“I squatted in the red mud and held my rod, watching for signs of a bite. The clear nylon line lay in loose coils across the surface of the pond, and disappeared beneath it. I imagined, almost willed the slow unwinding of those coils, followed by the tightened line moving back and forth through the water — the frantic pull of a fish jerking my rod down.” — Paul Molyneaux
I did not grow up Down East, nor am I a fisherman. But I was young once, and I remember the feeling of when a fish comes to the surface to take the bait. The strength and speed of the strike intoxicates, taking you back to another time and place. In “The Doryman’s Reflection: A Fisherman’s Life” by Paul Molyneaux, that experience and much more illuminate an ever-changing, always-complicated fishing industry and the lure the sea holds on many of us.
Originally published in 2005, this memoir was re-released in 2017. Today, its relevance still captures the essence of a fishing life fraught with challenges. The political world continues to debate climate change, yet scientists know it is already here. Corporations are heavily invested in a fishing industry that changes just about as much as the tides, while regulations, quotas and natural resources compete with one another on a constant basis.
It’s a cycle Molyneaux knows well, because he lived and worked it, beginning in 1976 as a “lumper” unloading scallop boats in New Jersey. Molyneaux knows the personal side of fishing because he spent a great deal of time working alongside those who depend on it for their livelihood and now have to adapt day-by-day to the global realities impacting the industry. They do so all while trying to preserve a generational calling and put food on the table for their family.
Today Molyneaux and his family split their time living in Mexico and Maine. He has written extensively about the fishing industry and marine issues for publications such as Yankee, The New York Times and National Fisherman.
The book opens within the wet confines of steel doors and swaying rigging but then turns back to an idyllic memory of a pond and children fishing before it does a deep dive into the business side, where the United States was trying to adjust to recommendations made in 1969 by the Stratton Commission. The commission’s report, titled “Our Nation and the Sea: a Plan for National Action,” contained over 120 specific proposals and was instrumental in defining the structure of a comprehensive federal ocean policy. It recommended the development of a technically advanced efficient fishing fleet, essentially throwing large amounts of money to play catch-up and control the ocean’s bounty.
Molyneaux writes, “As the cataclysmic combination of political, economic, and environmental forces converged on the U.S. fisheries, the Stratton Commission provided a weather report predicting sunny skies. The unfortunate circumstances, which would lead to seemingly endless fisheries battles, provided aspiring but unlikely fishermen, such as myself, an entryway into the business. The U.S. owned the ocean, and, though the fish stocks were getting hammered, new boats needed crew.”
As he travels from Cape May to California and then to Alaska, Molyneaux shares a personal travel-log of experience within the commercial confines of the fishing industry. It is not until Molyneaux ends up in Maine working on a scallop boat built by midcoast fisherman Bernard Raynes where the story takes on a more personal note.
Raynes’ family have fished the waters of Maine and Nova Scotia since the 1640s, and this fishery is in the truest sense not only a way of life loved both by Raynes and Molyneaux, but also a microcosm of experience and history of ocean fishing in this country. Years of plenty in the mid-1970s are a byproduct of federal involvement that eventually led to years of decline for each fisherman trying to keep the generational binds while taking care of his family.
The fisherman’s plight is where the book is at its best. Sharing time with a Maine fisherman as colorful, no-nonsense and “old school” yet loving as Raynes is a gift. Among the boats crammed with gear, ropes and nets are stories laced with real situations, raw emotions and a mystique for the reader to take in, feel and most importantly relate to.
Today, there are continued debates on the contested gray zone on the American-Canadian border, North Atlantic right whales, baitfish shortages, quotas, climate change and much more. Those debates will continue while future challenges lurk within the ocean’s depths. They will eventually float to the surface, needing attention. It is the nature of the competing elements of an industry, the livelihoods lived, some lost, amidst the living creatures with which we share the sea.
On Bernard’s death, Molyneaux recited a quote from Moby Dick. For those gathered at the graveside service it was an opportunity to reflect and go back to that small pond surrounded by children fishing for sunfish. Ultimately, that’s what it is all about, enjoying and remembering pure moments. Reading this fine work by a gifted writer for me was one of those moments.
“The point I wanted to make is that we were all kids once, enamored with wooden boats and eager to get out on them. I was 19 when Virgil P. McDowell hailed me from the deck of the Kaynell, and Bernard received his calling probably in the womb. We were all drawn to something in the sea and most of us did not make much money. We were able to, as the Stratton Report said, ‘eke out a moderate living,’ but we were accruing wealth far less corruptible than money.” — Paul Molyneaux
The Doryman’s Reflection: A Fisherman’s Life
By Paul Molyneaux
Seahorse Publishing, 2017, hardcover $18.99