Boston Fishermen

Somewhere between five and six in the morning Joe Germano stops his white jeep on a Somerville street to pick up Louis Sevilitti. They drive in silence to the Essex Delicatessen or a similar all-night restaurant where they know all the "regulars" and where Joe orders a bagel and tea, Louis coffee and an English. Then they make their way down Atlantic Ave, to the wharf where Louis' boat, the Salvatore, is moored, and motor out past the airport in the sunrise.

Joe and Louis are two of few remaining Boston-based fishermen. Louis small boat is one of no more than eighteen boats, large and small, that go out from Boston Harbor on a regular basis. The Salvatore and other small boats fish in the Harbor itself or the Quincy bay and sell the fish daily directly to the many fish markets that line the fish pier. The bigger boats can go out for several days at a stretch and auction off their fish on return. Prices fluctuate with competition: the more boats that come in on one day, the less fish is worth per pound. Prices are also affected by how much fish is trucked in from Canada on a given day. Fish that comes in by road is free of import duty; fish that comes in by boat is subject to excise taxes that pay the costs of running the fish pier--unloading the boats and wheeling the fish to the companies with the highest bids.

Fishing is dying out as an industry in Boston because of the city's high cost of living and also because of the over-fishing all along the East Coast. Boston Fishermen blame this on the large government subsidized foreign fleets that fish as close as 12 miles to the coast, and are for a 200 mile limit.

Louis talks with a certain nostalgia of the days--only ten years ago--when Atlantic Avenue was lined with fish stores and there were two large fish piers instead of one. "You should have seen it--this whole place." He waves his arm. Louis started fishing with his father 20 years ago and then took off on his own. His two brothers work at Great Atlantic Fish Co. and come to talk to him when he brings in the day's catch in the afternoon. Joe graduated from Harvard, class of '73, and started right on fishing with Louis, who used to take out sections of Nat. Sci. 27 and Bio. 122--Professor Fell's Marine Biology, courses--on field trips. Joe had planned to go to graduate school in Marine Biology, but by his Sophomore year realized that the academic life was not for him. At least not for now. He'll fish until the industry dies out--within ten years. And on the side--last year--he was a section man in Fell's courses.

Joe and Louis catch flounder in Gill nets. April through September; then it's cod season and they alternate between the nets and trawling with baited hooks. Hooks are a last resort since the bait is expensive, the method laborious. A day often lasts from five in the morning until seven at night, and they must go out every day. Nets are left out for a day, then hauled into the boat and reset. A day only lasts until one in the afternoon, and the day in between they mend nets or work on the boat.

Louis remembers the days when bringing in less than 1,000 pounds was the exception rather than the rule and when one cod took more than one man to haul aboard. And when they trawled. "My father used to come down to the boat and spend all night baiting for us. Because we knew there were fish out there to be caught."