By Richard Gaines
CNHI
Gloucester, Mass. —
Russell Sherman believes he and his buddy Glen Yngve, now in Alaska, are the only two Harvard graduates in commercial fishing, unless you count the ones who regulate the industry.
Sherman, a child of Yankee stock from Putnam, Conn., and a scholarship student at prep school and Harvard, fell victim to the allure of fishing when Yngve introduced him to a "fishing boat summer" after college graduation in 1971.
Sherman was smitten by the rewards that came to him as a hireling on the crew.
"I got better at it and was making as much money as Dad," he says. "In 1973, in five days of king-crabbing, I made $2,700."
He deck-handed for 13 years, then bought his first boat.
It was the Eagle Scout in him, and his adventurer's heart, that pushed him to go all in and become a self-employed fisherman with a crew of three of his own, he said.
He said he got "the mechanics" first, and later "the art" of it, figuring out where the fish are.
"It's a gambler's game," said Sherman.
Sherman doesn't see himself as the gambling sort but said the business of fishing has forced him to become one.
Like many of his colleagues, he bought up fishing permits from other fishermen when regulators reduced the number of days fishermen would be allowed to fish.
But he lost the gamble when the New England Fisheries Management Council, an arm of the federal government, changed the rules of the game. Instead of days at sea, the council decided to base commercial fishing quotas on a 10-year catch history.
What mattered was how much fish the permit holder had caught. If the permit holder hadn't caught any fish, the fisherman who bought that permit holder's days at sea was left with nothing.
"Sixty-eight percent of the permit holders were holding paper with no value," said Sherman.
Even permits with good catch history were devalued by the related decision by the council to give preferential allocations to the recreational sector and a small group of fishermen on Cape Cod who had pioneered the fishing cooperative approach.
The preferential allocations meant that the bulk of the commercial fleet had to share a smaller "pie."
Sherman says he and his colleagues were left with 18 percent less haddock and 12 percent less cod than they would have been allowed in an equal distribution.
The new catch shares system has left Sherman with few options.
"I've reached a brick wall," he said. "I'm in survival mode."
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Richard Gaines is a reporter for the Gloucester, Mass., Daily Times. Contact him at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.
