“The first year, I wouldn’t even go in the building when they were processing,” said Drusilla Ray, of the product being processed, hagfish or Myxine glutinosa, better known as sea snakes or slime eels. She and her husband, Lawrence, own Cherry Point Products, Inc., in Millbridge, a company that fishes, processes, freezes, and sells sea cucumbers and hagfish.
The fish—and they are fish, not eels—have one of the best systems in the animal kingdom for deterring predators: when threatened, hagfish exude huge amounts of slimy mucus that is so thick and sticky it can suffocate a predator. In fact, according to a Wikipedia article, in only one hour a single foot-long hagfish can fill a barrel with slime.
These ancient, primitive, eel-shaped, jawless fish, found on the muddy bottom of temperate Atlantic and Pacific waters, prey at night on dead and dying fish (they like the liver best) and on live small invertebrates.
Wikipedia claims hagfish are endangered, which may be true in some parts of the world, but not in the waters off Massachusetts, where hagfish has been fished for the last 15 years, or off Maine, where it is considered a new fishery.
Fishing for hagfish requires baiting a regular size plastic barrel having a number of five-inch diameter holes fitted with pierced, cone-shaped entrances leading the fish to the bait (herring or pogies) and capture. The barrel traps are strung in trawls, set for 24 hours then hauled back.
Koreans and Korean markets and restaurants in New York City have been buying, selling, cooking, and eating hagfish for the last 30 years. A 2006 article by Peter J. Prybot, in the Gloucester Times stated that customers choose the fish they want from tanks in restaurants (the fish have been purged and cleansed much the way French land snails are by not feeding them for a week so they can eliminate wastes, then the 1½- to 2-foot-long, nickel-diameter eel-shaped fish are skinned and gutted, cut into short lengths, and fried with vegetables and spice sauce in a delicacy called Comjang O, or barbecued.
But that’s just one of the markets for hagfish: Its scaleless skin, when tanned, is strong yet smooth and supple, making it appropriate for use in wallets, handbags, and jackets. The Rays’ buyer sent Drusilla a hagfish ladies wallet. One side of the wallet was made from six of the narrow skins stitched together; the other side required ten. She said, “I’d love to have a jacket, but they’re very expensive.”
All 48 years the Rays have been married they have spent working in one fishery or another. They processed sea urchins from the mid-eighties till 1994 when that fishery became overfished and declined, which started their search for underutilized species.
This search led them to sea cucumbers, but they started at a time when Maine had developed a bad name in the business because of poor standards in the past. They had to work hard to change that perception.
They built their 120-foot long by 80-foot wide plant, then reached out to buyers who had to be convinced they’d be buying a good product. They told the Rays what they wanted, but not how to achieve it. (Like the hagfish market, there are two components to the sea cucumber market: the meat and the skin.) Achieving quality dried sea cucumber skin was the problem. Drusilla Ray recalled being told, “You figure it out, and we’ll buy it.”
She and her husband bought a dehumidifier and dryer, which she called “a huge, expensive piece of equipment,” and in time perfected the drying of sea cucumber skin. They had the boats to fish the child’s football-size animals and the way to dry the skin well, but they couldn’t find a labor force to process them. No one in Millbridge would consider the work. “We knew they could make good money,” she said. “It was sad, sad.”
Lawrence runs the plant; Drusilla, the office and is company spokesman. They built a good product and earned a good reputation, but all the parts didn’t fall into place until 1997, a poor year for blueberries.
Ray recalled receiving a phone call from a blueberry grower she and her husband knew. The grower was desperate. His migrant workers hadn’t been able to earn enough by harvesting blueberries. Could the Rays find work for three or four families?
What a question! If the workers could process the sea cucumbers, they’d be a gift from heaven.
“We hired the blueberry pickers,” Ray said. They did the job, and when they left for apple picking, that gave the Rays time to bring in trailers to house them when they returned. “That’s how it evolved,” she said. “They stayed and some have been here since 1998; that’s a long time for migrant workers to stay in one place.”
Despite the problems of getting an ESL teacher to help the children learn English, which led Ray to go on the school board (she’s still serving), the workers’ children have thrived and some have already gone on to college. Ray is particularly proud of their achievement.
Because sea cucumbers are not as plentiful as they were, though the Rays still process them, the state closed harvesting in July, August, and September, which meant down time for the workers. This led the Rays to start looking for other underutilized species and found hagfish.
Or maybe it’s the other way around. A Korean company based in Gloucester had New Bedford-based draggers fishing hagfish in waters 40 or 50 miles off Maine. Those captains found it quicker and easier to steam to Millbridge to offload their catch than to have to steam back to New Bedford or Gloucester, so by default, the Rays started dealing with those off-loaded fish. Last year they began using their own boat to fish hagfish, which provides work for the Ray’s family, in addition to buying from four other boats. They now deal directly with their Korean buyer.
“They’ve got a good deal,” she said of the minimal $100 they charge per working person in a family per month to help pay for utilities. Each family has two or three workers so rent averages $200 per month.
The Rays pay their piece workers by the pound. The best workers earn $25 per hour, the slower ones average between $12 and $15 per hour.
Good pay and inexpensive housing notwithstanding, for many, processing hagfish could well be described as stomach turning. Once in the barrel, the threatened fish produce what can most gingerly be described as copious amounts of slime. A torrent of mucus pours out of each barrel along with the eel-like fish and a distinctive odor that penetrates clothes and shoes. It is revolting to see, and separating the fish from the slime compounds the feeling.
Workers empty the barrel onto a lipped table built with scuppers on each side and containers to catch the slime beneath. The worker puts his gloved hand in the approximate center of the massed fish and slime and starts twirling. Centrifugal force spins the slime away from the fish, to the point where the processor can pick up the slime and drop it into a waiting container. He then picks up the squirming slime-free fish and dumps them into a plastic-lined box.
Once cleaned, the fish are graded by length and weight, packed 22 kilos to a plastic-lined box, popped into the freezer, and shipped, flash-frozen, to Korea.
As for remuneration, Ray said, “The fishermen do okay, but that’s where it stops. You’re working on pennies per pound. With the cost of fuel, containers, and shipping having gone up dramatically, we have a very, very, very small margin.” Asked why they continue to process this unpleasant product, Ray explained that they do it to keep people working.
The business supports their son Stuart, grandson Josh, son-in-law Ray Martin, and daughter Joan, who claims her job is to be her mother’s gofer. (Underage granddaughter Alexis, at eight, provides hugs and kisses every time she passes her grandmother.) The plant keeps their local women working through the summer rather than having to draw unemployment and provides the Hispanics with enough income to keep them in Millbridge.
Processing sea cucumbers remains the Ray’s primary source of income from October to June and hagfish, their secondary source, from July to October. This year there may be some overlap. Drusilla Ray said, “We hope to do a little bit of both in October: do sea cucumbers in one part of the building and hagfish in another.”
Two years ago the state recognized Drusilla Ray for her work with the migrant workers. The Rays, despite the negatives of having to work with hagfish, have created an industry that not only supports three generations of an old Millbridge fishing family, but one that also helps and supports a number of new families who’ve made Millbridge their home.