Books : Against the Tide: The Fate of the New England Fisherman
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 597
EAN: 9780618056989
ISBN: 061805698X
Label: Mariner Books
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: June 15, 2000
Publisher: Mariner Books
Studio: Mariner Books
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review:
Like many kids fortunate enough to spend summers by the shore, writer/journalist Richard Adams Carey grew up with a healthy respect for fishermen and the sea, "a world of astonishing color and shape and texture, of surprise and a perceptible knife-edge of menace." During the '90s, when headlines described the demise of New England's small-boat family fishermen, he decided to head back to Cape Cod to learn what he could about a threatened way of life and the forces--political, commercial, ecological--which imperil the survival of the fish the industry depends on. To this end, he spent a year working alongside four veterans of the Cape's inshore waters: a crewmate on a dragger (a boat that catches groundfish with a dragnet towed along the ocean bottom); a lobsterman; a long-liner (who sets quarter-mile or longer fishing lines sporting baited hooks every three feet); and a quahog dredger (essentially a clammer who harvests in bulk). Carey deftly weaves the details of their hard-won, unpredictable lives with passages on local and global fishing history, the minutiae of national and regional legislation severely regulating the fishing industry, the vicissitudes of the weather, and a smattering of stories and anecdotes. Throughout colonial times, for instance, fishermen regularly caught lobsters 4 feet long and weighing 45 pounds! Such an ancient, sizable creature is nearly inconceivable today.
Despite the tenacity of the men he fished with, Carey acknowledges that the owner-operators of small family boats off New England are likely going the way of the family farmer. Yet he reminds us that the issues deciding their fate concern us all: "how to tap this continent's wealth without plundering and despoiling it; how to reconcile our hard-wired demand for growth and consumption with a husbandman's concern for sustainability; how to mark our limits and resolutely stay within them." --Svenja Soldovieri
Product Description:
With its spectacular beaches and charming towns, Cape Cod is known around the world as a vacation spot and a summer retreat for the well-to-do. But there is another Cape Cod, a hidden, hardscrabble, year-round world whose hunter-gatherer economy dates back to the Bay Colony. The world of the independent fisherman is one of constant peril, of arcane folkways and expert knowledge, of calculated risk and self-reliance -- and of freedom won daily through backbreaking, solitary work. It is a way of life deep in the American grain. Haunted by the numbers of family fishermen who have recently been forced to abandon the profession, Richard Adams Carey spent a year among a handful of men who stubbornly refuse to do so. Reminiscent of the work of William Warner and Joseph Mitchell, AGAINST THE TIDE is a masterly profile of four New England fishermen in which every page opens onto something more profound: maritime history, maritime ecology, and the poetic celebration of a special American place.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
I gave this book to my husband who enjoyed this book immensly! He the "old fisherman" who used to fish out of Cape Cod and New Bedford, Woods Hole, all the way up to Maine, back in the old days before these new fishing regulations, said this book brought back fond memories of fishing and those long gone days.. Some of the people mentioned in this book were friends of his. The book is very well written and is a picture of the fishing industry, what it was and what it is today. Highly recommended ... Read More
Rating:  -
This is going to be short. After having read "Living On The Edge" I thought I was getting another tale of life as a fisherman.Instead, what I got was life as a fisherman at town council meetings. The book is currently being used under the short leg of my pool table. ...
Rating:  -
Being a New England fisherman (hehe-rather, woman) I found the day-to-day lives of the fisherman very interesting-who knew scallops had blue eyes? However, I had a difficult time following the time frame of events because of the way Mr. Carey jumped around. I couldn't even tell exactly what year this book was taking place without some re-reading. The politics involved are sickening in the amount of time wasted and the fact that the committees could get nothing accomplished, evidenced with the ... Read More
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If you read The Perfect Storm and came away wanting to know more about the commercial fishing industry, this is the book. Carey explains the views of the men and women who risk life, limb, and fortune in the waters off Cape Cod. He also explains the tedium of public hearings and governmental rule making which impact the lives of the fishermen.
I spent the summer in a rented house overlooking the commercial fishing fleet in Bodega Bay, California. I often wondered what happened on ... Read More
Rating: -
Richard Adams Carey has crafted a detailed look at a failing industry and a very well written narrative. One can only hope that present and future fishermen and politicians, American and Internationally, read Mr. Carey's book and learn from the mistakes of the past. The book brings you into the daily lives of New England fishermen in an honest, pragmatic way that doesn't decry the sins of history but certainly lays them bare for all of us to learn from. The author has carefully crafted and documented ... Read More
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