The Silent Sea
BEFORE DAWN IN the coastal Maine town of Jonesport, Nick Perreault wakes up, caffeinates, and prepares before his day fishing for lobster. Driving through town, Perreault mentally gears up for another day of captaining his fishing vessel. He boards his boat garbed in layers, waterproof boots, and oil pants, and navigates out of the harbor. Operating without a deckhand, he baits, empties, stacks, and drops traps. Much of his day involves rubber-banding the lobsters’ claws, checking regulatory requirements like size minimums, and returning undersize catches back to the ocean. The frozen fish bait is pungent, which for many fishers can worsen seasickness. (Perreault’s antidote: Dramamine.) After a day out on the water, Perreault returns to the wharf, offloads his catch, and restocks bait and fuel before heading back to the mooring. A fifth-generation lobsterman who sees his work as part of his family’s legacy, Perreault is one of Maine’s roughly 5,000 lobster harvesters, and among the approximately 25,500 commercial fishers across New England. The regional fishing industry once used to employ even more. Numbers have decreased in recent decades due to a variety of factors, not least of which is climate change. By one estimate, climate change reduced direct fishing jobs in New England by an estimated 16 percent between 1996 and 2017. That figure is just for those working as commercial fishers, not the nearly 300,000 jobs across the region provided by the fisheries. Much like the 58.5 million people worldwide who work in this industry, New England fishers, too, have been experiencing firsthand the impacts of a warming planet. They feel it not only in declining catches but also in the growing tension between sustaining their livelihoods and safeguarding our increasingly fragile marine ecosystems. Science writer Jennifer Clare Ball writes about the complex challenges facing New England’s once-thriving commercial fisheries.
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