Mending the Nets

It has been a beautiful Spring so far here in Gloucester. There have been a few rainy days but lots of sunshine, too. The last couple days I am having trouble staying inside to work–-when the sunshine is as bright and golden as this I just want to go outside.

My favorite place to go when I have a few minutes is the state fish pier. I am not alone in that, there are plenty of people sitting in their cars reading the paper, drinking coffee, watching the boats go by. Now before summer arrives, it is all working boats in the harbor and they have been busy. Yesterday, just as I got there, a herring boat had come in and the pier was alive with activity. Huge totes of herring were being lifted off the boats and poured into bins to be taken inside and processed. Forklifts scuttled up and down the pier and the gulls–-the gulls were going wild! They soar in great, bright clouds around the boats and as the stream of shining, silvery fish pours out of the totes into the hopper that feeds them into the bins the gulls screech and swoop trying to snatch a prize. The men hate it but it is wonderful to watch.

And always there is the continual work of mending the nets, a timeless activity that has gone on since fishermen used nets and is not terribly different today than it was two thousand years ago. The nets today are plastic and fiberglass and miles longer than the nets of earlier times but the process is the same.

I have been watching the men mend their nets for close to twenty years now. These huge nets, which are strung out sometimes for miles in the ocean, are kept afloat by round orange buoys attached to the upper edge. The mesh of the nets is designed to let the smaller fish through so they can go on to keep breeding but they catch the gills of the larger fish so they can be gathered in by the fishermen. The nets spend a lot of time in the water where they sustain considerable wear and tear. Stuff gets caught in the nets that shouldn’t–-mostly sea vegetation–-barnacles grow and assorted pollutants get tangled up in them. They get attacked by larger sea creatures. Sections get torn and damaged. So the men spread the nets out along the pier and they get to work.

With knives the cut away the excess attachments, with line and large bobbins that serve as needles, they weave the damaged places back together. They move along the pier always bent over their nets working as they go. Some sit on over-turned plastic milk crates. Some stand, some kneel. They spend hours and hours. Sometimes I can hear them talking to each other as they work–-sharing news and gossip, telling stories, discussing politics and keeping the world running properly.

It used to be that Our Lady of Good Voyage, the Catholic Church with the two blue spires and the statue of the Blessed Mother holding a fishing schooner in her arms that stands on the hill overlooking the harbor and the fish pier, rang the Angelus at six in the evening. I don’t think they do that anymore but back when they did sometimes on summer evenings you could hear the men praying the Angelus as they worked. I loved that.

We live in a technically sophisticated age. I sit before a computer and earn my living. But I love to remind myself that as I sit here creating data, down on the fish pier there are boats unloading their catch, gulls, trying to steal a bit of it, and fishermen mending their nets. I find great comfort in that.

Thanks for reading.