return from moderate-sized grocery stores of Europe to the everything-you-could-ever-want supermarkets of North America three months before returning home. Arriving in Canada, I felt less an outsider than I had at any other point during my travels.

My first real adventure in Newfoundland – a trip to Fogo Island, a four hour drive and ferry ride from St. John’s to an island of small fishing communities, in the midst of the sealing season, still iced in at the end of April – proved to me how home and adventure can collide. I was enamored with the landscape, the ubiquitous presence of fishing in the culture and heart of the island, the friendliness of everyone I met. And yet, for the first time since I had left home, I found people who knew, quite specifically, where I came from – I stayed with the family of a woman who lives in my small town outside Pittsburgh. The connection was, frankly, disconcerting: I had spent so long away from anyplace even distantly associated with home that it was hard to talk about my old school district, the local grocery store, things I thought I had left behind. But most of all, it made me realize that the places I had tended to overlook near home could have the same beauty and hidden surprises as the places I had been visiting throughout this year. Although less exotic that many of the possible places I could have traveled, in many ways the familiarity of the landscape during my time in Canada confirmed for me one of the most important lessons from my year of travel – that excitement and adventure are not found only in exotic, distant places but also are waiting close to home.

In the weeks since I have returned to the States, I have not lost the sense of wonder and exploration that became my constant companion as a Watson fellow. My actual return home was anticlimactic – I drove from Newfoundland through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick before crossing the border into Maine – but the gradual easing back into a world I know well seems to have avoided any sharp change that might have felt like an end to adventuring. Instead, rather than feeling like the end of my Watson year, it felt more like a beginning – with a year of adventuring as the prelude to a life full of adventures, whether they be journeys across the globe or in my own backyard. For me, the Watson was not about a year-long adventure but about learning to see the possibilities available in the world and realizing that I am capable of pursuing any of them I want. I’m still passionate about many of the same things I loved before I began – I want to sail, to teach, to study the oceans, to find sustainable ways to use nature – and this long journey has proven to me that these are things I can do, and no doubt provided me with many of the tools and lessons I will use on the way. Beginning in August, I will be sailing Long Island Sound, teaching about the environment and sharing my passion as I consider which dream to pursue next. And so, the end of my journey is not an end but an interlude, as the next adventure begins.

Home again

And so, I'm home. I crossed the border on June 27, a full year from the day my flight landed in Reykjavik and this crazy adventure began. For having been out of the country for a year, my return was entirely anticlimactic. My return journey, rather than a long plane flight like that of most Watson fellows, was by car: I crossed the border between New Brunswick and Maine in a minor road between the small towns of St. Stephen and Calais at the end of a two week road trip from St. John’s.

The border crossing consisted of a ten-minute traffic jam on our way to crossing the bridge into the US. The man at border security didn’t even notice from my passport that I had been away from home for the year, and didn’t bother with a stamp. It felt as if returning to the country after a year away was as normal and routine as the many Maine license plates returning home from a day trip. A bit anticlimactic, I suppose, but mostly it feels lovely and comfortable to be home.

The trip back was wonderful too – a perfect way of easing back into the life I left behind for this year of adventuring. Before I even crossed the border, I had a chance to remember what it’s like to spend time with friends, to relax without having to worry about the details of what comes next, and to get my first taste of summer (and sunburn) since last June.

After a year of wanderings, it seems I should have something profound and conclusive to say at this crossroads in my life, but I regret to inform you that a year of wandering has not taught me the secret of life. I’ve become more careful and nuanced in my views, more aware of the hidden wisdom and beauty to be found in strangers and out-of-the-way places, more thankful for time with people I love and the comforts of familiarity and belonging. But more than anything, the secret is that there is no secret – life doesn’t change because you cross a border.

And even though the official adventure is over, I’ve learned that excitement and adventure and the opportunity to make things happen don’t depend on finding a fancy fellowship. My adventures don’t end just because I’m home again. I have a month to relax and recollect myself and reconnect with my friends and family, and then I’m beginning my next adventure – working as an educator and deckhand aboard the Schooner SoundWaters in Long Island Sound. I’m pretty excited. I’m hoping to spend some of the next few weeks going through the flotsam and jetsam of this past year, the notes and pamphlets and pictures that record where I’ve been and what I’ve seen, and hopefully I’ll slowly work this blog towards a more complete account of my journey before the next big adventure begins. Meanwhile, if you want to catch up, give me a call.

A town called Dildo

Yup, you heard me right.

Newfoundland has a lot of towns with odd names. The week I spent on Fogo Island, I stayed in a town called Seldom-Come-By (a fitting name for a small town on an island only reached by ferry). Other names include Come-By-Chance and Happy Adventure. But I think Dildo takes the prize. Some sources I’ve found claim that the name has nothing to do with its current meaning – Wikipedia says that the word dildo initially referred to the pegs in a dory used to hold the oars in place (also called rowlocks), though I can’t say whether this is actually true. A few times, people from town have suggested changing the name to something more…child-friendly. But the name has stuck, and seems likely to stay – it may raise a few eyebrows, but the curiosity also seems to draw attention and tourists.

But I didn’t actually come for the name…I came to learn about the fish hatchery that operated on Dildo Island, just across from the town of Dildo in Trinity Bay, from 1889-1897.

I was interested in learning about the hatchery largely because its presence and the historical records from its time raise questions about the possibilities of overfishing and worries about how to maintain a sustainable fish stock that most people today tend to consider only a modern concern. In talking about the depletion of the northern cod stock, many people tend to only look as far back as the beginning of industrial fishing in the mid-twentieth century. But nobody really knows what had changed before then – this group of scientists and historians, for instance, found that there had been significant depletions in the cod biomass on the Scotian Shelf in the 1850s, long before the advent of modern trawlers. And certainly, the fish were not so plentiful in the nineteenth century as when John Cabot first arrived in Newfoundland in 1497 and reported that even though he had not found spices, he had discovered a source of fish so plentiful they could be scooped up in buckets.

As it turns out, Newfoundland has experienced fish depletions in the nineteenth century that, while by no means as widespread as today, were enough to cause alarm for the fishermen living in isolated coastal areas who depended on the inshore migrations of cod for their livelihoods. It was enough of a concern that in 1887 that when the Newfoundland government heard a presentation by a Norwegian named Adolph Neilsen on “artificial propagation” of fish stocks, they invited him to move to the island to begin hatchery operations and provided $4000 (a large sum in those days) to build the facility.

Nielsen took a steamer trip through some of the east coast bays to look for a suitable spot for the hatchery and finally settled on Dildo Island. Although a fish hatching operation in the nineteenth century seems far ahead of its times, the methods Nielsen used for his hatchery were the product of methods that had been developed in Norway beginning in 1864. An experimental hatchery had been opened in the US at Ten Pound Island, near Gloucester, around 1878 and had later led to the development of a hatchery at Woods Hole that opened in 1885 and ran until the 1950s. Another experimental hatchery had been opened at Arendal, Norway in 1882, which was run until it was taken over by the government in 1918 and has since been used as a research facility (today it is the Institute of Marine Research’s Flodevigen Biological Station).

As it turned out, the Dildo Island hatchery did not run for so long as the others – mostly because public debate over whether the project was worth the cost to the government led the government to pull out funding when a new party came into power. Nielsen funded the operation of the hatchery for its last year in 1896, but then was forced to close the hatchery due to poor health and lack of money. Today, all that is left of the facility is a rusty pump, but luckily there are fairly extensive notes on the hatchery both from a few early pictures taken of the facility and illustrations from the report of a visit from a French delegation considering the potential for a hatchery in their colony of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon.

Here you can see an aerial view of the hatchery on the island. You can see the holes cut into the wharf to use as holding tanks to keep both the large fish used to produce and fertilize the eggs and the small hatchery-raised fish just before releasing them into the bay.

This illustration shows the interior of the hatchery facility, with rows of water tight wooden boxes each containing cylindrical glass incubators where the fertilized cod eggs were hatched. By the last year the facility was running, 76% of the fertilized eggs survived to grow into the juvenile fish that would be released back into the bay – to my mind, quite an impressive success rate for nineteenth century technology.

The very presence of this hatchery and the debates over whether the hatchery was a worthwhile investment illustrate one of the major debates in fisheries science and management – namely, whether human influence was capable of affecting fish populations, whether through fishing out the stock or building it up with this sort of supplementary effort. Most people talking about attitudes towards fishing and the possibility of overfishing at the turn of the twentieth century cite Thomas Henry Huxley’s address at the London Fisheries Exhibition in 1883, in which he said, “I believe, then, that the cod fishery, the herring fishery, the pilchard fishery, the mackerel fishery, and probably all the great sea fisheries, are inexhaustible; that is to say, that nothing we do seriously affects the number of the fish. And any attempt to regulate these fisheries seems consequently, from the nature of the case, to be useless.” In looking more closely at the rest of his speech, though, it seems that his argument is not such a unilateral statement as it seems, but rather a sort of back-of-the-envelope calculation showing that the contemporary fishing methods were not catching enough to significantly add to what scientists today call “natural mortality.” Huxley also admits that local populations of sea fish, such as individual salmon rivers, can be fished out – and so it does not seem so unlikely that people at the time would also have seen that local bay stocks, such as those relied upon by Newfoundland’s inshore fishermen, could also be overfished.

Certainly this was Neilsen’s belief, as reported by the French delegation that visited the Dildo Island hatchery in 1894. They reflected on their own opinions of the usefulness of the operation: “‘Is artificial procreation useful?’ ‘Does the cod stock, plentiful off the coast of Newfoundland, tend to diminish by the very fact of overfishing which has been done?’ It is certain that if, as Huxley thinks, the stock is inexhaustible, the idea of harvesting a few million cod a year along a certain stretch of coast is something like a child every day carrying a little bit of water from the sea. For Mr. Nielsen it is undeniable that the cod supply is being exhausted, and if a future fishery is to be guaranteed, it is necessary, as soon as possible, to make up for the lost of each day.”

It is hard to say whether a hatchery operation such as Neilsen’s could significantly increase the overall population of a large stock such as northern cod, but for the local inshore fishermen in Trinity Bay it seemed to have improved their catches. A Norwegian article on the subject found that, “In various reports, one can see that the growth of young fish increased substantially in Trinity Bay. The oldest residents in the area confirmed that they had never seen so much fish as the years that the hatchery was in operation.” It is hard to say whether hatcheries such as this one could have averted the crisis in the fishing industry that today has devastated in the coastal communities of Newfoundland – as the French pointed out after their visit to Nielsen’s hatchery, even if such an operation would have helped keep good fishing in Trinity Bay, it would not have solved the problems of a declining fishery all around the coastal areas of the island. “Dildo is but a spot on the Newfoundland coast and, since other spots do not profit from this work of “restocking”, how can it be worked to their advantage? Will we be able to restock other places with the artificially-born cod from Dildo? It is possible. Must one establish in all bays a scientific industry like the one we have been viewing these days? That would be a huge enterprise and extremely costly, for uncertain results for which we would have to wait…. He [Nielsen] may have been able to set up a base for the prosperity of Dildo, but he has not yet resolved the more general problem: raising the confidence of the fishermen higher than it has ever been, to definitely guarantee the resources throughout all of the coast of Newfoundland if, as he has himself positively affirmed, the cod tend to become exhausted on this coast of Newfoundland, just as they continue to do in Norway.”

Today, though the hatchery is long gone (it was purchased by a local merchant, who took down the building and used it for construction elsewhere), but the (hi)story is still an important part of the community of Dildo – particularly since the cod fishing moratorium in 1992, which has lead the community to focus on opportunities to market its culture and history for tourists, not to mention prompting considerable reflection on the wisdom of Nielsen’s conservation mentality. I first heard about the hatchery from one of the men working at Hampidjan Canada, whose uncle Gerald has collected an incredible amount of historical information about the hatchery, including translating a number of old documents, putting together an interpretation center in Dildo about the history of the town and island and running boat tours out to the island to learn about the local history and environment.

He also still maintains his own fishing stage and boat, although now he says he really only uses it to take out his grandkids for a trip out in the bay.

There seems to be a sort of wistful attitude towards the hatchery, wondering about the “what-ifs” of the fishery – whether overfishing and the cod moratorium would have happened if they had followed Neilsen’s philosophy that Gerald described to me as “for every fish you take you should put one back.” It is interesting, however, that while many inshore fishing communities blame the inadequacies of science and the use of new fishing technologies (both the use of gill nets inshore and trawlers offshore) for the collapse of the fishery, Nielsen’s hatchery – using highly advanced technology for its time and the most modern science – as a potential savior of the fishery. In all likelihood, hatcheries like Nielsen’s wouldn’t have been enough to counterbalance the massive catches of offshore trawlers, but emphasis on local conservation – particularly if the government had remained involved in funding efforts at preserving local stocks – might have influenced people’s attitudes towards the potential problems of overfishing. History, it turns out, still has lessons worth paying attention to today.

From Bonavista to Burin

After the end of the symposium, I set myself to more serious meanderings. I had rented the car for another week and had no plans for the next five days until I intended to take the ferry to Saint-Pierre from Fortune, on the southern tip of the Burin Peninsula. Which left me with plenty of time to explore the Bonavista peninsula, where Port Union is located, and make my way the two hundred miles south. For reference, here’s a map of the most direct route (obviously, not the one I took, though, which was slightly more circuitous) from Bonavista in the north to Fortune in the south.

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Bonavista, at the northern tip of the Bonavista peninsula, is thought to be the first place in Newfoundland visited by Europeans. According to the plaque on the statue of John Cabot looking out at the tip of the peninsula, “In early May, 1497, John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), a Venetian citizen bearing letters patent from Henry VII sailed from Bristol in the Matthew to seek a western passage to Asia. On June 24, he made land somewhere on the east coast of Canada. Although the sources do not allow unequivocal identification of the site, local tradition records Cape Bonavista as the landfall. From this, the first official English voyage of exploration in the Western Ocean, derived Britain’s subsequent claims in the New World and the beginnings of her overseas empire.”
Though there is debate within the historical community about whether this was the actual site of Cabot’s landing, the story is considered as fact in Bonavista. The story goes that when Cabot first saw land, he cried “Buon Vista!” – “Happy Sight!” – hence the name for both the town and the peninsula. In 1997, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Cabot’s original voyage, a recreation of the Matthew was built in Bristol and sailed across the Atlantic to Bonavista for a ceremony on June 24 presided over by Queen Elizabeth II. (Everyone was proud to tell me about the Queen’s visit, though the most vivid story I heard about the day was from a woman who had decided to avoid the crowds and the rain and just watch from her house.) That replica then returned to Bristol, where it remains today. Seeing a promising tourism opportunity, however, Bonavista decided to build its own replica of the Matthew, which is seasonally on display in the Bonavista harbor right alongside the fishing boats. Built, maintained, and interpreted all by locals, the aura surrounding the boat is nothing like one generally finds around historic or recreated wooden boats. The new Matthew is too authentic to be seaworthy (no engine or safety features), but locals are very proud of such an historic monument in their harbor and the work of locals in doing all the carpentry and maintenance on the boat. Since the harbor regularly ices over for the winter, they even have a clever set-up for keeping the Matthew indoors during the icy months. Beyond the history, though, the real beauty of these days of wandering was the ability to see the unfolding of spring in the scenic outports, drive through some of the most interesting parts of the province, and meet some of the most welcoming people I have met this year. In my four nights of meandering, I was twice taken in by strangers I met along the way – the two people who discovered that my other option was to sleep in my rental car. (Yes, Mom, I went home with strangers and slept in my car. I promise they were very upstanding strangers, and I locked the car doors even though I was at campgrounds all by myself.) I spent one night at the base of Cabot’s statue, looking out over the water, and the other on the shore at a campground on the Burin peninsula, where I remembered to record the view when I woke up:
In Bonavista, I was taken in by a retired schoolteacher who I met at the local coffeeshop/bar while watching game five of the Stanley Cup finals (Pittsburgh won in triple overtime). I met his dog and talked with him about travel and education and his childhood in Newfoundland before he sent me off with an open invitation to visit anytime. In Grand Bank, the first person I met was the Anglican minister’s wife, who gave me a tour of the old fish plant-turned-theatre where she works and insisted that I come and stay the night with her and her family at the Anglican rectory. And, as most Newfoundlanders were quick to tell me, such unquestioning hospitality is the rule rather than the exception.

And if such welcoming people weren’t enough to sell me on Newfoundland’s outports, I was content just to wander the towns and watch the scenery. I saw old fishing stages, signs of a by-gone era of fishing,

and small boats and fishing stages still being used as they were decades ago, looking quaint but also continuing to provide a livelihood.

There were sheep – rounding out the tally of Watson year sheep sightings to include all four of my original project countries,
and peaceful domestic scenes.
When I got to Newfoundland, everyone kept telling me that this is a place that people just end up staying. It gets in your blood and you just don’t want to leave. And really, I can see why.

Port Union: “To Each His Own”

I set off on this grand road trip rather spur of the moment. I had begun feeling a sense of restlessness spending my days in St. John’s while knowing that the heart of fisheries in Newfoundland was in the outports and had been mentally planning to set off and search out a story of fishing that couldn’t be found in town. So when I saw a flyer for a symposium on the founding of the Fishermen’s Protective Union, that did it: I was off.

While in St. John’s, I had met with representatives from the modern-day fishermen’s union, now called the Food, Fish, and Allied Workers Union (FFAW). Fishers (men and women, here, unlike everywhere else I traveled) in Newfoundland are very well organized and represented, in no small part because of the FFAW. Having organized nearly all the fishers and fish plant workers in the province into a single infrastructure, the union was able to provide representation for the fishing communities, despite their being spread out throughout the province. The FFAW was instrumental in lobbying for the unemployment benefits that sustained whole fishing communities when the cod fishery collapsed, in helping communities keep their local fish processing plants from closing, and procuring representation for fishers in the policy-making process. It had seemed from my initial meetings with people at the FFAW office and from talking with union representatives in some of the outports that the unionization of fisheries workers has been instrumental in sustaining rural fishing communities and preventing the consolidation found in so many other places.

So naturally, I was eager to learn more about the beginnings of fishermen’s unionization in Newfoundland and the history that has shaped the modern fishery in the province. And key to that story is William Coaker and the Fishermen’s Protective Union (FPU) he founded 100 years ago in 1908. The FPU was initially established as a political and social movement to provide independence to fishers as the working class of Newfoundland, their motto of “to each his own” focusing on the need for economic independence. At the time, fishing communities were beholden to the merchants who provided on credit the essential goods they needed to live on and in return for their cured fish at the end of the season. The merchants inflated the prices of the goods they sold and set low prices for the fish such that fishing families were constantly in debt to the local merchant. The FPU’s initial innovation was to create the Fishermen’s Union Trading Company, which bought goods and wholesale prices and shipped them to the outports, where fishermen could buy them at cost. They would also purchase the fishermen’s cured fish at the end of the season, paying them a fair price. This took away the merchants’ monopoly and ability to inflate prices, returning economic control to the fishermen. For a short time, the FPU also expanded into politics, attempting to provide not just economic but also political independence for the province’s fishermen (though at this time, Newfoundland was not yet part of Canada and not technically a province). William Coaker, who remained the driving force of the FPU throughout its early influential years, was elected to the House of Assembly and eventually became Fisheries Minister under the Union Party. This is a bust of Coaker, at the top of a hill overlooking the Port Union harbor.Port Union, where the symposium was held, was the center of the FPU’s efforts, a town actually founded by the union. The union built premises for retail and export in connection with the Trading Company, serving as the hub store for outlets in 40 communities, established a shipbuilding company and built a fleet of supply and trading ships which to transport goods and cured fish, and set up a publishing company for The Fishermen’s Advocate, the Union’s newspaper. The town had its own spur railway line, saltfish and seal plants, a cooperage and carpenter’s shop, a soft drink factory, a warehouse, a woodworking factory, a school, a debating club, a church, a hotel, a large meeting hall, workers’ housing, and even a movie theatre. Port Union also has its own hydropower plant, making it one of the first outport towns in Newfoundland to have electricity. As part of the symposium, a number of older people who had grown up in Port Union and surrounding towns described what it had been like in its early years. They saw the dances held in the meeting hall, the moving pictures shown at the theatre, and the town’s electric lights as the height of sophistication – nearly as exciting as the big city of St. John’s. Here they are speaking, flanked by a picture of William Coaker.Of course, things are very different today than they were in Coaker’s day. The FPU no longer exists, though its legacy of advocating for rural fishing communities’ social and economic independence doubtless helped keep the outport fishing lifestyle from collapsing under economic and social pressure and planted the seeds for the modern-day FFAW. Today, with cod populations still low, it may take new efforts to maintain these communities. During the symposium, a new project for Port Union was announced by Newfoundland Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn. The government is providing a grant for the Sir William Ford Coaker Heritage Foundation to restore the former retail store and fish plant, to “add to the area’s tourism infrastructure and help attract new business to the community.” Here's what the old fish plant looks like today, on the edge of the harbor at sunset.And new business is already on its way: part of the funding for the restoration will come from Iceberg Water and Vodka, which plant to use part of the building’s interior as a bottling plant for their water and vodka products (which indeed are made by towing real icebergs into the harbor and melting them for their water). The plan is innovative – it will promote tourism by restoring the building and providing tours of Iceberg’s bottling facility, and it will provide short-term jobs in construction and long-term jobs working for Iceberg, in addition to the new jobs from tourism. It’s a far cry from William Coaker’s initial vision for Port Union, but it just might work.

Refuge of the Roads

I think I may have developed some wanderlust. After four weeks sleeping every night in St. John’s, I started to get antsy. And so I rented a car and headed off in search of adventure and beauty and whatever it is that people search for.

I drove up the Bonavista peninsula and down the Burin peninsula, and found lighthouses and fabulous stories of lighthouse keeping at the tips of both,*

And even made it all the way to France (the French colony of Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, only an hour’s ferry ride away from the tip of the Burin peninsula).

There were icebergs, rocky cliffs, sunsets, and fishing boats – sometimes all at the same time.

I saw living coastal cultures that blend the old and the new - old fishing stages in the same harbours as modern fish processing plants, a traditional Catholic ceremony blessing a modern seagoing fleet, the Bonavista harbour with a replica of John Cabot's 15th-century caravel that sailed to Newfoundland alongside today's fishing boats.

And after ten days of wandering, I’m back in St. John’s. I have one last week here to tie up loose ends and begin to put together some of the pieces of this year (and hopefully also write more here about what I’ve seen and done…) before setting off on the final homeward journey in this year of journeying.

*Newfoundland still has fifty-two manned lightstations, and I met two real-life lighthouse keepers! They were painting the lightstation and showed me their office, complete with computer and desk, not so romantic as my image of a lighthouse keeper. But – both of them used to work at another lighthouse nearby, where they stayed alone on the island for twenty-eight days at a time. The dream still lives…

How to make a shrimp trawl: nets and networks in a global world of fishing

My first introduction to the Newfoundland fishing industry in this year’s journey was actually at the Hampiðjan workshop in Hirtshals, Denmark in December. David Kelly, a Newfoundland netmaker (as was his father, who still works making nets and is apparently so well-known for his nets that there’s a style still known as a “Bob Kelly” net), runs a netloft that is part of the worldwide group of Hampiðjan companies, and thus was one of the many netmakers and fishermen from around the world who came to the flume tank to see some of Hampiðjan’s trawl nets in action. After we met in Denmark, Dave offered that when I got to Newfoundland I could come see how the nets are made and try my hand at netmaking. And so, a couple weeks ago (I know, I’m constantly behind on this blog) I took a few days and went along on his daily trip from St. John’s to the netloft in Spaniard’s Bay.

As one of relatively few netmakers in the region, the netloft provides all sorts of products – from providing the netting for local soccer goals a few years back to making mesh covers to protect trash bags from gulls to selling rope to local women for a clothesline – but most of the netloft’s business is in making shrimp trawl nets. Since the closure of the cod fishery in 1992, crab (caught with traps, which the netloft also makes but, Dave says, not so much for profit as to help keep customers) and shrimp (caught with trawls) have become the most important species for the fishing industry. I’d been in a netloft before while I was in Scotland, but it was only after seeing firsthand how the trawl nets are made that I feel like I can actually appreciate how much work goes into each one. A trawl net of the type I’ve seen on the stern of many boats this year more than fills the entire floor of this room.

Although the mesh material for each piece of the net comes from a factory in Lithuania, all of the pieces that go together to make the net have to be measured, cut and then hand-sewn together. Each step in the process has its own particular methods for how to tie the knots, splice the ropes, and piece together all the mesh, twine, and rope to make a functional net.

Even just the most basic of tasks, lacing together two pieces of mesh, was slow going for me even after I got the hang of the method – although it was kind of exciting to see palpable progress as I worked my way down the room.

It takes this group of experienced netmakers about three days to put together a full trawl net – which seems fast to me given how slowly I work without any experience – but still uses about 120 hours worth of work. The labor-intensity of the process, combined with the huge amount of physical material that goes into making a full trawl net explains why one of these nets ends up costing about $20,000. That’s expensive for a net, but in the scheme of things for a large fishing enterprise, this is just one of many pieces of the extensive capital investment (buying and maintaining a boat, fuel, nets, etc.) that have to be put in before there’s any chance to catch something and hope to make a profit. The fisheries union, the Fish, Food, and Allied Workers (FFAW), writes that, “As the shellfish-driven fishery of the late 1990s and early 2000s drove existing fishing fleets farther from shore, there was a massive overall capital investment - to the tune of $100s of millions - in vessels more suited to the greater distances from shore and the changing nature of the fishery.” And in most of the world’s fishing industries these days, this has become commonplace.

Yet even as the nature of the fishery is changing to require this sort of capital investment, many Newfoundlanders seem hesitant to trade the small-scale inshore fishery for fewer, larger, more capital-intensive enterprises. One of the most interesting things about seeing how trawl nets are made here in Newfoundland is that, unlike other places I’ve been like Iceland and Scotland where nearly everyone is fishing with trawl nets, trawling is a relatively small part of the province’s fishing industry. Even though there are about 13,000 people in Newfoundland employed as fish harvesters, there are fewer than four hundred shrimp licenses in the province, meaning that it’s actually only a fairly small proportion of the industry – the largest, most capital-intensive enterprises – that fishes with this sort of trawl net.

Among the old-time, inshore fishermen, many are dubious of trawling, particularly after many felt that offshore trawling caused the decline of the cod stocks, and even among the families of fishermen who had invested in the larger boats and gone shrimp trawling who I met on Fogo Island, many wondered whether they actually made any more money at the end of the day because of the bigger boat. At the same time, though, this sort of modernization, using new technology to be able to target new species in new ways and increasing size to improve economic efficiency, seems to be the dominant trend in the world’s most profitable fishing industries, and a trend the province can’t afford to ignore since marine resources remain a central pillar of the economy. So for me, a trip to the Hampiðjan Canada netloft in Spaniard’s Bay was a prime illustration of Newfoundland’s balancing act in today’s fishing industry: we drove through small outports with fishermen who still know how to make their own wooden punts and maintain old put-put engines to get to a netloft that has evolved in the hands of a local family to partner with a worldwide company and uses materials from as far away as Lithuania and Iceland to build trawls for the largest, most capital-intensive fleet fishing out of Newfoundland’s outports. It’s an odd juxtaposition between the old traditional ways and modern innovation born of globalization. One that Newfoundlanders (and I) are still trying to work out.

Saving a few thousand words on St. John's

St. John's has been my home base since I got back to this side of the Atlantic, and so I thought I should share a bit of the area. I'll admit that my first impression of the town was not so favorable - after more than nine months away from the realm of big box stores and strip malls I was a bit in shock at how, well, American it seemed here. But St. John's is also a city with plenty of charm - the oldest and easternmost city in north America, capital city of Newfoundland and Labrador, a city that manages to have both the most bars per capita of any city in North America but also a friendly atmosphere, low crime rate, and lots of walking trails and parks within the city limits. (Much of this, I should add, is helped by the fact that St. John's has a population only slightly over 100,000 and seems more like a small town at the center of a sprawling suburb than a bona fide city. But I digress.)

Downtown itself is rather quaint and cheerful. To me, the bright colors on the wooden houses says New England meets Iceland, which might not actually be so far off.
The town is situated at the site of an excellent natural harbor, which made it a great location for the early English fishermen who used the town as a base when they began crossing the Atlantic in search of cod in the 1500s. This view shows most of the downtown area and the entrance to the harbor, known as the "narrows" for rather obvious reasons.
When the town was initially founded, this geography was also a major benefit for defense - on the hill to the left of the picture above you'll find Signal Hill, and to the right, Fort Amherst (yes, the very same Lord Jeffrey Amherst of my fair alma mater). While Ada was here, we took a walk up to the top of Signal Hill to see the reception point of the first transatlantic wireless signal by Guglielmo Marconi in 1901, as well as the site of harbor defenses for St. John's from the 18th century to the Second World War.The town is obviously well-defended.Partly because it is such an excellent harbor and partly because Newfoundland's lifeblood is the sea, it is still very much an active harbor. There are many fishing boats tied up along the harbor downtown (also a number of other boats, including supply and service vessels for the growing oil industry and even an EU fisheries patrol vessel). As you can see from the crab pots, these boats are actually here to work, not just to look pretty.Also among the defining characteristics of St. John's is its weather - lots of wind and rain and fog that is only just starting to clear up enough to hint of summer. Here Ada demonstrates mid-April wind at the top of Signal Hill, so strong we actually had to be careful not to get blown over. Most people tell me that this year is worst than most, but I think I'd be missing something of the Newfoundland experience if I only saw clear, sunny days. To make up for it, though (and partially causing it), the spring brings visitors from the far north...icebergs!This one was right in the entrance to the harbor at Quidi Vidi, a small fishing harbor just at the edge of downtown St. John's. One of the other things I like about this city is that there can be a small village like this just a few kilometers from the central downtown.With this just next to the city, even for "townies," it would be hard to forget the central role of fishing in the economy and identity of Newfoundland.

It's a good place to be.