The purse seiner NIGHT OWL of Vinalhaven and the carrier DOUBLE EAGLE of Rockland have been fishing together for these elusive little fish for a decade, with the owners and captains going back together almost another decade on other vessels. Catching and selling herring for lobster bait and sardines has long been a cooperative venture, involving both a catcher boat and a carrier, which transports the catch to various markets.
These vessels fish for herring in the dark of night, when the fish rise up to the surface and congregate in tight schools, and then they sell most of their catch fresh the following morning directly to local lobstermen and fishermen’s co-ops. The herring fishery in the midcoast area operates primarily in the summer and fall, and the inshore herring boats rely on the lobster season for providing most of their year’s income.
The stout, fiberglass NIGHT OWL was built in Canada in 1989 specifically for inshore herring seining. She is the fourth seine boat owned and operated by Vinalhaven resident Ambrose Alley, who has been chasing herring for about 25 years. At 48.5 feet in length, she is the smallest inshore purse-seiner currently operating. Smaller, open boats used to operate in coves and bays as purse-seiners, but Alley notes that these vessels are seen now resting only in boatyards, as the shore and cove fishery has declined to the point where it is no longer productive. With her purse-seine net of about 210 fathoms in length, the NIGHT OWL supplies bait to the islands of Vinalhaven, Matinicus, Criehaven, as well as Stonington and other parts of Deer Isle. The vessel and business are currently for sale, but Alley is interested in keeping the boat working on the island.
Alley cites increasingly restrictive and costly regulations as one of the primary reasons for his getting out of the business. The herring season has gone in recent years from being an open fishery, with few restrictions on when herring could be landed, to being open only a certain number of days each week, and closing altogether in the late fall.
“For a small inshore boat like myself, not being able to go out on good nights hurts because it forces us to go out on bad nights when we are allowed to fish,” Alley said, noting also that he relies on markets that need to be supplied daily. “Closed days means that we cannot provide fresh product, and our buyers will have to look to trucked bait, and we may not get that market back.” He noted that a closure for even part of the active lobstering season can prove devastating to smaller operators like himself. “Local small-boat seining is going to be a thing of the past if this keeps up” he said.
Alley is also particularly rankled that he has been required by recent federal regulations to carry a Vessel Tracking System — a “black box” that allows for the fleet to be monitored remotely by the National Marine Fisheries Service for the purpose of tracking fishing areas and effort. “They are keeping tabs on me, and I have to pay the bill,” he said, citing the $5,600 installation fee and the $150 monthly charge. “This system may be needed for the big boats offshore, but we can’t and don’t go out that far in this boat — things have been getting tougher for us small, privately owned businesses, but this year the crunch is really coming more.” In part, he blamed increased competition for markets from larger operations.
Alley plans to continue in other fisheries, and is currently having a fast lobster boat built, from which he will run his lobster traps and perhaps pursue tuna.
The double-ended wooden herring carrier DOUBLE EAGLE has been in this same trade for all of her 72 years, carrying herring all along the coast from Lubec on the Canadian border to Gloucester, Massachusetts. She was built in 1929 in East Machias for the North Lubec Manufacturing and Canning Company, and is named after one of the Company’s brands of packed sardines.
The vessel was rebuilt in 1949, when she was lengthened by 12 feet. In the postwar years she had a number of owners from Jonesport to New Harbor, and was eventually purchased in poor shape in 1991 by current owner Glenn Lawrence of Owl’s Head. That year the vessel was given a year-long second rebuild at North End Shipyard in Rockland, and according to mate Walter Boyko “is better now than the day she was built.” Fully loaded, DOUBLE EAGLE can transport almost 100,000 pounds of fish in two holds, enough to supply upwards of 300 lobstermen with their daily bait needs. Over the years, Lawrence has supplied many coastal communities with bait, focusing on smaller, island markets in the midcoast area.
Lawrence may continue operating the vessel with the new owner of NIGHT OWL, or he may also get out of the business altogether. In addition to fishing for herring, he has relied in recent years on winter shrimping, and that season has also recently been curtailed.
Like Alley, he cites the shrinking herring season and restricted days as reasons for making the business tougher. He too wishes that small near-shore boats would be allowed to pick the days that they could fish. “I would be fine only fishing four days a week,” he says, “if only we could pick the days, and not have to try to fish marginal days because it’s all we have.” Recent regulations have favored the larger operators, he believes, who can go to other, open areas on the closed days, and thus continue supplying fish to the markets. “It feels as if they wanted to come up with rules specifically to put the local, small guy out of the business.”
Lawrence did note that some recent changes to the quota system reserving the majority of the catch for the summer fishery might help a bit, but he also sees these measures as only partial fixes to the problems facing the small, local herring boat operator. He contends that the larger problem is that the larger vessels using trawl gear are altering the behavior of the herring schools, and are decreasing the size of the coastal stock, making it harder for inshore vessels that rely on aggregations of fish closer to the coast to find the fish they need to operate. “In my opinion the best answer would be to make Area 1A [the inshore Maine area] traditional purse-seine fishing only, and keep the bigger trawlers out,” he said. “I am amazed that the regulators consider coastal herring to be still underutilized, because where we used to see miles of big rafts of fish, we now only see pods here and there.”
Not all regulators or fishermen agree that fishing with trawl nets has had this impact, but the issue of the effects of this gear on the herring stock has recently garnered additional attention from state regulatory agencies. Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner George LaPointe sent a letter in August to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (which regulates herring fishing) noting that “there is here in Maine a growing concern about the effects of midwater trawling for Atlantic herring on the resource,” and requesting “a thorough, unbiased review of the impact of midwater trawling and other fishing gear.”