18

CAPE MAY COUNTY MAGAZINE 1 JUNE 83

r Commercial Fishing: i&5-Million Industry

(F'rom FaRe.17) May-Wildwood docks. He moved north in January, 1982, because he likes the bottom better off New Jersey. He lands fluke in the winter and switches gear for scallops in the spring The “Yvonne Michelle” can carry 1,200 boxes of shucked scallops at 100 pounds a box but, said Peabody “It’s hard to get that many ”

FRANK PKABODV Aboard Mis: 'Yvonne Michelle'

Bob Holloman of Whitestone, Va., took the "Yvonne Michelle” out for a grueling five-week cruise with layovers in New England. By custom, when the catch is sold, each crewmember receives a share of the sale based on experience. A boat owner takes 40-60 percent; the rest is divided among the captain and crew with a novice earning half that of a salty scalloper.

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It’s pretty much a verbal agreement,’’ Steward Tweed, Cape May County marine agent, said of the pay on commercial fishing boats. Between 85-125 commercial vessels like the vessels like the “Yvonne Michelle” or smaller, most of them locally and independently owned, regular unload their catches at docks like Lund’s in the Cape May-Wildwood harbor. The port is the third largest in the value of its annual catch ($20 million) and fifth in size along the East Coast with 14 docks, two processing plants and 800 people employed as crews, doefehands or processors. Together they earn a total of $7 million a year. As a whole, the port’s commercial fishing industry had an estimated value of $65 million last year. The recorded value of its yearly catch is an inaccurate gauge of the industry’s value to the county, however, according to Tweed. Although he couldn’t recall the actual figures, he argued that another value must be added for the businesses and employes that profit from the services they provide the industry — for the taxes the industry, businesses and employes pay local, county, state ana federal governments. The commercial boats and their crews don’t make any money unless they can get to sea, haul in a catch and sell it dockside while it’s as fresh as possible. With the cost of fuel, it’s too expensive to

been offered for his catch of flounder that he took it to sell for a better price in New York (despite the extra cost and loss involved in hauling it there). Other fishermen have dumped their catches overboard when the prices weren’t right, Tweed added. With Tweed’s cooperation and that of other researchers, Dr. Thomas Chelius, chairman of Academic support services at Atlantic County College, spent three years taking a closer look at Cape May County’s commercial fishing industry. He concluded that the fishermen who devise new techniques for landing their catches stand the best chance of turning a profit. The real entrepreneurs of the industry are those fishermen, like -Axelsson, who have made the transition from fisher to marketing, Tweed said. Although local fishermen have demonstrated their adaptability, the U.S. commercial fishing industry as a whole fell behind its overseas competitors after World War II. American trawlers would put out to sea only to find themselves bobbing in the wakes of factory ships flying foreign flags. “There was as many as 550 factory ships off New Jersey,” complained Warren Lund of Lund's Fisheries. In 1976, Congress passed The Fishery Conservation and Management Act to improve the lot of American eommeLcial

He likes the bottom off New jersey

haul anchor unless the chances of a landing are good. Weather and currents are most often the elements that decide the issue. But the tides make timing the voyage important too because the channels to the docks aren’t deep enough for the larger vessels. Strinking an underwater obstrubtion can mean a month or more of repairs to rudder, prop or seams. Beyond those natural complications, the fishermen must also contend with the marketplace before they can call their voyage a success. When Holloman returns with “Yvonne Michelle,” Peabody will sell the scallops at the going rate ($4.75-$4.80 a pound) to a dock, pay his boat bills and divvy up the shares. The last time he sold his catch, though, scallops were selling dockside at $4.56 a pound which means everybody involved, including the' dockowner, got less from the haul. “The dock owners never really know what they’re going to make,” Tweed explained, noting that fish prices are based on the going rates at the New York City fish markets. “The fishermen never really know either. Marketing has been one of their big problems.” Some boats, said Tweed, are tied up all summer because the cost of chasing fish isn’t worth the trip if the expense is weighed against the probable sale, i He told a story about Eric Axelsson Jr., a fisherman turned dockowner who operates Axelsson & Johnson Inc. along the north shore of the harbor near Lund’s. When still working a boat, Tweed recalled, Axelsson was so put out by the four cents a pound he had

On the cover. The trawler ‘Debbie-Flo’ heads under Cape May canal bridge, returning to K >rt. Photo by A1 Schell of the Barld-Lantern.

fishermen by limiting foreign fishing within 200 miles of the U.S. coast. The extended limit served to decrease the number of foreign factory ships working offshore and to improve the local fishermen’s chances of a rebound. Foreign, vessels are permitted to fish inside the territorial zone for “underutilized species," like squid, which domestic fishermen have not harvested because of the limited U.S. market According to fishing statutes, however, if Americn fishermen can handle the catch, they have first shot at the underutilized harvest. By agreements with the factory ship owners called “joint ventures,” local fishermen can land squid and other underutilized species and sell their catches to the foreigners, who process the catch underweigh. While joint venuture harvests are limited by law, Lund's and another Cape May-Wildwood dock have nearly cornered the market on the seasonal quotas for Illex squid. Lund’s has been allocated 8,500 metric tons of the catch out of the optimum harvest of 30,000 metric tons for its contract with a Portugeuese processing ship and another 850 metric -tons for a Japanese factory ship deal. International Sea Food Trading Company, operated by Daniel Cohen of Sea Harvest, was allotted 5,050 metric tons of Illex for its foreign squid contracts. Two Sea Harvest quota requests were turned down, though. “All of them were reduced," said David Keifer, administrative officer with the Mid-Atlantic Fisheriers Management Council. "There were so many applications (for joint ventures) that there just weren't enough Illex to go around." Joint ventures are the latest innovation to hit the docks and, while they’re still causing a scramble for shares of the harvest, the arrangements with