There are many kinds of commercial fishers, but most make their living
fishing along the coasts of the continent.
Karen Fulton is the editor of a fishing magazine. She believes that the
once-thriving North Atlantic fishery is "a dying thing -- both wages and fishing
is poor."
Steward Murray has more than 45 years of experience as a professional fisher.
He is also president of a fishers' association. His organization was put together
in the early 1980s to deal with the fisheries and various government agencies.
Murray laments the loss of freedom due to huge numbers of government regulations.
But he does support whatever means are necessary to conserve fish stocks in
the overfished North Atlantic. "If you don't have fish, you can't be a fisherman,"
he says.
Another longtime fisher, Roger Davies, goes after the enormous Pacific
halibut and sablefish. From the Bering Sea to the southern coast of Washington,
Davies saw the rise and collapse of much of the North Pacific fishery.
"We worked strictly on shares," says Davies. "A share per man and a share
for the boat. It was free enterprise with a vengeance. But the problems that
we see today aren't new ones. Conservation saved the halibut back in the 1930s
when it was being overfished. The greed factor always kicks in."
Davies says working as a professional fisher is a wonderful life, and he
loved it. Not only did he love the life on the waves, but the money was surprisingly
good.
"I used to make as much money in a season -- we had to -- as a carpenter
or piledriver would all year long. But it could be rough. Ninety and 100 mile-per-hour
winds and having to recover the fishing gear. I've been out in weather worse
than that."
For those who might find it tough to find work on a boat crew, Davies points
out that even he had to scramble hard for two years before a skipper would
take him on. He recommends that "green kids" hang around the docks and ask
the fishers and skippers questions.
"Fishermen have always been a polite group. Nobody ever got cut down for
asking questions."
Davies believes that with today's plastic gear, there isn't the skill needed
that was absolutely essential in years past. "You don't even need to know
as many knots!"
Don Pepper is a professor of fisheries economics. He is also a commercial
fisher during the salmon and herring season.
Pepper says the single most important factor affecting a fisher is the
seasons. "In winter, you have the herring spawn. In spring, the halibut are
in the shallows. All year round, you have crab and other shellfish. The salmon
come in the summer, but also in cycles. They come to the same river to spawn
in different years, so that determines where you're going to fish."
As well, there are larger cycles and effects -- global warming, for instance
-- that have consequences on fishing.
On the West Coast, there are many more men than women fishing. However,
the East Coast fisheries have long employed roughly equal numbers of men and
women.
Bob Rezansoff is president of a fishing vessel owners association. He says
physical strength is a necessary part of working on a boat or as part of the
"beach crew" securing one end of a net's rope to a stout tree on shore. He
believes men are more suited to this kind of work.
"Women work on the [Pacific] trawlers," he says. "It's a lot of long hours,
but not brute strength."