My
assignment? Spend some time down at Schellegner’s Landing
and watch the  fishermen come in.
Now, let’s clarify. Not the sport fishermen –
the
real fishermen. The ones whose roots go back
to the whalers and Moby Dick and all that.
That would be the fishermen who risk their
lives and earn their living at the most
dangerous occupation in the world.
Schellegner’s Landing is where
The Lobster House calls home so, before
I can hang out, I clear it with the head man
down there, Keith Laudeman - CEO of The
Lobster House and all things remotely
related to fish.
Keith says it’s ok and so I’m out the door
and on the dock at 8 AM. Eight AM??? Why did
I even go to bed? That’s like the crack of
dawn. Who gets up that early?
Fishermen – that’s who. Even Keith gets to
work at 7am. Geez doesn’t he know he’s a
bigwig and could stroll in at say noonish?
No
one’s really around as I walk on passed the
Raw Bar. I see boats docked alongside an
area which says Employees Only. Do Not Cross
Beyond This Line. - or some such thing as
that. So – you were thinking what? That I
would turn
around and go home? No way. I march right
through there and as soon as I cross over
into the other world, I get the same feeling
that I used to get when I went near the coal
mines where my father worked.
This
is a world about which I know nothing and
never will really. I can’t imagine being 70
miles or more out to sea. I can’t imagine
sleeping, not when I want to sleep or when
it is customary to sleep, but when it is
convenient to sleep. I can’t imagine being
surrounded with all that sea life. When I
walk onto the docks, I sense all of these
things and try to absorb as much as I can.
First
– there’s the smell. It smells fishy.
Shocked – you’re shocked. But here’s what is
 most shocking. It’s a fresh smell. Not a
stale one. It’s a smell more of the
ocean than anything else.
Then there’s the sounds that I hear. I hear very little meaningless
chatter but rather the sound of equipment –
machines running on the boats, fork lifts
moving large containers of ice about the
warehouse. The men are very quiet. At least
on this Tuesday morning, they work quietly
and efficiently as though they’ve done this
hundreds, if not thousands of times before.
For one thing, the machines are so loud,
talking would be a waste. And there is no
time to waste. The fish has to
 be
unloaded, iced, weighed and sent on its way,
very quickly.
I, on the other hand, am looking for someone
to talk to. I look to my left and I see a
large warehouse with a conveyor belt
running. Before I go in to check it out, I
want to see the fishermen unloading their
catch. I’m lucky. The crew of the Excalibur
out of Point Judith, Rhode Island is
hoisting huge galvanized buckets filled with
tons of wee fish onto a conveyor belt.
Actually, the bucket tips the fish onto the
conveyor. I just bet that’s the same fish I
saw sliding down the beltway in the
warehouse.
 I
feel like such a girl but I might as well go
with it. After I take loads of pictures, I
ask the man on the top deck what kind of
fish it is.
“Squid. You know. Calamari.”
Wow. I’m afraid to ask anymore because they
seem so busy but I do check out their boat
which is very different from the boat in
front of it – The Coppa-Setic. The Excalibur
seems to have its own mini-conveyor system
as opposed to the Coppa-Setic which I’m told
is a scallop boat and has a giant net on the
front of it.
I
decide to pop into the warehouse. I watch as
the conveyor belt moves squid along. It
looks like Niagara Falls or in this case
Squid Falls.  Thousands of white fish flowing
down to the bottom of the falls. Then, the
squid are scooped into a large (VERY large)
plastic container. When the container is
full, it is covered with ice and sent on its
way. The men attending this process politely
let me take all the pictures I want. I ask
one of the gentlemen in charge of scooping
how much squid is in this catch but he
apparently doesn’t speak English very well
and points to a man across the room.
The man is Dave Wilburn. He is the dock
foreman and he looks as though he’s just
stepped out of a New England painting.
He is
standing by a large scale and has a
clipboard in his hand. He is tall, thin. His
face chiseled and weathered. He has a skull
cap on. It is damp and cold on this
particular morning. He is wearing a canary
yellow windbreaker and slicker pants to
match. Waterproofed boots cover his feet. He
knows what boats are coming in – two more
after this. Four more tomorrow. Wednesday’s
boats are part of The Lobster House fleet.
He
knows just how much squid came in today –
50,000 pounds caught off the coast of Cape
May, about 70 miles out, and how much will
probably come in tomorrow – as it turns out
another 55,000 pounds of squid plus sea bass
from the crew of the Barbara Pauline and the
Alexandra Michelle. The Coppa-Setic unloaded
400 pounds of scallops.
He knows that the squid will stop being fished at midnight Saturday. He
knows what boats are coming in and when
they’re coming in. I can’t really watch the
boats come in he says, because these are day
trippers and they come in at all
 hours
during the night. If he isn’t standing by
the scales, looking out at the dock, or
checking the equipment, Dave is at his desk,
hunched over paperwork in a dimly lit
section of the warehouse.
Keith Laudeman told me just the day before that 225,000 pounds of squid
and 4 million pounds of scallops came into
the dock last week. That’s a lot of seafood
to keep track of and I have a funny feeling
Dave can account for every ounce of it.
The
fork-lift man – Patrick McCullen asks me
what I’m doing. He asks me if I’ve ever been
to any other docks. I, of course, plead
ignorance. He says, with a great deal of
pride, that if I were at any other dock, I
wouldn’t be able to walk around as
 easily
without fear of falling or tripping. He
tells me that The Lobster House docks are
the safest and cleanest of any around.
As I’m
leaving, I see a crew member from the
Coppa-Setic. They’re getting reading to
reposition the boat. Gary Arrington is tying
the rope to the dock. He points to their
sister boat, the New Lady. The Coppa-Setic,
he tells me is just two months old. The New
Lady, who obviously isn’t so new, is resting
for now. I ask him how long he’s been doing
this. “Over 20 years,” he says. I can feel
my eyes opening wide in surprise. “Really?
You don’t look that old.” He laughs and
tells me - “You got to take care of your
body.” “Will you go back out today,” I ask.
He nods yes.
Well,
I have to go now because there is work to be
done and I don’t want to get in their way
but I’m kind of sad at thought of leaving
because one or two mornings in the
 month
of February can’t begin to tell me what life
is really like here but then how mornings
would I need? One thing I can do though is
to pop into The Lobster House Fish Market
and see if I can find today’s catch.
And
there it is. How cool is that? Right near
the front of the long case are four bins –
Squid, Cleaned Squid, Squid Tentacles, and
Scallops. Now, people will buy them – maybe
even me. Yes, I think I will and when I make
dinner tonight, I’ll think about how
this food made it to our table. |
