Douglas Whynott - Giant Bluefin

Table of Contents

I must thank Bob Sampson, first and foremost, for telling about his life, and for bringing me out on the Scratcher. And I thank Nelson Shifflett for introducing me to Bob Sampson, and for his stories about the bluefin fishery.

Many thanks to Brad Sampson and Penny Sampson, and to the Sampsons in Plymouth. To Eric Hesse for time on the water, documents, explanations, and the use of his log. And to those many other fishermen and family members who took me along and spoke with me and helped enlarge my visionto Wade Behlman, Matt Bunnell, Joe Jancewicz, Keith Hudson, Peter Atherton, Sonny McIntire and the McIntire family, Fred Brooks, Jonathan Mayhew, Trip Wheeler, Nick Nickerson, Ron Lein, Matt Comeau, Billy Chaprales, Norman St.Pierre, Brenda Sullivan, Bill Mullin, Scott Mullin, Peter LaRoche, Lenny Hultgren, Joe Eldredge, Chris VanDuzer, Dave Linney, Jeff Tutein, Kip Lewis, St. John Laughlin, Steve Weiner, and Doug Gerry.

To Rich Ruais, executive director of East Coast Tuna Association, who took me to docks and introduced me to fishermen and led me to buyers, fisheries managers, government officials, and conservationists, and who provided accounts, and updates of events in the fishery and developments at ICCAT.

My thanks to Frank Mather, for his recollections of his tagging studies, for providing documents and videotape, and for the loan of his fascinating unpublished manuscript, Life History and Fisheries ofAtlantic Bluefin, Tuna , which I drew upon in Chapter 2. And to Francis Carey, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, for copies of articles about bluefin biology.

My thanks to Dick Stone, director of the Highly Migratory Species Management Division, National Marine Fisheries Service, for providing documents and answering questions. To Kevin Foster, Northeast Fisheries Center, NMFS, for providing catch reports and statistics. To Steve Turner, Southeast Fisheries Center, NMFS, for providing documents and other information.

To Bob Campbell for his market updates and explanations. To Molly Lutcavage of the New England Aquarium for information about the aerial survey. To Frank Cyganowski for his recollections of the seine fishery and for lending his expertise on the stock question and the ICCAT and NMFS process. And to Leonard Ingrande and Roger Hillhouse for their recollections of the seine fishery and of fish spotting. To Gerald Abrams for his account of the early years of the fishery and of the ICCAT process. Thanks to Ted Bestor for information about the Japanese markets. Thanks to those others who explained the ICCAT process, recalled their experiences at ICCAT, and gave their views on the stock question, among whom were Ken Hinman, Carl Safina, Carmen Blondin, Gary Sakagawa, Frank Hester, Chris Weld, Gordon Broadhead, Ray Conser, and Peter Wilson.

Thanks to my daughter, Isha Whynott, for her research assistance. To Laura Templeton, Laurel Harris, and Valerie Jenkins for making tape transcriptions, and to Mount Holyoke College for a grant to pay them. To Chris Pyle for his Plymouthian suggestions and other advice. To Jay Neugeboren, for discussion and encouragement. And to K.L.

To Richard Parks, and to Jonathan Galassi and Paul Elie.

THE SHOW

T HIS WOULD be an afternoon show, Brad Sampson figured. At least it had been so far, with the bluefin rising to the surface with the slack tide in the warmer part of the day. Bluefin tuna were an epipelagic species, meaning they ranged far and lived in the upper waters of the ocean. Bluefin liked to get close to the heat of the day, to cruise with their dorsal fins above water, like sharks or dolphins. Making water, trailing wakes, by triangular aspect revealing their courses, a purple shade moving along, that was what the bluefin harpooners looked for. That was the show.

Just three days ago, July 4, the last good-weather day, Brad Sampson, a harpoon fisherman, had been near Outer Kettle off Portland when he got a call from Eric Hesse, another tuna fisherman whod come from Cape Cod to Maine to chase the first fish of the season. Eric told Brad that fish were only five boats, or 250 feet, away. Brad had stopped the boat and was working on the engine. When he looked up, he saw four wakes coming his way. His mate took the wheel of the Scratcher , and Brad got on the stand, and they circled around behind the schoolits much more difficult to approach bluefin by going straight at them. The boat got close, but the school settled and Brad couldnt make a throw. That was a hard opportunity to miss. You didnt see fish up like that very often.

Atlantic bluefin tuna seemed to show up first off the coast of Maine, or at least that was where the first fish were usually caught. Sixteento twenty bluefin had been taken so far this season. Strangely, some bluefin arrived in Maine fat, while most came in lean. The fish taken on June 11 weighed over 500 pounds round, 370 pounds dressed, and brought $16 a pound in Japan. Another tuna brought $25 a pound, and a third $43, but most of the others were not good enoughnot fat enoughto merit a trip to the Japanese markets. These domestic fish were bringing about $3 a pound and went primarily to New England fish markets and restaurants.

In Japan, red tuna meat, maguro , is an essential component of a good meal, and bluefin is the quintessential maguro the food of perfection. Served raw in thin slices as sushi or sashimi, a two-ounce serving could cost as much as $75 in Tokyo. The Japanese consumed 400,000 tons of raw fish yearly, about 35 percent of it imported, and the raw market was the only niche for American fishermen. Bluefin tuna had the highest status among imports3 percent by volume, but 10 percent by value. Of the many sourcesAustralia, California, Spain, the Canary Islandsthe jumbo bluefin of New England, because of its size, oil content, and color, was most often the bluefin with the highest status on the Japanese market.

The early arrivals in the Gulf of Maine (some called them marauders, others called them racers) had migrated to feed on the abundant mackerel and herring. They had come days or weeks ahead of the big schools now making their way north off the Atlantic coast, or heading in from eastern waters. And in concert with their prey, the fishermen working in Maine, harpoon fishermen generally, were also in the vanguardahead of other harpooners, and ahead of the fleets of rod-and-reel fishermen soon to drop their lines along the underwater ledges and hills, and ahead of the purse seiners, who would begin setting their nets in August. Fish and fishermen, scouts and hunters, testing the northern waters, following instinct, following leads.

Brad Sampson, twenty-two years old, a college student, son of perhaps the best tuna fisherman in New England, thought these Maine fish were squirrelly. Moving along in singles, pairs, foursomes, they werent acting rightstaying still long enough to be good harpoon targets. They were skittish, and shy, and they screwed too easy. But Maine was the only game in town right now, until schools of tunashowed up off the Cape and in Massachusetts Bay, and the way to succeed in tuna fishing was to be out there when it happened, to get on the fish, to make the throws, to work the percentages.

THE SAMPSONS, and those like them, were the true sons of the whalers of old. In body and spirit, in style and confidence, speech and manner, sense and intuition, intent and determination, the fishermen who harpooned bluefin tuna in the waters of Cape Cod and the Gulf of Maine were the inheritors of the New England whaling tradition. The harpooners of the nineteenth century inherited the tradition from the Danes and Basques and the British before them, from the Native American hunters, from the fishermen whod dried and traded their salt codNew Englands first currency. The bluefin tuna fishermen had the whalers harpoon, the cod fishermans persistence, and the lobstermans boat, and in this last decade of the twentieth century, they had loran navigation systems and radios with scramblers and descramblers, and they had spotter planes. They had fax reports from Tsukiji marketlike their seafaring ancestors, some had gone off to the Orient to trade. They had an international regulatory system subject to diverse contention.