Early October in New England is a dreamy time of year. The trees are just starting to turn, with splotchy reds and yellows appearing among the top branches, and the changing colors are slowly working their way down. The days are still long, and the sun warm on your back. At night the temperature drops, and you can feel the summer receding into the distance. The air smells different.
On one of those perfect October afternoons, I ventured out to the Branford Land Trust to go fly fishing with three friends. It was my first time and I was excited to learn from my fly-fishing enthusiast companions. Though I spend all my days thinking about fish and the people who catch them, I am pitifully inexperienced when it comes to casting a line.
“Though I spend all my days thinking about fish and the people who catch them, I am pitifully inexperienced when it comes to casting a line.”
We parked along the road and meandered our way around a field of squash, through some woods, and down to the salt marsh. As we got closer to the shore, we started to hear a furious splashing. The woods cleared and the Long Island Sound came into view. The water was bubbling and jumping and sparkling with striped bass and bluefish (or, as Italian fishermen would say, “bollendo”—boiling like a pot of spaghetti). The larger predatory fish were chasing schools of alewives as they scattered frantically in all directions. The stripers and bluefish were on their way south for the winter, fattening up for the cold months ahead. It was one of those awestruck situations where you don’t really know what else to do but laugh at yourself and laugh at your good fortune. I have never in my life seen so many fish.
After learning to cast—back and forth and back and forth—and catching and releasing striper after striper [1], the glow on the marsh grasses was starting to fade with the day, and I decided to keep the next fish I caught for dinner. It was a bluefish, only about a foot and a half long but a strong swimmer. It put up a good fight.
I cleaned and de-scaled the fish, and we set up a small charcoal grill and threw it on top. Its skin crisped up and its fatty flesh solidified with the heat. Too eager to wait, we ate it straight from the grill with our hands. As I pulled flakes of warm fish off the sticky bones, I thought about the disconnect between the wild, slippery act of fishing and the solid fish that ends up on our plates—or in this case pinched between our fingers.
Seafood is palpably absent from most conversations about food systems and food communities, and many of the voices representing fisheries are equally absent. Most fishers in this country (with plenty of exceptions) probably don’t think of themselves as part of a food system. Rarely does a fisherman sell his fish directly to a consumer, which widens the gap between fisher and eater and obscures the idea of a cohesive system. More commonly, once a catch of fish lands, it makes its way through a series of mid-chain players who may be dealers, processors, aggregators, traders, wholesalers, and finally retailers of some sort. Only then does it make its way onto somebody’s plate. While our terrestrial food system has similarly convoluted supply chains, the wild nature of fish, different conceptions of marine property, and a wholly separate fisheries regulatory system make the slippery fish just that much more removed from its eventual eater.
“I thought about the disconnect between the wild, slippery act of fishing and the solid fish that ends up on our plates—or in this case pinched between our fingers.”
On a more basic level, it is hard to conceive of a community that is not located on solid ground. The idea of an agricultural community is simpler to define—say, by farmers who live in the same town or sell at the same market. But how do you take a wild animal, and the people who chase it, and gather them together? What does a “fishing community” look like? Is it fishers who live in the same place, or fish from the same dock, or follow the same stocks? Is it a geographically dispersed group of fishers who share a common interest?
The concept of community is an important one. Communities allow people to organize and to advocate for themselves, or for the betterment of something that matters to them. Under U.S. fisheries law, a place-based fishing community is a required unit for management purposes.
But just because a group of fishers resides in the same town doesn’t necessarily mean they operate as a network or community. Recent studies have explored “communities at sea” that are built around shared fishing grounds and information-sharing rather than common shore-based geographies. Lots of folks are doing incredible work to bring seafood into the food systems conversation. Organizations like the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, Dock to Dish and LocalCatch.org, for example build networks of fishers who can advocate changes in policies shift markets toward more equitable and sustainable ends.
Community takes many forms—based at sea, on the ground, or in a practice—and communities of fishers can help bridge that gap between a wild animal and a flaky finger-full of fish flesh.
After the bones of my bluefish were picked clean, we climbed into our tents for the night. The next morning, I woke to the sound of my buddy Nick cackling with joy down by the water. The stripers were back with a vengeance. We spent the morning casting our lines—back and forth and back and forth—but I wasn’t so lucky this time. The slippery fish continued their migration south, and they’re not to return again until Spring.
[1] In Connecticut, the daily catch limit for recreational fishing is one striped bass with a minimum length of 28 inches. Any other stripers must be unhooked and released back into the water.
Emily studies environmental management at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and is interested in the intersection of fisheries policy, fisherfolk, and climate change.