CAPE MAY COUNTY MAGAZINE 8 JUNE '83

23

Whaling, county's first industry. Livingston, one of the Pound Net crew, built PT boats at the Leesburg Shipyard in Port Norris. La Rosa’s son, Pat, married Livingston's daughter and moved his family into his parents' home when they died. Now 55, Pat, a lieutenant with the Sea Isle police, recalled his bitter sweet fishing days. POLLUTION, he said, killed trap fishing off the coast in the mid-1950s when more than 100 fishermen sailed from their backyard lagoons to tackle the trap nets. Now that the pollution is under control, his sons want him to start trap fishing again. La Rosa's enthusiastic: “You can catch 10 tons a day with no energy — five gallons of gas are all you need. Those draggers use 300 gallons of fuel a day." Two 58-foot draggers, the “Dewey'' and the "Barbara Ann,” operate out of Sea Isle during the winter, but from Cape May-Wildwood in the summer, hauling their catches of flounder, weakfish, butterfish and squid. Two 60-foot lobsterboats (potboats), “Doc 11” and "finest Kind” also home port at Sea Isle. Some 27 fishermen and 10 deckhands are employed in the county's second commercial fishing port. Its facilities and equipment were valued at $2 8 million last year and the total catch was then worth $300,000. As with trap fishing off Sea Isle, shellfishing throughout the county and state suffered from pollution that closed many of the oyster and clam beds in the late '50s through the '70s. A 1938 fishery survey recorded that, while clammers earned half the income of oystermen from their yearly

harvest, they outnumber the oystermen 20 to one. There are still 200 times as many clam beds as oyster beds. Pollution of the shellfishing grounds inshore and in the Delaware Bay had been detected as a potential problem in the beginning of the century Harvesting was banned in several thousand acres of inshore'clam and oyster beds near Wildwood as early as 1958 — 25,000 acres were closed within the state. By 1979, shellfishing was prohibited in 25 percent of the state waters. Compounding that problem, a shellfish virus struck in the late ’50s. Seventy-five percent of the bay oysters were destroyed by the disease. The oyster industry, which had reaped a million bushel harvest in 1953, took.in only 20,000 bushels in 1960. Although 2,000 people had been employed in the Bivale oystering businesses a generation ago, only 200 workers remained in 1977. UNTIL WORLD WAR II, surf clams had only been used as bait With the demand for new wartime food sources, however, those clams became popular and New Jersey supplied the nation with 96.

Town Bank, before the fall.

percent of its supply between 1961-1966 Pollution and overfishing decimated the catch by 1975 so the government imposed

z

DOS

uotas on the surf clam catch and

e number of boats employed to

harvest it.

With each setback, the local fisherman came up with a way to overcome it and make a living When surf clams declined, their boats went farther offshore after guayhogs and scallops — both shellfish, which, like the surf clam, were rarely harvested before. Now scallops rank after clams as the county 's second most valuable catch With careful management and quotas, inshore shell fishing is making a comeback. Some of the polluted beds were reopened in. 1981, more were opened last month Researcher Koedel predicted a steadily more bountiful havest in the future

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