Gloucester, Mass. —
In 1977, 18-year-old Terri Farscone showed up at the Coast Guard station in Boston to apply for a 100-ton boat captain's license.
The officers on duty laughed and told her to go home. She was not amused.
Descended from three generations of fishermen, Farscone had been fishing for 10 years out of Gloucester and off Plum Island. At 12, she'd landed her first job as a mate on a charter boat. The same year, she caught an 800-pound tuna. At 13, she skippered recreational fishing boats.
Turned away in Boston, she tried again to apply for a license, this time at the Portland, Maine, Coast Guard station. There, she recounts, they gave her an application that said "Mr." on the line for her name. She crossed that out.
"They really didn't want to give me a license," says Farscone, who is now 51 and lives in Point Judith, R.I. "But I wouldn't let them intimidate me."
Indeed, at age 19, she got what they told her was the first 100-ton commercial operator's license ever issued to a woman.
Today, of course, no such shenanigans would be likely, although women at that level of the industry remain rare.
Most women involved in commercial fishing attend to the shoreside duties of the family business, although they will rig a line when they have to. But many are at the forefront of the movement against what the fishing industry views as government over-regulation and inflexibility.
Farscone runs Rhode Island Red Seafood, a fish brokerage she says she may to lose if the government's new fisheries management policy achieves one of its stated goals — squeezing out "a sizeable fraction" of the fleet, in the words of Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration.
Farscone calls the fishing industry's current situation "an abomination."
"The scientists can categorize the fish, measure the catch, name the species, and all that," she says. "But they can't tell you how to get it."
The executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fisherman's Association is Bonnie Brady, of Montauk, on New York's Long Island.
Brady helped organize the "United We Fish" rally that brought some 5,000 fishermen and family members to Washington, D.C., in February to protest the federal government's treatment of commercial fishermen.
"We should be respected as a tax-paying industry, a lengthy line of independent family business that is being treated harshly," she says. "We need accountability for the regulators as much as the regulated."
Brady, now 47, equipped with a journalism degree and experience in the Peace Corps, says she wound up running a commercial fishing association by default about 10 years ago.
She was at an organizational meeting with her husband, Dave Aripotch, and sat listening as the fishermen "talked on and on like fishermen do."
"I stood up, grabbed the chalk, and said, 'OK, here's how to organize,'" she recalls now.
She's been running the association since 2000, on top of overseeing the shoreside business for her husband's 70-foot dragger — all the while caring for their two daughters.
"We're at a tipping point for the whole industry," says Brady, who operates as a citizen watchdog and ombudsman for the industry, monitoring and writing about political, regulatory and environmental developments.
"There are people in roles of authority who say they want 'decreased capacity' in the industry," she adds. "They don't want to talk in terms of people's lives. But 'decreased capacity' affects you, me, our neighbors, the grocery store."
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Nancy Gaines, a veteran Boston journalist, is a publishing consultant and special projects writer. She lives in Gloucester, Mass., and is married to Gloucester Daily Times reporter Richard Gaines.
Gulf Oil Spill
Related Photos
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Tina Jackson, left, and Terri Farscone are among women in the fishing industry fighting new regulation. Jackson co-founded the American Alliance of Fishermen and their Communities and raised money to sue the government over its new rules. Farscone runs Rhode Island Red Seafood, a fish brokerage. Courtesy photo
Discussion
Fisherwomen key players in fight for survival
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The gleaming cod delivered whole from the Gloucester-based Debra Ann II to shareholders in the Cape Ann Fresh Catch program were pulled from the ocean just hours earlier and only a few miles from the dock.
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Fisherwomen key players in fight for survival
In 1977, 18-year-old Terri Farscone showed up at the Coast Guard station in Boston to apply for a 100-ton boat captain's license.
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Capt. Joe Orlando has been a stalwart of the Gloucester, Mass., fishing fleet for more than 35 years.
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