Travel anywhere on the Seacoast and you’ll see fishing boats along the shore. But where to eat their fresh fish? Good luck with that. About 11 million pounds of fish, including just over 3 million pounds of fin fish, landed on the New Hampshire coast last year, and nearly all of it left the state after being unloaded on the pier.

Like most of us, I didn’t have a clue that our fish are heading down the interstate. But for those who’ve been watching the industry consolidate over the last 30 years, it’s like standing by while trucks full of money disappear down the road. And seeing 400 years of tradition being sold to out-of-staters. And, for some reason, saying “no, thanks” to an affordable supply of fresh healthy food, only to buy it back a few days later and older, at a higher price.

The math doesn’t make sense to a small group of people who have been meeting at Portsmouth City Hall since October working to turn the tide. This week, they’ll launch “NH Seafood Fresh and Local,” a new brand intended to help consumers identify locally landed seafood, species that are both fresh and managed to sustainability.

And on Sept. 19, the first ever N.H. Fish & Lobster Festival in Prescott Park will honor 400 years of the local fishing industry with fresh local seafood, demonstrations of filleting and trap building, tours of fishing boats, and all types of entertainment.
Why all the fuss over fishing?

Despite a growing body of rules and regulations to manage the resource, we could face a future in which wild caught fish will be as rare and expensive as premium caviar is today. At this moment, we still have common access and an unbroken chain of fishing activity going back to pre-Colonial times. This committee of non-profits, citizen volunteers, boat owners, business owners and local officials wants to keep it that way.

What the group advocates is simple: If you want to still be eating fish in 10 or 50 years, we have to support our local fishermen today, so they can be part of the solution.

a parallel universe

I became involved in the committee on behalf of Seacoast Local, to help strategize ways of getting more locally landed fish on local plates. Stepping into the world of local fishermen has been like entering a parallel universe, one that exists alongside our daily lives but is utterly disconnected from it.

The story starts with one fisherman who went to the Portsmouth City Council looking for some recognition for the industry. Erik Anderson has been fishing off the coast since he was a teenager.

“The industry was an asset for the city from a promotional point of view. There’s all this literature, brochures, with pictures of boats, a promotional video for the city with a fishing boat on it. There’s a lot of acknowledgement from the city, but there’s no discussion,” Anderson recalls of his decision to approach the City Council.

“I called (Mayor) Tom Ferrini and said, ‘The city doesn’t ever recognize the fishing industry, but just know that it’s there. Engage where you see fit, but just know a little more about it.’ I literally think nobody does know.”

What Anderson wants us to know: Fishing is New England’s oldest industry, working some of the world’s richest and most diverse fishing grounds. New England fisheries catch only a small percent of the worldwide total of 95 million tons of fish per year, and they’re currently heaviliy managed to rebuild stocks. Very little of the problem is due to today’s fleet, but the consequences fall squarely on their shoulders. As local fishermen often say, they seem to have a target on their backs.

Anderson has worked various aspects of the trade, returning to lobstering a few years ago. Lobsters fall under different regulations, and lobsters from local boats are widely available in our restaurants and markets. But Erik thought it might be worth trying to engage the city in the groundfish problem. What he found was community support he never knew existed.

“I was aware of everybody’s existence, but never thought the group would come to the table and sit down and have a discussion and get to the point we have,” Anderson says.

Doug Bates, president of the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce, says it speaks to what this community is all about.

“This is a town where the number one way people are with each other is through relationships. People get together, talk, exchange very powerful ideas in a very short time and make a quick connection.” 

Among those at the table were city councilors Eric Spear and Esther Kennedy, the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce, Seacoast Eat Local and Seacoast Local. Also, the Portsmouth Lobster Company, Eastman’s and Seaport Fish, along with Slow Food Seacoast, UNH Sea Grant, and restaurant owners. Then there were fishing and lobster vessel operators. Suddenly, the room was filled with people who otherwise might never meet, working together to support the local fishermen.

local resource

There’s hope that the industry can tap into a surge of consumer demand for unique local products, and keep more fish here before it’s shipped out of town to create an added benefit for the local industry and the community.

“The best outcome in the world is that those guys regain some of the livelihood they’ve lost. This is not snap your fingers and everyone will be back where they were 10 years ago, but they can regain some of what they lost through this new brand,” Bates says.
The “NH Seafood Fresh and Local” brand promises the fish is the freshest and most direct available from local boats, who are fishing under federal rules for sustainability.

“With brand labeling you will instantly know four things. It’s super fresh because it’s local. It’s a sustainably managed fishery, so you’re not eating ‘bad’ fish. It’s seasonal and you’re they’re eating within the community. You’re having a true New England seafood experience. You’re not eating seafood from China in New England,” says Duncan Boyd, owner the former Victory restaurant in Portsmouth, who is organizing restaurants to prepare sample tastings at the Sept. 19 festival.

The idea is that it will benefit all of us. Tourists will have one more great reason to spend money here. Less trucking will be better for the environment. More fish sold here would maintain local relationships and traditions, and help build our local economy. Studies show that local, independent restaurants return as much 56 percent of their revenue directly into the local economy. When they can source their fish here, the benefit of that local dollar starts to multiply even more.

Rumbletree advertising agency donated services to create the brand. Barrie Hanlon of Rumbletree says it also changed her personal perspective.

“It certainly put a face to the benefit of buying local. Sitting around the table with local fishermen and hearing about their businesses and the struggles showed how buying local can impact the economy in your back yard and kind of make the community a better place. “

But local distribution also has to pay for itself, support a wide range of local markets and restaurants, and depends on businesses with proper federal licenses.

The N.H. coast currently only has three businesses purchasing ground fish from boat owners: Eastman’s and Yankee Fishermen’s Cooperative, both in Seabrook, and Seaport Fish in Portsmouth. All three have been to the committee meetings. Seaport has been operating the longest.

Rich Pettigrew, who bought the family business from his uncle a few years ago, has operated as a wholesaler and retailer for years, selling local fish but also trucking fish up from Boston six days a week.

“It’s a hard business, but I like the part of it on the unloading side, working with the fishermen, coming up with a fair number on the fish where everyone can make a little off of it. It’s nice to be able to have those relationships and get them the best number we can get them. And if we can keep the fish local, even better,” he says.

His real work begins for the season when the inside area of the fishing grounds opens up for the season on July 1, and fishermen are staying closer to home. He hopes a few more boats than last year will choose to berth in Portsmouth, where he and another truck owner will take the fish off their hands. Some will stay at Seaport Fish. The rest will head to market in Boston or Portland, Maine.
Prices fluctuate daily depending on the weather and Canadian imports on the market—50 percent of Canadian fish is imported through New England, affecting our prices tremendously.

Pettigrew understands the pressure fishermen are under. They are allowed fewer and fewer days at sea, and there are more regulations. They are paying for every day at sea, and investing in better nets and technology to record their catch. The fishermen are working hard to abide by policy, but policy is ever evolving, making it nearly impossible to craft a business plan from one year to the next.

The federal government been struggling to manage the fisheries since 1976, during an era when stocks have dropped to historic lows. In most cases, they seem to be rebuilding. But commercial fishing only one piece of the puzzle. Evaluating the total resource includes many unknowns, including biology, climate change and more. Even scientists admit that they don’t fully have a handle on restoring fish stocks, especially in diverse environment like New England.

And now the National Marine Fisheries Service is changing the rules dramatically. Their new plan divides the fishing commons into quasi-property rights groups called sectors, each with an allocated annual catch. Fishermen are being asked to join into binding sector agreements with other fishermen, and together decide how to ration their catch among themselves. For those who choose not to join a sector, the rules will become more restrictive.

“That makes the permits worth less money than even before. They kind of got hit all at once by everything. It really stung,” Pettigrew says.

Anderson says he’s thrilled by the work being done by the fishing committee, but fishermen are up against so much more. “On one side of scale we’ve done this great thing, on the other side is the story of what’s going on in the industry. I don’t know where the scale is going to level off. We’ve done something that has great prospects, but I don’t know if there’s going to be anyone left to deliver the product that we’re trying to promote.”
new rules

“A bunch of fishermen in partnership with themselves and the government? That is a big unknown,” says Pat Anderson (no relation to Erik), whose family operates F/V Rimrack and F/V Madrigan out of Rye Harbor. She also participates in the fishing industry commitee.
Based on feedback at the open hearings in Portland June 24, she is among a majority who are profoundly upset with the prospect of sectors.

Among the problems cited at the meeting were that the new plan is poorly crafted and defined, and will be confusing and expensive to create, monitor and report, while diminishing the value of existing permits. Evidence from other fishing regions shows that it will reduce the size of the fleet even further. And will it help the fish stocks? No one knows.

“It’s the same thing as with the bailout. We’re going to do this whether it’s right or wrong, whether we’re prepared or not, and it’s going ot happen,” Pat Anderson says.

Erik Anderson served on the New England Fisheries Management Council from 1995 to 2004. He knows most of the New England fishing community by first name. Some of them say they will go out of business when the new rules take effect in May 2010, in part due to consolidation of the resource.

“Now you have an allocation, and because the allocation is specific, there’s consolidation because it’s a commodity. And the ones with deepest pockets will be buying it up,” Anderson says, summing up more concerns that were relayed by fishermen at the meetings in Portland.

The new rules begin to separate fishing from fishermen, families and communities. It’s easier for the government to regulate fewer and more consolidated businesses, but at a social cost.

“In each community you see the structure, the social implications, the employment implications, just how it weaves itself into the fabric of the community, and this whole process seems to be shredding it, and I don’t like that,” Erik Anderson says.

community strength

Fishermen like Pat Anderson and Erik Anderson may not realize it, but they can credit a bit of their livelihood to the great, great, great grandfather of Ben Anderson (also no relation). Half-serious, half-joking, the executive director of Prescott Park Arts Festival notes that Capt. Ben Anderson ushered in the era of over-fishing. While the Grand Banks had lured European fishermen for 300 years, it was his record return with 207,200 pounds of cod that convinced so many from northeastern shores to follow in his wake.
Growing up in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Ben Anderson watched the cod industry collapse. When he began thinking last fall about bringing a local food festival to Prescott Park, he also was reading headlines about the plight of local fishermen.

Supporting the fishermen was natural, and the N.H. Fish & Lobster Festival was born. “I was really excited about this whole idea coming together,” he says. “The power of the festival is that you get people out, they’re having fun, and they’re still absorbing all this information.”

There’s enough fish caught in New England to feed the region and then some, but the species landed here don’t always align with public taste. In addition to entertainment and education, the festival on Sept. 19 will bring in local restaurant owners to prepare food and share their expertise, encouraging an appetite for underutilized species.

Doug Bates will be among the first in line. “I am waiting for their promise that, as Duncan said to us, ‘you don’t know what fresh fish tastes like because you’ve never actually had it.’”

It’s fitting that the festival takes place in Portsmouth’s South End, home to the fishermen’s pier and fishing activities going back to pre-Colonial days. The festival has received seed funding from the Friends of the South End and other groups. Esther Kennedy, who owns a 22-berth marina in the neighborhood, also serves on the fishing committee.

“The bottom line is I love helping the fishermen, I enjoy working with them and respect them. They bring a culture to our community that shouldn’t be lost,” Kennedy says.

One of the highlights of the festival will be a tour conducted by Strawbery Banke Museum. The tour features a rare view of five co-existing working waterfront activities all in one location, encompassing the history of sailing and submarine defense to commercial fishing.

“This tour gives people a sense of why we care to preserve this. It’s an essential part of our community. It built it, shaped it, and is vital to it. It’s as worth preserving as any building or statue,” says Michelle Moon, director of education at Strawbery Banke and also a volunteer on the fishing committee.

When she worked at Mystic Seaport museum, the education program included standing on the deck of the L.A. Dunton, a 1921 Gloucester fishing schooner, which, like hundreds of schooners, caught cod and halibut.

“We would demonstrate how they would be split, mostly deboned and covered with salt to create salt cod in the same fashion as was done in New England since the 1500s. We would do things like take out the ear bones to show people, because they are so beautiful and feathery, and talk about the life cycle and how it migrates and what it eats.”

It was inevitable that she would notice our forbears were typically pulling in 50-pound cod, while today they are 10 to 25 pounds.
Not a lover of seafood at the time, she became engaged by the traditions, and by her adventures as a waitress at a local restaurant, which specialized in home cooked food. The restaurant was two blocks from the town pier in Stonington, the largest fishing port in Connecticut. It opened her eyes.

“Even though people feel it is hard to interest the public in species they haven’t heard of, if you focus, we found regulars who would come back and try anything and everything. There’s a lot of variety out there,” Moon says. Before she knew it, she too began craving cod, flounder, black sea bass, northern shrimp and scallops.

“I have a little struggle because I know fisheries need management. For me, those questions are important. But there is another priority we have to look at. Our active fishing community might die if we don’t support it,” says Moon.

“I believe we can build sustainable fisheries, but we can’t build it if all the fishermen go out of business. They’re the ones who are going to build it. We need to see them through until we know more and can do more. We’ve got to support them so they can be around to do that work.”