“…to the last I grapple with thee…”
– Captain Ahab from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick
Rest assured Captain Eric Hesse of the Mattanza and Tenacious II doesn’t utter those words each time he lets his harpoon fly toward his intended target – the Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus). Yet, there is a chronological connection to the harpooners of the 17th and 18th centuries and those relatively few harpooners still out today fishing for one of the ocean’s apex predators. After the last whaling ship, the John R. Mantra, departed New Bedford in 1927 for one final trip, harpooners turned to other species in the local waters such as swordfish. For the past several decades, the quarry of choice has been the bluefin tuna. The bluefin, unlike its smaller relatives, the yellowfin and big eye, can grow to massive sizes weighing well over 1000 pounds.
Eric Hesse has been hunting these torpedoes of the sea since first tagging along on a harpoon boat while still a student at Barnstable High. “In college, I’d rearrange my fall schedule so I could come back and go fishing,” Hesse remembers of his time earning a bachelor’s degree in physics at Bates College in Maine. No matter where he roamed, and how much he, self-admittedly, “flopped about a bit”, Hesse always returned home, and to the sea.
His travels took him to places about as far as one could go, like working on a dredging project in New Zealand. After returning home – to go tuna fishing – Hesse left for the Antarctic Peninsula in 1989 after seeing an ad in the Cape Cod Times for a boating coordinator at Palmer Station, a biological research base. There, he ferried scientists to and from projects. “They did a lot of penguin studies but also some atmospheric stuff as well,” he recalls. “I was in charge of keeping people from running amok.”
There was a brief period where Hesse worked for the Barnstable County Health Department inspecting in-ground residential oil tanks, but his heart was elsewhere. “It was good work, but it wasn’t that visceral physicality and adrenaline that fishing offered,” he admits. So, he began cod fishing trips, jigging and long-lining. He saw a direct correlation between the amount of effort put forth and the fruits of that labor. Today, while there are still cod in our local waters, they’re considered “economically extinct” for long-lining. “You need a lot of fish to long-line,” Hesse points out.
In 1984, he got his first shot in the captain’s seat. “I ran a boat for Captain Joe Eldredge,” he explains. “We saw a lot of fish that year.” And the results? “Well, I threw the harpoon a lot!” he laughs. “I think we got three fish that whole year.” It was the career track that fishermen have followed for generations. Someone interested in working in the fishing industry starts out crewing for a boat (or multiple boats). After gaining experience and showing proficiency, a would-be captain gets a shot at running a boat for an owner. The next step is for that new captain to purchase his own boat. If all goes well and they are successful, perhaps they buy a second boat. Currently, Hesse owns two boats: the Mattanza out of Chatham Harbor, and the Tenacious II docked in the Sandwich Marina. “I just got the slip in Sandwich,” he points out. “I had been on the list since 1990!” Both boats are equipped with a retractable pulpit extending roughly twenty feet out beyond the bow of the boat. The pulpits are retracted when in the harbor for space considerations.
The Mattanza fishes commercially for tuna as part of the harpoon-only permit season. When that closes, the general category is opened, where commercial fishermen can land bluefin with either harpoon or with rod-and-reel. The overall quota total for harpoon-only is fifty-five total tons per year, allowing each boat to land only five per day. “It used to be unlimited, and then it dropped to ten a day and now it’s five,” Hesse remembers. The general category, which the Tenacious II is part of, is much larger in both the number of boats in the class, and the total catch limit of tuna. Where there are only historically 30-35 harpoon permits issued, there’s one hundred times that number in the general category. Those boats can only land one fish per day, and only fish four days a week: Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, which is up from the three-day-a-week limit it was for the past couple of years. Once the general limit has been reached (750 tons), the season is closed. Short season sub-quotas open back up in the fall months. These numbers may seem extremely large but consider that the Atlantic bluefin’s average weight is 550 pounds. It means fewer than 3000 fish are pulled from the water locally each year. On-board monitoring, catch audits, and size limits (73 inches or greater) help to protect the fish, which once was listed as endangered, as it makes a comeback.
As Jared Auerbach, owner of Red’s Best, a Boston-based seafood distributor, sees it: the tuna are back. “There are a lot of fish [bluefin tuna] out there,” he points out. “The fishing’s too good.” With the regulations in place, the fishing seasons’ quotas are being reached ever more quickly. For Hesse and others fishing in the harpoon-only category, the limit was hit earlier than ever. This might suggest that an increase in the catch limit would be warranted – for bluefin. Not all species are alike when it comes to their abundance. Auerbach needs to take in the big picture when it comes to fish stocks. Connecting fishermen with the end consumer, one needs to keep a close eye on the statistics and sustainability of all the fish species arriving at the docks. “I’m heavily interested in bluefin, but I’m equally interested in skate wings and surf clams and striped bass and thirty other species,” Auerbach explains. For him, there is a goal to reach for, if not attain. According to Auerbach, “The north star is to reach maximum sustainable yield. To harvest and eat as much seafood as possible without harvesting and eating too much seafood.” How to go about finding that balance is the challenge. Regulations do need revisiting regularly. The scallop fishery is a prime example of this where the yearly quota will expand and contract year to year.
“Everything [in nature] is a pendulum,” Auerbach says. “It’s just like nature on land, but nobody applies the same logic to the ocean.” One look at all the rabbits exploding in population in our yards (and our decimated gardens) prove that point.
For harpooners like Hesse, the challenge of the hunt is a driving force behind their choice of gear. “With the rod and reel, you’re basically waiting for the tuna to run into the hook,” he says. “I prefer the hunt.” Forty years of experience has made Hesse far more proficient than that first year. “First off, you’ve got to understand light refraction,” he explains. Light refracts (or bends) when it enters a substance with a different optical density. With water being denser than air, an image you see – in this case the tuna – is a bit of a mirage. The fish is actually trailing the image you’d see looking down from the pulpit. “If you threw the harpoon at what you’re looking at, you’d overshoot every time,” he points out. Hesse nimbly walks out to a platform at the end of the pulpit amidst the rocking seas. Crewman Dan Deane pilots the boat from high atop the tuna tower and gets Hesse in the best position for a throw. As Hesse tosses the harpoon, he’ll nearly launch himself into the drink with his follow through.
Bluefins are a schooling fish, traveling in groups that can sometimes number over one hundred. “We’ll see the monsters come up first before the main group,” Hesse explains. “We call them the scouts.” The bluefins’ breeding grounds are in the Gulf of Mexico. They travel up the east coast throughout the spring and continue to the Gulf of Maine and Canadian waters. The other main breeding grounds are in the Mediterranean Sea, and the tuna have been known to make the trans-Atlantic migration. They’re unique in their ability to thermoregulate their body temperature, allowing them to live in all types of water – from cold to tropical. The sleek shape of their bodies, taut tendons, pectoral fins which can retract, even their eyes that are flush with the surface of the skin all add up to make it possible for tuna to reach swimming speeds of 43 miles an hour.
It’s the way they swim in the school that is quite interesting to Hesse. “It’s funny, they’ll be swimming along and then they freeze,” he points out. “Okay, they’re listening, they’re sensing. Sometimes they’ll take off, other times they go back to easily swimming along.” The actions of the group resemble that of other migratory animals: birds. “Did you ever watch a flock of birds, and one bird will change direction, and the rest will follow?” he asks. “The fish know when you miss. Unless you miss so badly, they don’t even see the harpoon,” he laughs. One spooked tuna can startle the whole school, and they’re off like a shot. Diving deep and out of sight, they could be gone for some time before returning to the surface. “Your first shot is your best shot.”
The harpoon has a metal probe attached. Once the fish is speared, an electric shock is delivered, stunning the fish instantly. It is considered more humane as opposed to long, drawn-out battles at the end of a rod and reel. Additionally, it’s better for the product. With the physical exertion of a fight, lactic acid builds up throughout the muscles – much like in humans after a workout – and that can give an off flavor to the meat. The Japanese market, long known as the top market for bluefin in the world, will not settle for that. They’re very discerning about their sushi, paying top dollar for the finest grade of bluefin.
Once landed, most tuna is now sold domestically. Gone are the days where the “Boston Bluefin” was the darling of the Japanese market. “The bluefin fishery is now global,” Hesse says. “Everybody caught on to the Japanese market.” While sushi in the United States continues to gain in popularity, the reverence (and price point) of bluefin may never reach the Japanese level. The resulting price the fishermen can earn today for bluefin is a fraction of what it once was.
While quotas, catch limits, and days at sea – all in place to protect fish stocks – can make earning a living commercially fishing a challenge, there are other factors at play. Mid-water trawlers have decimated the local herring population, the preferred food for tuna and other predators. Two large trawlers will tow a football field-sized net between them and haul up nearly a million pounds of fish at a time. The target fish is the herring and mackerel, but unfortunately, all manner of sea life are caught up as bycatch – young fish, sea turtles, dolphins, etc. An established 12 nautical mile buffer zone was challenged in court by the Sustainable Fisheries Coalition, an industry group of the fishing companies running mid-water trawlers – “sustainable” in name only perhaps. On March 29, 2022, federal judge Leo Sorokin vacated the buffer zone, citing a lack of scientific evidence to prove “local depletion” where predators have an insufficient supply of prey. Meanwhile, the small boat fisheries need to travel further out to sea for their catch. An interesting result of herring’s disappearance, along with rising water temperatures, has been the explosion of menhaden, or pogies, to local waters. In addition to being a great source of bait fish for lobstermen, the tuna have found a taste for them. “These fish [tuna] will stuff themselves full of pogies,” Hesse laughs. This will make them as sluggish as we humans can be getting up from the Thanksgiving table. “I don’t want to say it’s easy to catch them, but it does make it a little easier,” he claims.
For Eric Hesse, an alternative revenue stream has developed over the years. Harkening back to his days in Antarctica, for the past eleven years, he and his boat have been working with NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) to supplement the long-line research studies NOAA’s Henry B. Bigelow performs every spring and fall to determine the health of fifteen different groundfish stocks. From that, he has since expanded to work with engineers of companies in the private sector, sea testing their products. Occasionally, after the research day is done, and Hesse and his charter are steaming for home, a bluefin will make an appearance. “We saw one and stuck him, and had him in the boat in five minutes,” Eric laughs. “The scientists loved it. They were taking pictures with it.”
Additionally, Eric Hesse has been part of the Cape Cod Commercial Fisherman’s Alliance (CCCFA) as they fight for the rights of the local small-boat fleet of commercial fishermen. As a volunteer on CCCFA’s board since 2018, he is intimately aware of the challenges of the fishermen and regulators as they search for that north star. The fishermen within this small-boat fishery face challenges: ever-changing catch limits and regulations, environmental changes forcing fish to migrate elsewhere, tackling the influx of new (traditionally southern) species moving in, and the regulatory process lagging behind their arrival. Yet, for some, the sea still calls, and we should all be thankful for that. Much like the local farmer, as Jared Auerbach said, “Fishermen should be celebrated. What’s a more noble profession? Harvesting food for your community.”
Larry Egan, along with being co-publisher of Edible Cape Cod with his wife Cori, is a New England Associated Press award-winning writer and commentator and host of the talk show The Handyman Hotline on Saturdays from 1-3 pm on 95.1 WXTK-FM. He can often be found on the trails of Cape Cod being worn out by his personal trainer: their Portuguese Water Dog, Archie.
David Hills divides his photographic life between corporate and editorial assignments all over the country and the decks of commercial vessels fishing the nation’s salt waters. To showcase his seafaring photographs, he and his wife Kristen recently opened David Hills Gallery in Orleans. To view more, visit DavidHillsGallery.com.
Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance
Capecodfishermen.org
Red’s Best
Redsbest.com
