Harvesting The Sea

"These guys aren't the same sort of fishermen you'd find in Boston, Gloucester, and other ports. . . These guys are money chasers."

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For five hours, the Deborah-Lee, a trim, 55-ton western-rig stern trawler has been tied up behind point Judith Fishermen's Cooperative Association Inc., taking on a load of 12 tons of ice and topping off its 2,400-gallon fuel tanks. Finally, a few minutes after 10 p.m., the lines drop away, the Deborah-Lee backs off, comes about, and points its bow at the Galilee Breachway, a stretch of black leading to the dark Atlantic Ocean. The faint lights of Galilee, R.I., to port, and Jerusalem, to starboard, frame the way. David Roebuck, the boat's 42-year-old skipper, is heading for a patch of ocean 50 miles to the soutbeast, near a spot known as the Dunaping Ground, in search of whiting, which a salesman at the co-op has said is now bringing 18 cents a pound. As the Debarah-Lee clears the breachway, Roebuck prays that the price will hold until he returns to the port.

It is a guessing game of a career, a gamble of a life, but for Roebuck and thousands of others, commercial fishing is an identity as well as a source of income: It is tradition, family, faith, and future. It is also a sizable business. In the U.S. fleet, there are more than 114,000 vessels, which last year landed 6.4 billion pounds of fish worth $2.4 billion. Yet the industry is anything but vigorous; the catch has remained flat since 1978. And there have been a host of problems -- stiff increases in the cost of fuel, overfishing by foreign boats, government quotas on certain species. Recently, the climate has improved -- some quotas have been lifted, and, since passage of legislation in 1976, foreign activity has been strictly regulated within 200 miles of shore, leading to an increase in exports. But the United States remains a fish-importing nation (with a $3.5-billion deficit in 1982), and bankruptcies, like sinkings, are not uncommon.

The Point Judith fleet is a bright exception to the lackluster rule. Some 100 vessels operating out of the tiny port of Galilee, a handful of buildings planted at the edge of a forest of masts and trawler booms, have eurned a national reputation for growth, profitability, and innovation. Each year, the number of boats in the fleet, the pounds of fish landed, and their value go up. In 1980, Point Judith netted 43 million pounds worth $12 million; last year, it produced 64 million pounds and gross sales of $20 million.

The fleet has prospered by virtue of its willingness to tamper with age-old traditions when those salt-soaked, but sacrosanct, ways conflicted with new technologies, techniques, or business practices. Such flexibility has been enhanced by a combination of factors, including the relatively young age of its skippers, an aggressive co-op, a close tie to the fisheries program at the University of Rhode Island (URI), and reliance on nontraditional species.

"These guys aren't the same sort of fishermen you'd find in Boston, Gloucester, and other ports," notes Leonard J. Stasiukiewicz, general manager of the Cooperative Association. "These guys are money chasers."

Roebuck, a muscular man with a gray beard, values his legacy and prizes the mystery -- the timeless struggle of independent men with water, weather, fish stocks, and market conditions. But he concedes that fishing at Point Judith is a matter of capturing "the greatest economic gain for the least amount of effort."

Like many other Galilee fishermen, he began fishing at an early age, earning $10 a day at the age of 13 on the boat that belonged to his uncle, Jake Dykstra, one of the "grand old men" of the Point Judith fleet. Roebuck graduated from URI and also did a year of graduate studies in oceanography there, before joining the fleet full-time. At age 28, he was able to buy a 57-foot dragger, and the following year he and his brother built a 76-foot trawler. Light years later, he had the Deborah Lee (named after his daughter) built. Now, a year or two older than most other skippers, he finds himself the midpoint of a three-generation fishing family; an uncle, his brother, son, and son-in-law, and a few others, too distant to mention -- all are on the boats. It is a tradition that seems unlikely to end.

Unlike other ports, where fishermen may be further from their fisheries, limited to one or two species, or advocates of the full-hold theory, the Point Judith fleet prefers short hit-and-run expeditions for whatever looks like it will pay off at market. "Cod, haddock, and yellowtail have always been the staples of the New England groundfish fleet," explains Chris Cornell, Atlantic editor of National Fisherman magazine, "but Point Judith has gone after the so-called nontraditional species -- butterfish, mackerel, squid. . . . Those species have kept it afloat when the traditional ones were under strict regulation, or fished to unprofitable levels by the foreign-trawler fleet."

Since foreign vessels have been forced out of U.S. waters, nontraditional species have become even more profitable. The Japanese, who used to catch their own butterfish, and the Spanish, Italians, and Portugese, who specialized in squid, now must buy them, and, in some cases, have been willing to guarantee prices in order to ensure a predictable flow of product. When the Japanese downgraded their size requirements for the small, diamond-shaped "butters" two years ago, Point Judith fishermen, who had been catching 3 million to 6 million pounds per year, went out and found 11.5 million pounds. "Now other ports are beginning to take notice of butterfish," says Stasiukiewicz.

Roebuck generally makes a couple of twoor three-day fishing trips each week, and, if the fish are there, and the price is right, may see a five-figure settlement sheet. Recently, one typical week's fishing yielded $6,800, leaving, after expenses for fuel, ice, food, oil, and gloves, some $5,000 to be divided between the boat and the crew. "A good trip," says Roebuck, "is anything that gets into double digits."

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