 By the time
the first colonists arrived in 1634 at what is now St. Mary's City,
American Indians had been fishing Southern Maryland's waters for more
than 400 years. The new settlers, mostly artisans and laborers, were
more at home farming the land than the waters. Nevertheless, they began
harvesting the bounty of the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers, using
fishing nets bought from the natives. The abundant fish, crabs and
oysters became staples of their diet. But it was only in the second half
of the 19th century, when the post-Civil War economic troubles brought
hard times to farmers, that fishing evolved from a source of food to a
mainstay of the Southern Maryland economy.
Laying Roots Under Water
As the fishing industry developed and agriculture declined, hundreds of
farmers began spending a portion of their time on the water. Many of
today's watermen, as everyone calls Maryland's professional fishers,
trace their families' work on the rivers and the Bay to that time.
Tucker Brown lives on land overlooking St. Patrick's Creek in St. Mary's
County that has been in his family for generations.
"My father grew up over there and he was a waterman, and so was my
grandfather, over that way," he said. Brown, who turns 71 this summer,
still rises long before dawn to put in a 12-hour day in all kinds of
weather searching for fish, crabs, clams and oysters. He and his fellow
watermen are keenly aware that many of those creatures have been in
decline for years, threatening their livelihood.
A waterman fishes either full time or part time and possesses a
commercial fishing license. Where once Maryland's watermen numbered in
the thousands, today they total perhaps 500, including about 150 based
in Southern Maryland, according to Bill Rice of Charles County, a board
member of the Maryland Watermen's Association. Tommy Zinn, president of
the association's Calvert County branch, said the number of full-time
watermen is even lower because most must find other work to make a
living. Rice, for example, keeps up a Maryland tradition by mixing work
on the water with farming. The total number of watermen, both full time
and part time, has declined sharply, said Zinn.
History in a Can
In the heyday of the seafood industry - roughly the last quarter of the
19th century and the first half of the 20th century - seafood processing
joined fishing in economic importance. Isaac Solomon, a Baltimore
cannery owner, discovered a process that greatly increased the
efficiency of canning. In 1866, he bought a tract of land at the
southern tip of Calvert County called Sandy Island - now Solomons Island
- and set up the first oyster cannery on the Patuxent River. The
best-known operation in Solomons, however, was J.C. Lore & Co., which
lasted from 1888 to 1978 and shipped its Patuxent-brand oysters
throughout the United States. After World War II, one of the Lore sons,
Rupert, started his own processing plant in St. Mary's County, which
rivaled Calvert as a seafood-canning center. Today, a few small
processors survive in St. Mary's County, but what's left of large-scale
fish, crab and oyster processing is limited to the Eastern Shore of the
Chesapeake Bay.
The packing business declined for a variety of reasons, but foremost was
the near-disappearance of oysters from Southern Maryland waters over the
past several decades, a result of disease and pollution. Brown runs a
small shuckhouse, as the processing plants are called locally, on his
property in St. Mary's County. But, he said, "95 percent of my oysters
come from the Gulf of Mexico. You can't even call it a seafood industry
(around here) anymore. I just hope we haven't missed the boat on this
Asian oyster." Like his fellow watermen, Brown was dismayed this past
April when Maryland, Virginia and the Army Corps of Engineers decided
jointly not to introduce Asian oysters into the Chesapeake. The
non-native oysters, they feared, might be invasive and could further
damage the ecology of the Bay.
"They studied that to death," said Rice, the Charles County waterman who
also serves as a member of the Potomac River Fisheries Commission. "As a
waterman, I was very disappointed. I can't see natural oysters ever
coming back. The biggest problem is the lack of vegetation in the bay
and shoreline erosion. Grass was a natural protection for crabs and fish
and everything else. Most of the life in the river centers around the
oyster bar. With a healthier oyster population you also have a healthier
river population."
Tension between watermen and scientists is hardly new. In "Working the
Waters," published by the Calvert Marine Museum in 1988, George Carey
wrote: "I am familiar with at least one marine biologist who would be
delighted if all watermen would simply disappear. (By the same token, it
would not take me long to round up a clutch of watermen who would be
equally happy to see the Almighty gather up every marine biologist on
the face of the earth tomorrow afternoon)."
Teaming Up For Preservation
But the relationship between watermen and marine scientists is more
complicated than that, and leavened by humor. After complaining about
the Asian oyster decision, Zinn added that his association's members
recognize that "this resource is everyone's" and seek to be good
stewards of the environment. The watermen are working with scientists on
a variety of projects, including the Oyster Recovery Partnership, a
nonprofit organization that Zinn sees as the best hope for restoring the
region's oyster population.
The watermen have a fierce independence that sometimes makes them
difficult to organize, but they have become more cognizant of their
image. In addition to an annual scholarship project to the Chesapeake
Biological Laboratory, the watermen participate in river cleanups and
sponsor a festival in Solomons each year. This year the festival is on
Sept. 27. The association also works with the Chesapeake National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to organize a
"Watermen in the Classroom" program, which sends working watermen to
spend an hour with fourth graders. Ultimately, their hope is to preserve
a way of life they inherited from the American Indian stewards of the
waters.
"I'm glad I maintained my interest in farming, but I'll never give the
river up," Rice said. "Once it gets into your blood …even the people I
know who've gotten out of the business, it's still in them."
To learn more information about watermen, visit these Web sites:
o The Maryland Watermen's Association:
www.marylandwatermen.com
o The Oyster Recovery Partnership:
www.oysterrecovery.org
o Watermen in the Classroom program:
www.chesapeakebay.noaa.gov/WatermenClassrooms.aspx
o Maryland Department of Natural Resources:
www.dnr.state.md.us/fisheries
o The Calvert Marine Museum:
www.calvertmarinemuseum.com/history.htm The museum also maintains
the former J.S. Lore & Sons cannery in Solomons as an exhibit on the
history of seafood processing. That building has been closed for
renovations. Check before visiting. |
