View from the Pool

The hammer's fallen on the Maine sardine industry. http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/137081.html
I've been reading a lot about it lately and I'm still thinking about my trip to Prospect Harbor last week. I'm worried about what the herring limits might mean for other fisheries or lobstering too.

One day a while back I was knocking around the Boston waterfront and found a bronze marker noting the location of the first successful cannery in the US. I can't remember the name on the marker, or exactly where it is or what the date was, but I'm pretty sure the whole herring factory era lasted less two hundred years. That's several lifetimes, but just a blink in the larger scale of time. In that time it supported a lot of households in Maine.

In the 1980s it was a boom and bust business with huge landings and low prices one year and higher prices but fewer fish the next. One fisherman friend told me with a sardonic grin once that has soon as he got a good shut off of fish somewhere people came out of the woodwork, old friends and relatives he hadn't heard from in years showed up to help him harvest the fish and to share in the profits. It was hardly worth the effort and cost of doing business after he got through sharing the wealth he said. But he couldn't stop looking for herring and hoping every year that the August Darks would find him sitting on a cove full of fish. There might be enough to pay down some debt, help out his relatives and friends and maybe even get another twine dory in anticipation of a better year ahead. It's that sort of optimism that will see the community of Prospect Harbor through this latest bit of bad news.

Hard Times at the Factory

Today I'm thinking about sardines. That's because I recently read about the closing of the last sardine cannery in the US in Prospect Harbor, Gouldsboro, Me this week. The Bangor Daily News story told of 130 people losing their jobs and how the most recent round of herring protection measures means that the cannery can no longer get enough fish to can. Back when I was reporting fishing news rthere were 35 herring canneries in Maine and thousands of people earned their living in the factories, on the boats or in the supporting services and stores all along the coast of Maine. At the time, Stinson had operations in Prospect Harbor, Belfast, and Rockland. Now they're all gone as are the dories loaded with twine in coves and harbors, the purse seiners, and the sardine carriers, the most graceful of commercial boats on the coast to my eye. I guess it really is the end of the sardine as we knew it, and I'm sad about that. I knew some of those people who made a living cutting up fish and putting them in cans or catching them after long cold nights of tending nets. They were good people who worked hard and were quick to help others.


So on Thursday, my friend Dick and I packed up our cameras and headed down to Prospect Harbor to see for ourselves how Gouldsboro might make out without the herring fishery. The closure of the nearby US Navy base there, downturn in the tourist economy and hard times [dare I say collapse] of commercial fishing, limited shell fish and urchin fishery paints a grim picture of this ironically picture perfect section of the coast. We checked out Main Street. Dick and I visited an optimistically trendy coffee shop with empty tables, and comfortable couches, shelves of teas and a case full of baked goods. We were the only customers. Across the street there's a genuine five and dime store and three empty store fronts. That's it. No gas pumps, no pizza shop, just the “For Rent” signs.
We drove much of the day taking in the sights and really thinking about what it would feel like to call the peninsula home. I told Dick about the follow up story in the BDN which said the state was sending a task force down to meet with the cannery workers about retraining for new jobs. We spent a lot of time looking around behind empty buildings and along shore for where those jobs might be. Unless we missed some secret underground bunkers packed full of jobs, I'm thinking those cannery workers are facing a terrible choice. Stay in the community and starve or leave on the chance that the new training will get them a job in some other town. This seems particularly chancy for the older workers, say over 50. If I lived there, on the Schoodic Peninsula I wouldn't want to leave my community, my family, friends and church to get retrained so I could work the job in an office cube that might or might not be waiting for me. I wouldn't want to watch my town die either. Like I said, it's a terrible choice.