A rising tide lifts Viking Village
The Star Ledger, Sunday, August 17, 2008
By Judy Peet
Fishing ports up and down the Atlantic Seaboard are struggling to
survive, but at the pristine
He's got a 393-pound tuna on the scale, his first child on the way, a new fuel-efficient boat and a town that thinks what he does is more important than waterfront condominium conversion.
It's a big step up from the years when
environmentalists accused fishermen like Johnson of being akin to baby seal
killers.
"Today is a pretty good day," he says, watching tuna
and swordfish unloaded from the hold of his 46-foot boat, Sea Farmer. "Today
it feels like we have a future."
Optimism has been a long time coming to this small port
at the northern tip of
By the time the movie "The Perfect Storm" introduced
long-lining to the general public in 2000, the business was already a
shambles. Far fewer boats were reeling in far fewer tuna and swordfish.
Today, the annual catch in the
Barnegat Light followed the same script as other
long-line ports along the East Coast in recent years. Fishermen dropped out
of the business or switched to other catches. There were 60 long-liners at
Barnegat Light in 1990, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.
There are only about 17 today.
But Barnegat has held onto its spot as a player in the
Atlantic long-line fishery. Only
"Sure we bellyached, but we knew we had to adapt or
die," says Ernie Panachek, manager of the
"We became more environmentally responsible and more
cost-efficient. We cleaned up our image. We invited the public and the
bureaucrats in. We're doing whatever we have to so we not only survive, but
hopefully thrive."
Most famous for its lighthouse, Barnegat Light is
located just 3 feet above sea level on the northernmost tip of
The Barnegat fishermen fished by traditional methods
until the 1960s when something new came to town -- long-lining. Developed by
the Japanese in the early 1900s and expanded globally in the 1950s,
long-lining is fishing with multiple hooks strung together on a vast main
line.
There can be thousands of hooks on lines stretching for
miles. Hooks strung along the ocean floor can catch tilefish and cod. Close
to the surface, the prey are pelagics, highly migratory predators such as
tuna, swordfish and sharks.
A huge Asian appetite for these fish was supplemented
by a growing demand in
By 1990, about 700 long-line boats fished from
Long-lining is ruthlessly effective. It enables vessels
to land vastly larger quantities of fish than they could using traditional
techniques. As a result, by 1990, stocks such as swordfish, cod and tilefish
were crashing.
But it wasn't just the dwindling stocks that caught the
eye of conservationists. They also decried the fate of the so-called
by-catch -- the dolphins, sea turtles, albatrosses and other sea creatures
that were snagged or hooked inadvertently on the long-lines. The by-catch
was usually dumped in the sea dead when long-liners pulled in their catch.
Environmental organizations launched dolphin-free tuna
campaigns and convinced restaurant chefs that it was irresponsible to serve
swordfish.
National and international fish management plans shut
down some key fishing grounds and heavily regulated the rest.
Even places that could be fished had limits. This year,
although bigeye tuna are abundant off
CHANGES AHEAD
As far back as 1989, Barnegat Light fishermen could see changes coming. A
local long-liner formed Bluewater to represent the fishermen before the
National Marine Fisheries Service, which regulates catch in
The fishermen were also concerned about vital dockage
which is only two blocks from the ocean. By the mid-1990s, ports along the
"We knew that rich people didn't want to live next to
smelly docks and we were hearing the dreaded c-word: condo conversion," says
fisherman Kirk Larson, whose father is one of the co-owners of
In Barnegat Light, an estimated 20 percent of the
year-round population of 730 works in fishing or related support industries.
But they are outnumbered by the 1,100 people who own vacation homes here.
The town is also adjacent to Loveladies and Harvey Cedars, two of the most
upscale beach towns in
"In order to survive, the vacationers had to like us,"
says Larson, who turned public relations into politics and has been mayor of
Barnegat Light for the past 12 years.
The
Most of the
Last year the
The changes are not just cosmetic.
The 17 boats left at Barnegat Light with permits to
long-line have all been certified in by-catch reduction methods.
They invested in new gear that reduces by-catch and
smaller, boats, many less than 50 feet. It saves fuel and crew. They cut
trips shorter and fished closer to shore. As Johnson noted: "We fish
smarter. We are the future."
The profit margins are smaller these days, but a
long-line captain can still make $70,000 after expenses, if, as Panacek
says: "He knows where to find the fish and is willing to work very, very
hard."
Some environmentalists such as Carl Safina of the Blue
Ocean Institute still insist that the Barnegat long-liners are "the best of
a bad lot," but Richard Pearson, of the National Marine Fisheries Service
calls them: "The most responsible fishermen in the world.
"They've taken everything we've thrown at them,"
Pearson says. "They survived when we closed large areas of ocean and even
participated in experiments to reduce by-catch.
"Bluefin tuna are still in trouble, but yellowfin tuna
and swordfish rebounded beyond our expectations. They have proven that
species management can work.
"Now it's our job to support the fishermen," says
Pearson, noting that
Pearson says the department is considering opening
additional fishing grounds and will sponsor a marketing campaign, "to
convince public to buy American-caught tuna and swordfish. It's better, it's
fresher and it's more safely caught.
"Right now, these fishermen are endangered," says
Pearson. "It's time they got some help."