Nantucket's Changing Tides: Preserving a Family’s Fishing Legacy, Past & Future

Carl Sjolund and his scallop boat, docked at Old North Wharf, getting set up for a morning of scalloping.
Carl and his wife, Julie, leave Hither Creek in the scallop boat, headed to Tuckernuck. Although the boat has been maintained and in service for over 50 years, she’s never been named.
Jim and Carl Sjolund harvest Nantucket bay scallops in Nantucket harbor in 2020. Father and son have been fishing together since 1996 and continue to this day.
Bay scallops crowned, in a bushel. Nantucket is the last commercial bay scallop fishery on the east coast, and arguably in the United States.
Rolf Sjolund's first fishing trawler, the 75-foot Eunice Lillian, named for his wife Eunice and his business partner's wife Lillian, built in 1936, built in Bergen Beach, New York.
Carl Sjolund with a town-issued burlap bag used for a bushel of Nantucket bay scallops. Bags were provided by the town as a rule of measure and varied in size from year to year.
Carl Henry Sjolund, a second generation Nantucket fisherman, searches for the next location to tow a dredge. Next to him is a full bushel of scallops on the culling board.