Article - Grand Canyons

Cover story
Grand
canyons
The Freedom pursues lobsters in the deep water below Georges Bank
By John Lee
O
n the way out to the fishing
grounds in early November,
the Freedom rolls. The day
before we leave, Hurricane
Noel has torn across Georges Bank, moving quickly — it blows out fast, consumed
by cold water. Behind Noel a swell moves
like mirrored hills, up and down, in an offshore hypnosis.
The visibility stretches to the curves of
the earth. In the wheelhouse, Marc Ducharme, fast nearing 50, plays his electric
guitar. He plays it from Newport, R.I., all
the way to Nantucket Lightship.
“I should’ve been in a band,” says Ducharme as he rips a blues chord.
Ducharme, of Portsmouth, R.I., has
been the Freedom’s only captain. The
boat was built in the 1980s. She’s a steel
72-footer with a deep draft and a low profile. She has no outriggers or stabilizers, no
shelter deck across her rails.
“When it blows, you know it,” says David Dellinger, the 23-year-old mate from
Kingstown, R.I., who’s been with Ducharme for three years. “She’s a wet boat, but
a good sea boat.”
Dellinger’s father runs an offshore
lobster boat, also out of Newport. Ever
since he was 14, Dellinger’s been lobstering, most of it offshore. He bypassed high
school to begin the trade, and one day
would like to own his own boat.
Ducharme sets his trawls (also called
strings or sets) of pots near the southwest
part of Georges Bank in a small area of the
outer continental shelf, specifically Lydonia, Gilbert and Oceanographer canyons.
He has been fishing these three canyons
for 20 years. He doesn’t leave them and
go somewhere else. Instead, he holds his
ground and waits for the run. As with the
inshore lobster fishery, territory lines are
unspoken but understood.
“These sets are too valuable to leave,”
he says.
The canyons are shaped like hooked
fingers, and the canyon walls slope down
like the side of a mountain. Ducharme
sets along the contour lines, between 70
and 200 fathoms. When he sets his gear
he keeps an eye on the fish finder and on
the loran, trying to keep his mile-long
trawl within the narrow plateau of terraced bottom.
He turns the Freedom hard to port,
hard to starboard, setting with precision.
Ducharme fishes 44 pots to a trawl. At one
end is a buoy and at the other end is a
buoy and a high flyer. The high flyer has a
radar reflector so it can be found at night.
The basic idea aboard the Freedom is
to haul and bait all the trawls in three days
and then head home. Dock-to-dock trip
length is about five days.
I
n Lydonia Canyon on the first day, despite perfect weather, the crew running
through gear in t-shirts, Ducharme isn’t
thrilled about what he is seeing — empty
pots where they should be loaded. Last
year at this time they were landing nearly
20,000 pounds of bugs a trip. Ducharme
and the crew rely on the fall and early
winter run of lobsters.
“The lobsters should be here by now,”
Ducharme says. “They should’ve dropped
The Freedom fishes the offshore lobster
fishery on Georges Bank in the fall and early
winter with 1,700 traps.
gives Ducharme an idea of how the trawl
is doing against last trip. He wants to see
an increase in numbers, which indicates
the run has begun.
Costa also makes sure the bait (skate)
is ready to go, always. A mistake here will
surely draw a tough-love comment from
Ducharme. But Costa keeps the bait —
and its strong ammonia stink — in order.
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The Freedom’s captain, Marc Ducharme,
49, plays his Fender Stratocaster on the
way to and from the lobster grounds.
John Lee photos
down from Georges and be here. But
they’re not.”
Every time an empty pot lands on the
rail, Ducharme has a comment. His comments aren’t directed at anyone in particular: “Look boys another empty!” “Hey
we caught a rock! Better band it!” After
awhile, Dellinger rolls his eyes and says,
“He gets better as the trip goes on. The
first day is always tough to get through.
Not just for him, for all of us.”
The second day, we move down to Gilbert — a steam of roughly 20 miles — and
haul, stack, and set. The lobstering is still
slow. Lots of lobsters with eggs keep getting thrown overboard, and Ducharme has
comments about the percentages of eggers
to keepers. But the lobsters we are keeping
are large, no gauge required.
Even when lobstering is slow the motions are fixed:You haul and set. Haul and
set. All day and into the night. Nineteen
hours on your feet with nothing but the
whine of rope going through the pot
hauler — or the sound of pots being slid
across the deck, the sound of voices, the
sound of the engine.
“No matter what, you still have to go
through all the motions,” says Warren
Peckham, at 34 the second oldest man on
board. He’s tall and lean and lives in Warwick, R.I.
All of the Freedom crew members live
in Rhode Island. Peckham and Dellinger
have worked many boats together and
have years of experience. On the Freedom,
Peckham and Dellinger alternate running
the hauler, which is normally the captain’s
job. Ducharme likes to lift and stack the
75-pound pots.
“Marc stacks pots because Marc’s
in love,” Dellinger says. “It keeps him
in shape. Found himself an artist — he
may be in over his head on this one. She
went to RISD,” the Rhode Island School
of Design in Providence, pronounced
rizdee.
Ducharme would disagree. “I can talk
with anyone: art, business, the world. We
should all be learning Chinese right now.”
Justin Costa, also of Portsmouth, is the
youngest on board at 19. Costa’s father
is an expert rod-and-reel fisherman, and
is good friends with Ducharme — who
also is crazy about recreational fishing, and
builds and sells his own wooden striped
bass lures, called scuds. Costa spends his
free time spear fishing.
On one bicep he has a squid tattoo, on
the other the No. 2 hooter buoy, marking
not only Costa’s arm but the seaward entrance of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay.
He is also the newest to lobstering.
“I’ve lost 20 pounds since I started here
five months ago,” he says. “I eat more and
lose weight.”
Costa bands lobsters and puts them in
the tank. As he puts them in the tank, he
counts them.This gives Ducharme an idea
of how much they have on board. It also
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JULY 2008 • NATIONAL FISHERMAN 25
12/31/07 10:14:37 AM
Cover story
O
The 72-foot Freedom steams out of Rhode
Island’s Narragansett Bay the day after
Hurricane Noel tore across Georges Bank.
He also learns fast the lobsterman’s knots:
splicing, tying gangions and tying bridles.
On this trip, all the deckhands do their
share of knot work.
Hurricane Noel hasn’t gone by without
trouble. Storm waves pummel the buoys
and high flyers and pull on the buoy lines.
These buoy lines are more than 1,400 feet
long, and when 30-foot waves tug on them,
pots tumble and trawl ends get spun up. To
help with this problem, Ducharme uses big
anchors — 400-pound chain links — on
each end of his trawls. He uses the anchors
year round — fair weather or foul.
The anchors are unwieldy and dangerous on deck. Costa, Peckham, and Dellinger are good at using the Freedom’s roll
to get the anchors from the hauler block
onto deck and then aft to the transom.
“If it weren’t for these big anchors,”
Ducharme says, “many of these trawls
would have taken us hours to untangle —
the ends would look like spaghetti.”
Even with the anchors, the crew has
their work of splicing and tying bridles;
some trawls take over an hour to sort out.
n the morning of the second day
the clouds come thick and the wind
picks up. The gale is out of the south,
coming in off the Gulf Stream. At least
it is warm. We make it through the eight
trawls at Gilbert and then steam toward
Oceanographer. The weather makes us
creep along with green water coming over
the bow.
“Weather is everything,” says Ducharme. “This kind of weather will slow the
operation to a crawl.”
By the time we reach Oceanographer,
it’s late in the day, the visibility poor, the
wind 40 knots — borderline for hauling.
Ducharme has some difficulty locating
the high flyer on the radar. “They don’t
show up well when a sea is running.” After awhile, the crew at the rail searching,
they see it. “Off to starboard,” calls out
Dellinger.
Ducharme turns the boat slightly to get
the bow near the buoy. Then Peckham
throws the grapnel. Halfway through the
trawl, a squall hits. The wind goes over 50,
and rain comes in sideways. We all know
this will be the day’s last. Dellinger says,
“You always have to at least try one. Just to
see how it goes.”
Ducharme is antsy, wound up like a
spring. He doesn’t like the weather. Peckham stacks the pots two-high, and after he
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26 NATIONAL FISHERMAN • JULY 2008
finishes each row, he ties them down with
a line. They get the entire trawl on deck
and tied down. Now Ducharme has to
turn the boat around and set back in.
Ducharme goes into the wheelhouse
and on the radar within two miles is a
very large target, a steamer inbound for
Boston. Being in a gale with no visibility
with a target nearby the size of an island
doesn’t comfort Ducharme any. He swears
at the wind and the waves. He swears at
the steamer.Then he picks what he thinks
is a lull in the waves and begins to turn
the boat around.
“Hang on boys, we’re going to be in
the trough here!” Ducharme shouts.
The Freedom takes a nasty roll and
something slams against the galley floor.
“The stress of this job will kill you,”
Ducharme says.
Once we get turned around he tells
them, “All set. Let ’er go.” Peckham,
standing aft, drops the buoy off the stern
then comes forward and sits behind the
wheelhouse.
In better weather a crewman helps the
pots off the stern, guiding them so they
don’t tangle up. But in bad weather it’s too
dangerous, and the pots go off under their
own direction. Ducharme watches them
go. All goes well until one pot catches the
gangion of another pot, which catches
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FISHING AREA
OFFSHORE LOBSTERING: The Facts
Number of participants: 140 Area 3
permit holders
Size of boats: 55 to 90 feet
Fishing area: Baltimore canyon to the
Hague Line
Depths: 25 to 200 fathoms
Gear: Pots are either 50" or 40" x 26" x 16".
Many have double parlors and are made of
wire. Rope for gangions, bridles, and ground
line; buoys and high flyers complete the gear.
R.I.
Capital investment: Boats are generally worth $300,000 and up. A single trawl,
together with pots and lines and buoys is
around $6,000. Bait costs about $60,000 to
$80,000 a year.
Annual landings: Seven management areas
cover both inshore and offshore waters, from
Maine to North Carolina. In 2006 lobstermen
landed about 93 million pounds. Maine’s inshore fishery accounted for almost 80 percent
of the total landings. Rhode Island landed
about 3.7 million pounds.
Season: Year round
Permits: Individual historical allocation:
Every permit holder qualifies for between 800
and 2,400 traps.
Regulations: Trap limits and a 3 1/2-inch
gauge
Ex-vessel value: $4 to $8 per pound
Market: Global
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JULY 2008 • NATIONAL FISHERMAN 27
Cover story
the gangion of a third — off the transom
slides a mess of pots. Ducharme says with
a shrug, “Nothing you can do about it but
watch them go.”
When the pots are off, Ducharme records the end’s position and we lay the
boat up — closing the wheelhouse door
and settling in for a night of weather. Hot
dogs with lettuce pose as dinner. An episode of “Prison Break” is cued up on the
DVD player.
Ducharme sits in the wheelhouse, the
guitar in its case. He talks on the radio with
the Miss Julie, an offshore lobster boat out
of Sandwich, Mass. They talk about how
the breeze is going to blow out by morn-
ing. And it does.
At dawn the
wind comes out of
the west and the
air
temperature
drops 30 degrees.
We don our winter hats and thicker sweatshirts. The
crew finishes hauling through the
gear, working fast
to make up time
lost to weather.
Capt. Marc Ducharme prefers stacking the 75-pound pots to the typical
Ducharme
captain’s job of running the hauler. He sets roughly 44 pots per string.
works the hauler
think. Below deck, in the lobster tank, are
at full speed. Peckham, Dellinger, and
7,000 pounds of lobsters. The trip after
Costa work quickly, “like a well oiled mathis one, they land 11,000 pounds. Then
chine,” says Peckham, smiling. And then
15,000. Ducharme has good numbers
Peckham shouts, “Last pot coming up.”
right through January. His faith in the
Ducharme turns the boat around and
Georges Bank fishing grounds is proving
gets ready to set back in. “Time to go
well founded.
home,” he shouts out the companionway. He unbuckles the guitar case and
John Lee has worked on draggers, lobster boats
pulls out his Fender Stratocaster. Then he
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Justin Costa, at 19 the youngest crewman on the Freedom, bands and counts the incoming
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