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New Bedford scalloper and fishing industry featured
in Boston Globe
A Captain's Calling: As the weather worsens and prices
improve, scallopers make one last haul.
By Kate Yeomans | Boston Globe
 When
Captain Ewa Liput and her six-man crew cast off from
Fairhaven for Georges Bank, the fishing grounds east of
Cape Cod and south of the Gulf of Maine, she steers the
98-foot scallop boat Quincy II through the harbor's
hurricane barrier and into Buzzards Bay. The boat rounds
Gay Head and steams past Nomans Land before setting a
course that will take them 175 miles east in about 18
hours.
Under federal regulations, in the 2007 season, the
Quincy II was allowed just 52 fishing days, and Liput
used those up in eight trips, including the one to
Georges Bank. (The season opens March 1 and lasts 12
months.) In so-called closed areas - which are actually
open to commercial scallop fishing, though the catch is
limited - the boat is allowed to take 18,000 pounds per
trip. In "open" areas, the catch is limited only by what
the seven people and their boat can catch and handle.
The price of scallops, of course, fluctuates according
to supply and can range from $3.50 per pound wholesale
to more than $7.50; this time of year, an 18,000-pound
haul could bring in more than $120,000 in New Bedford.
Throughout the season, Liput and the boat's owner try to
make smart decisions about where and when to fish.
Should they use up the days in spring, when the weather
is better and the work of trawling, sorting, and
shucking scallops easier, or save some days for later in
the season, when the seas will be rougher and weather
colder but the market price for the catch almost double?
Trying to time trips to coincide with better fuel prices
is yet another part of the complicated equation.
The risks of commercial fishing, one of the nation's
most dangerous professions, according to the US
Department of Labor, are ever present in New Bedford. In
December 2003, the scallop boat Atlanta was lost at sea.
Three men died and four were rescued. In December 2004,
another scallop boat, the Northern Edge, was lost. Five
men died and one was rescued. In January 2007, the
fishing trawler Lady of Grace was lost and all four men
aboard died.
New Bedford, about 50 miles south of Boston, is an
important port. The dollar value of seafood landed by
the 350-boat fleet there (including Fairhaven, across
the harbor) in 2006 totaled $281.2 million, with $217
million of that coming from the scallop trade. For seven
years in a row, the city has held onto its claim as the
most valuable port in the country: While Dutch Harbor,
Alaska, lands more pounds of seafood, the catch in New
Bedford is worth more. According to the city's economic
development council, the scallop industry generates $1
billion for the local economy.
Liput, who started sailing when she was 7 years old, is
now 50. She immigrated to the United States in 1986 from
the port city of Szczecin, Poland, where she worked as a
captain of sailing vessels while also studying fine-art
painting. A friend from Poland owned a New Bedford
scallop boat, so Liput took a trip in 1987 and
discovered she liked the work. She decided to stay in
the area and, a year later, advanced to first mate. In
February 1994, when the captain of the Michigan needed a
replacement for one trip, he handed the helm to Liput.
Despite cold weather and high seas, she says, it was
"one of the best one-week trips of the season." Liput
continued her work studying art, too, and earned an MFA
from Boston University in 2002. The following year, when
New Bedford businessman Francis Patenaude needed a
captain for his new Quincy II, he hired Liput. The value
of the boat, with its permits, is about $4 million, he
says.
On a cold day in late fall, with land far behind, Liput
drops two 13-foot-wide steel scallop dredges to the
seafloor and tows them, their 4-inch-ring chain bags
dragging behind. The duration of the tow depends on the
catch, but can be as short as 15 minutes or as long as
an hour. A giant winch whines as two steel cables coil
over their drums and bring the dredges to the surface
and up onto the steel deck, where the chain bags clink
and rattle. A cargo winch inverts the bags, and hundreds
of rose-and-sand-colored shells click onto the deck. Two
deck-hands reconnect the tow wires and prepare to
redeploy the dredges before joining other crew members
as they stand wide-legged, bent at the waist, picking
through the piles by hand and tossing the scallops into
orange plastic bushel baskets. The remaining bycatch -
anything else that winds up in the dredges - is shoveled
overboard through wide scupper gates while a crew member
carries the bushels forward into a shucking house. A few
bushels go onto the forklift and are sent to the upper
deck for Liput - and then they all begin to shuck.
Scallop by scallop, each crew member stands before a
stainless-steel "cutting box," which looks like a sink,
sticks a knife between the shells, removes the scallop,
and drops it into a bucket while tossing the shells into
a stainless gutter that leads back to the sea. The
shucked scallops are washed carefully and packed into
ivory-colored cotton bags. Liput figures that a full
bag, about 18 by 24 inches, weighs 50 pounds. When
they're using their limited fishing days, the crew works
24 hours a day. Two groups of three crew members each
work in six-hour watches, with the seventh crew member
working half of each watch as the day passes into night
and then to dawn. When the fishing is good, as it was in
2005 and 2006, the crew can reach 18,000 pounds in about
180 tows. "It also happens," Liput says, "that you can't
get your limit."
Liput's last trip this year was a "Christmas trip," a
New Bedford tradition - one last trip out, usually in
late November or December, to make extra money for the
holidays. The weather is rougher and the work less
pleasant, she explains, but because there are usually
fewer scallops on the market, prices - and profits - can
go up. "Fishermen take a chance because they're thinking
about their families," she says. "The Christmas trip is
special." But since the Quincy II used up its days back
in September, she went out as captain of the Sharon K
instead.
Though many women work in the scallop industry ashore
and a few at sea, Liput is unique as an experienced
female captain in the New Bedford fleet - and modest
about her status. "Eskimo women have been fishing for
centuries," she says. "What I do think is special is
that women in this industry have the same skills and
earn the same salary as the men. In many shore-side
professions, women may have the same skills, but they
continue to get paid less. I am very lucky. I unload the
catch, and they pay me what it's worth. They don't pay
less because a woman caught them."
Kate Yeomans is a writer in Byfield. E-mail comments to
magazine@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company |
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