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Old Salts, New Times: Fishermen Find There's Always A Catch

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By VERENA DOBNIK, The Associated Press

Published: November 18, 2007

POINT LOOKOUT, N.Y. - The journey starts at the dock here, on Long Island, about an hour's drive east of Manhattan. And it all comes back to Point Lookout, too.

The worn wooden dock is home to a fleet of three commercial trawlers, plus dozens of scallop and hook-and-line boats that go out into the cold Atlantic Ocean and return with the fruits of the wild, salty waters. The catch goes to seafood dealers near and far - or, delicately garnished, to the tables of swank New York restaurants.

For Mike Mihale, co-owner of the dock, it means more. He has been fishing here since he could walk, carrying on a tradition going back to his Greek grandfather and going forward to his three young daughters, to whom he's passing on his passion.

"Fish or die" could be the motto of those, like Mihale, who accept the challenges of weather, danger and what they see as overregulation, to keep the tradition going.

"I'm doing what I was born to do," 40-year-old Mihale says. "If you told me I couldn't fish, I'd jump off that dock."

To glimpse the world he inhabits, one corner of the $1 billion a year commercial fishing industry in New York - and to see how fish goes from sea to table - an Associated Press reporter and photographer spent time in the Atlantic on a Point Lookout trawler, then followed the catch from the ocean to Mihale's dock, where it was loaded onto trucks headed for restaurants and markets. They also met with vendors at the nation's biggest seafood market, in the South Bronx. And in Manhattan, they visited with a chef at a high-end restaurant.

Come aboard, and follow the fish.

A Struggle To Make A Living

Capt. Anthony Joseph's rusty steel trawler, the Stirs One, pulls away from Mihale's dock at 10:30 p.m., its smokestack spewing steam as it cuts through the dark waters. The 119-ton Stirs One is headed about 100 miles out into the open ocean for a fishing trip expected to last three days, aiming to return with a catch of 30,000 pounds or more.

As one of Mihale's main suppliers, Joseph, with a crew of up to four deckhands, prowls these waters year round, in rain and shine, brutal winds and cold.

It's not always a bonanza: Sometimes Joseph catches too little even to cover his costs - about $4,000 each time he goes out, including 25 gallons of diesel fuel an hour, food for the crew, and 10 tons of ice. Fuel costs have risen sharply in recent years, as has the price of a commercial license.

"It's a struggle to make a living, and I have four daughters," says the 43-year-old captain, who's been in commercial fishing for 17 years. "But I love it."

As the mammoth green net dragging off the back of the boat rises from the depths of the sea, he pulls on his rubber boots, lights a cigarette and strides across the slippery deck - ready for the catch.

And here it is: a torrent of wriggling sea life spills from the bulging green net into a container on the deck.

Hands go to work, pitching back overboard thousands of pounds of seafood - from sand sharks, for which there's little demand, to fish not allowed to be caught by regulations. Seagulls cry with delight, nose-diving for effortless meals.

A mound of ocean treasure remains, including monkfish and squid that will end up on Manhattan restaurant plates.

Joseph's 28-year-old trawler has a touch of home: a doorbell he'd bought for his house in Levittown, N.Y. His wife didn't care for the loud, eight-tone ring, so the captain attached the push button to the ceiling of his boat's helm and put the bell below deck in the crew's cabin - to ring them awake when it's time to pull up the next net, then sort the catch for the conveyor belt and pack it under ice in wax-coated cartons.

Helping A Stranded Trawler

There's no such thing as a good night's sleep on an Atlantic fishing boat.

That's made clear the second night out on this trip.

Around midnight, loudspeakers on deck carry Billy Joel's unmistakable voice over the damp, salty air - "In the middle of the night... We all end in the ocean..." - but nobody's listening. There's trouble out in the choppy waters: Another trawler has broken down, 10 miles away.

Joseph doesn't hesitate. Under a full moon, he steers the Stirs One toward it.

When the dark hulk, the Sea Rambler, finally appears on the water, Joseph and his crew improvise rigging to tow it. Pulling iron cables across the deck in a noisy jangle, they use a blowtorch to create hooks to grasp and hold the inert vessel.

"Got it?" Joseph yells out to Juri Jeganov, a sailor from Estonia with a craggy, sea-worn face as they wrestle the chains into place.

A cool breeze sweeps in as Stirs One gets under way, a savior to its fellow trawler at a loss of a whole day's catch. This is the ethos of fishermen on high seas: Next time, the favor would be returned, if Stirs One were in trouble.

"This is the last frontier. We're the cowboys at sea," says Keith Stock, a 28-year-old deckhand. He cranks up the rock 'n' roll on the XM satellite radio as the engine revs up, powering the trawler toward Point Lookout.

Joseph is grateful the waters aren't stormy. In his pilot house, one of the DVDs on a shelf is "The Perfect Storm," about a 1991 gale during which six crew members of a fishing boat were lost in the Atlantic off Massachusetts. That same night off New York, Joseph fought 25-foot waves, barely making it back safely.
Commercial fishing is the deadliest job in America, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than 140 fishermen die for every 100,000 working.

They hit fast-rising storms that can't be outrun or rogue waves that wash men overboard. Onboard, fishermen work with power winches and hoists that can catch a limb and drag a man into the ocean, or heavy nets and cages that turn lethal on a slippery deck.

The average pay for taking on such risks is about $40,000 a year for a deckhand, and close to $100,000 for a captain like Joseph.

Joseph is at the helm when Stirs One, with the broken-down Sea Rambler in tow, finally reaches the Point Lookout dock. A lone gull settles on the mast of Stirs One, giving a plaintive cry as the ropes are secured.

The catch stored in the trawler's belly isn't as big as expected, but it's still plentiful and varied: more than 10,000 pounds of fish, plus bushels of porgies and sundry other delicacies such as Dungeness crab and lobsters. The monkfish, along with mackerel, fluke and squid, will go straight to a Manhattan restaurant.

A line of trucks drives away the catch, but only after Mihale takes what's needed for the business he owns with two brothers, Bruce and Rolf Larson: the retail fish market and clam bar by the dock, plus the adjacent Fisherman's Catch restaurant.

The walls of Fisherman's Catch are lined with black-and-white photos of men who have worked at the dock since the 1930s.

In one old image, Mike Mihale's late grandfather, George, stands proudly, a snow-white Greek cap gleaming on his head. As a young man, he sailed the Mediterranean "with just a compass, the wind, the sun and the stars," says his son John, Mike's father - who at 65 still brings fish to the dock, but with a global positioning system guiding his boat.

The bulk of the Point Lookout catch goes to the New Fulton Fish Market in the South Bronx, America's largest seafood market. As long as two football fields, it moved from the old, outdoor Fulton market about two years ago.

'Nothing Like Touching A Fish'

At 3 a.m. on a typical day, Roberto Nunez is wide awake. A regular buyer for top-of-the-line New York restaurants who purchases up to $15,000 worth of wholesale fish a night, he has a hawk's eye for assessing freshness.

"For that, there's nothing like touching a fish," he says.

When stopping to check out some scallops, his hands go to work, feeling the texture - which should be smooth and firm, "like a baby's bottom" - then he wrinkles his nose. He moves on to a batch that looks translucent and feels firm, biting into a raw one and smiling. Fresh.

Nunez picks out razor clams and looks for monkfish liver for specialties made by a Manhattan restaurant called Esca.
Commercial fishing and related businesses employ more than 20,000 people on Long Island alone.

As the industry has evolved, regulation has become more complex, a subject that prompts grousing along the docks. Whatever the quotas are, most commercial fishermen say they obey - and yet they seethe at the notion that decisions about their livelihood may be made without good information.

"They just keep taking more and more away from us," Mike Mihale complains.

Billy Joel, a Long Islander who says he shucked clams as a kid and once was arrested during a protest over fishing limits, reflects in his song "Downeaster Alexa" on the fiercely independent breed who "go where the ocean is deep.

"They say these waters aren't what they used to be,

"But I've got people back on land who count on me."

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