CHAPTER 9
1 Milt Miller and Don Eames, Jr., and probably others, question antiblack prejudice among the fishermen, although, in fact, it is quite widespread among the local people.
2 Clarence and Joe Midgett, respectively.
CHAPTER 10
1 A nervous jerking motion of the rod tip, to attract the attention of the fish.
2 John Yost.
CHAPTER 11
1 Built with overlapping planks (also called clinker-built) rather than smoothsided (carvel-built).
2 Invented by Captain Benjamin Tallman of Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
3 The first local bunker steamer—and the prototype—was the Eugene F. Price, built in 1874. The Price fished menhaden for nearly a century until she was scuttled about 1965. See “The Booming Bunker Fishery,” by E. L. Sherrill, the East Hampton Star, January 31, 1985.
CHAPTER 12
1 The ground nut, Apios tuberosa.
2 Called Bull’s Head in early days.
3 In 1662 Smith was convicted of illegally cutting down trees, which once extended down to the back of the dunes, but presumably there were other offenses.
4 A fast-moving storm front that appears as a visible “line” low in the sky; such a storm, when brief, is sometimes called a line squall.
5 Source: Stuart Vorpahl, Jr.
6 In Civil War times, one Josiah Kirk had sued the town for exclusive rights to this excellent marine mulch.
7 Everett T. Rattray, The South Fork, Random House, 1979.
8 An Algonkian word meaning “snowshoe wood”; tamarack or larch wood.
CHAPTER 13
1 See “Speakin’ Bonac: Echoes of Dorset?”, a two-part article by Isabel Norton, the East Hampton Star, April 1977.
2 The opposite of up-street was “b’low the bridge,” a vague terrain beginning at Freetown and Lily Hill, on the north side of the railroad bridge, all the way out through the Springs District, which extends from the east side of Three Mile Harbor through Accabonac. While “Accabonac” signifies that creek community, “Bonac” may include a much larger area, spreading south and east to eastern Amagansett.
3 Clammers were not equated with the folks of Little Hollywood, at the head of Three Mile Harbor, who were, Sally says, “a pretty wild bunch, free love and everything.” Jenny agrees: “If you socialized with anyone from Little Hollywood, your name was mud.” And in fact the sisters have rarely laid eyes on one of their own aunts who married at thirteen and offended the family when she moved there.
4 Since then, Ditch Plains had been given up anyway, since the set was too small to be hauled by the much larger seine that came into use a few years later.
5 The summer flounder (as opposed to the winter or black-backed flounder, yellowtail, halibut, and others) is “left-handed,” with its eyes on its left-hand side, and right side on the bottom—hence the name “fluke.”
6 Lobsters less than 33/16 inches from eye socket to end of carapace.
7 A good bushel of scallops will produce five to five and a quarter pounds of eyes, and there are nine pounds in a gallon.
CHAPTER 14
1 Billy Schultz, Brad Loewen, and others.
2 The clam raft program was set up by Arnold Leo, Tom Field, and Larry Cantwell, who was then bay constable.
CHAPTER 15
1 Only the phytoplankton seem to survive.
2 “The Venerable Striped Bass” by Dick Russell, Amicus Journal, Fall 1982. “They measure the food content and say, ‘Well, there’s not enough food around so they’re starving to death.’ Then the chemical company or the agricultural company isn’t responsible because it’s ‘mass starvation.’ But you’ve got to go back to the eggs and larvae stage and see, are the fish active?… They just don’t move, they’re paralyzed. Hell, they can have all the food in the world but no ability to move and catch it. I have a strong feeling that the chemical and farm industry has simply put a ‘no’ on looking into this.”
3 “Striped Bass Management in New York,” unpublished manuscript.
4 New York Fish & Game Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1, January 1968.
5 Dr. G.C. Matthiessen, marine biologist, concludes: “There is nothing about the decline of the striped bass that is really clear.… Some of the most polluted estuaries in New England we found to have the greatest abundance and diversity of fish populations, although some of the migratory species such as bass were not necessarily reproducing there. I think it is probably safe to say that a combination of factors are at work, overfishing being one of them. Certainly no one will argue about the impact of intensive and efficient fishing upon the stocks of haddock, yellowtail, blackback, and other species that are now in trouble.”
6 Drs. R. Mansueti and Edgar Hollis, “Striped Bass in Maryland Tidewater,” Natural Resources Institute, University of Maryland, Educational series No. 61.
7 Dr. Ted S.Y. Koo, Chesapeake Science, Vol. II, No. 2, June 1970.
8 Benjamin Florence and Joseph Boone, Maryland Conservationist, May/June 1978.
9 Judith Hope.
10 New York’s pound trap fishermen and gill netters catch small school bass up to twenty inches almost exclusively, and this is true also in Rhode Island, where in 1981, 92 percent of the bass taken were between sixteen and twenty-four inches; a Rhode Island gill netter reports that small bass bring in 80 percent of his income. As in New York, the netters believe that the striped bass wax and wane in cycles, and are not endangered. In the fall of 1981, Tallman and Mack, the Newport ocean pound trap firm that years ago bought their ocean traps and anchors from the Edwards Brothers, landed 130,000 pounds of bass—the third highest figure since the firm was established in 1910.
11 On the keypost set or flag set, east of Kuzmier’s.
12 Emergency Striped Bass Research Study, an amendment to the Anadromous Fish Conservation Act, 1979, sponsored by Senator John Chafee (R) of Rhode Island.
13 New York Times, August 10, 1983.
14 Dr. John Boreman of National Marine Fisheries Services and Dr. Philip Goodyear of United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
15 Charter boat Captain Jim Price, quoted in “A Rain of Death on the Striper?” by Robert H. Boyle, Sports Illustrated, April 23, 1984.
16 The Potomac River is relatively unaffected, for the same reason.
17 See “Fisheries Management on the Chesapeake,” by Dick Russell, Amicus Journal, Fall 1984.
18 Dr. Gene Cronin, the New York Times, September 30, 1984.
CHAPTER 16
1 A small whale-spotting hole under the eaves.
2 Laughing gulls.
3 Terns.
4 Calvin Lester, Harry Lester, Mickey Miller, Stuart Vorpahl, and others ship from the Seafood Shop in Wainscott.
5 See Rattray, Ship Ashore.
6 Interview by Susan Pollock in the East Hampton Star, 1978.
7 E.L. Sherrill, the East Hampton Star, January 31, 1985.
CHAPTER 17
1 Carol Havens, in interview with John Eilensen.
2 Hammerhead.
3 Little northern porpoise.
4 Cutlass fish or ribbandfish.
CHAPTER 18
1 This committee, which became “the Governor’s Task Force on Striped Bass,” and included Arnold Leo among its members, supplied Cuomo with a factual basis for his eventual support of the beleaguered commercial men in 1985, and won them strong allies in the governor’s office and various critical departments, offsetting the seeming prejudice in favor of the sportsmen demonstrated in almost all decisions of the D.E.C. In this critical period, 1983–1985, the Baymen’s Association officers—Dan King, Don Eames, Jr., and Leo—traveled repeatedly to Albany, where the association had become an effective lobby.
2 General Electric dumped its PCBs into the Hudson for over a quarter of a century, 1950–1976. The pollution was discovered in 1975, by which time the Hudson could claim the worst PCB pollution in the country.
3 Recently the tagging program has been intensified. On April 27, 1985, in Calvin Les
ter’s seine, I saw a twelve-inch bass with a yellow strip tag on it; another that day and a third caught the previous week by the Havens crew were the first tagged Chesapeake bass haul-seiners had ever seen.
4 Arthur Bengston.
CHAPTER 19
1 In 1984 the town of East Hampton sold approximately 150 commercial shellfish permits, as opposed to well over ten times that number of noncommercial licenses.
CHAPTER 20
1 Copeces—pronounced locally “co-pex”—is an Indian word for “little cove,” an apparent reference to the head of Three Mile Harbor, according to Tom Lester.
CHAPTER 22
1 Multi-Aquaculture Systems, run by Dr. Robert Valenti.
2 Eastern stretch of the Block Island Canyon.
3 The Captain Johnny.
CHAPTER 23
1 Journal of the Trustees and Commonalty at East Hampton Town.
2 See “Our Fishing Heritage,” by S. Kip Farrington, Jr., the East Hampton Star, October 24, 1935.
3 Here, in the old days, cattle were “baited,” or fed, before being driven down to summer pasture on Montauk.
4 The striped robin; the smaller species is the common robin.
5 Joe Olzewski, Fred Havens, Walter Bennett, Danny, and Danny’s former brother-in-law, John Haviland.
6 See Striped Bass Task Force report to Governor Cuomo, June 1, 1984.
7 Ironically, a resurgence of the bass was no guarantee that a fishery would be permitted. On August 20, 1984, the Food and Drug Administration had lowered the acceptable PCB level in fish from five parts per million to two, which laid the basis for a closure of the fishery by the D.E.C. On March 13 of 1985, the D.E.C. reported that a sample of bass taken in New York State exceeded the new PCB limit, and the commercial men, already reeling from a threat—later withdrawn—to forbid the sale of raw clams in New York restaurants, braced themselves for the D.E.C. closure that they had expected all along.
Meanwhile the Governor’s Task Force on Striped Bass, which tended to offset the D.E.C.’s clear bias in favor of the sportsmen, had accumulated evidence (see “PCBs: Is the Cure Worth the Cost?,” January, 1985, The American Council on Science and Health; see also (untitled paper) by Dr. Joseph O’Connor of N.Y.U., due summer of 1985) that of the 209 chemical components of PCBs (a stabilizing element used in transformers and other electrical equipment to reduce fire risk, etc.) only 16 were known to interact with living organisms, and none of these 16 had been found in Hudson fish; that unrelated dangerous chemicals were involved in the industrial accident in Japan that caused the PCB scare in the first place; that two studies of fish eaters by Michigan and Connecticut public health services revealed no known ill effects from PCBs; that many authorities agreed, in any case, that Hudson fish lost most of the PCB concentration in their fatty tissue by the time they reached the east end of Long Island. In short, the data on PCBs was as incomplete as the data on bass distribution, and on March 31, 1985, the Cuomo administration, citing the fact that the bass sample from local waters had been inadequate, exempted the east end of Long Island—those waters east of an imaginary line from Wading River on Long Island South to Mastic on the ocean shore—from a new ban on commercial fishing of striped bass in New York State. Also—pending more conclusive PCB tests—it would continue to permit recreational fishing rather than destroy a five million dollar industry. It also imposed a recreational bag limit of two fish (twenty-four inches or over) per day. This decision infuriated not only the sports fishermen but the charter boatmen, who claimed it would do serious damage to their business, especially in June, October, and November, when the striped bass was the fish most sought after by their clients. In short, nobody was happy, and nobody thought that the bureaucrats were finished with them yet. The publicity over the controversy, fueled by the politicians (Mayor Koch of New York City considered a total ban on the sale of bass, and Assemblyman Halpin demanded one), had affected the popularity of bass so severely that some markets announced they would not handle bass at all.
8 Bigelow and Schroeder, Fishes of the Gulf of Maine.
9 Harry Cullum.
EPILOGUE
1 In the autumn of 1985, the numbers of striped bass on the ocean beach had increased markedly over the previous year, and a number of large hauls were made; wherever they came from, the bass were coming back. Yet in mid-October, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission recommended a new minimum size limit of 33 inches, to be implemented as of 1987, and the D.E.C. indicated that it would endorse it. The fishermen could scarcely believe it. They discussed defiance of this latest ruling, in order to force a test case into court, although they had small hope that they would win. “That’s it,” the men said. “That’s the death knell.”
In the spring of 1986, despite the disputed data on PCBs and the strong resurgence of the bass, the taking, possession, or sale of this species, by any method, was indefinitely prohibited in New York State, and the seine crews vanished from the ocean beach. That fall, the “endangered” bass were more common along the beach than they had been in years, and the surfcasters took all they wanted; neither the PCB scare nor the ban was taken seriously. In effect, just as the seiners had predicted, the D.E.C. had established a recreational bass fishery while forcing the commercial men out of business, and the D.E.C. made it official, in the spring of 1987, by permitting the anglers one bass a day over thirty-three inches. Since these larger fish are more important in the reproduction of the species and have a higher PCB concentration than the smaller ones (which are much better to eat), the logic of the D.E.C. seemed as murky as ever.
Meanwhile, a brown algae of unknown origin, filling the bays from Riverhead east to Napeague, had damaged the trap and gill net fisheries and entirely destroyed the scallop harvest. With the simultaneous loss of scallops and striped bass, it was all but impossible for even the most stubborn fishermen to make a full-time living, and many resigned themselves to the loss of a family tradition of hundreds of years.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Matthiessen was born in New York City in 1927 and had already begun his writing career by the time he graduated from Yale University in 1950. The following year, he was a founder of The Paris Review. Besides At Play in the Fields of the Lord, which was nominated for the National Book Award, he has published four other novels, including Far Tortuga. Mr. Matthiessen’s unique career as a naturalist and explorer has resulted in numerous and widely acclaimed books of nonfiction, among them The Tree Where Man Was Born (with Eliot Porter), which was nominated for the National Book Award, and The Snow Leopard, which won it. His other works of nonfiction include The Cloud Forest and Under the Mountain Wall (which together received an Award of Merit from the National Institute of Arts and Letters), The Wind Birds, Blue Meridian, Sand Rivers, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, Indian Country, and, most recently, Men’s Lives. His novel-in-progress and a collection of his short stories will be published by Random House.
ALSO BY PETER MATTHIESSEN
THE PETER MATTHIESSEN READER
edited by McKay Jenkins
In this single-volume collection of the distinguished author’s nonfiction are essays and excerpts that highlight the spiritual, literary, and political daring so crucial to Matthiessen’s vision. Comprehensive and engrossing, The Peter Matthiessen Reader celebrates an American voice unequaled in its commitment to literature’s noblest aspiration: to challenge us to perceive our world—as well as ourselves—truthfully and clearly.
Nonfiction
LOST MAN’S RIVER
In Lost Man’s River Matthiessen returns to the primeval landscape of the Florida Everglades, the setting of his bestseller Killing Mister Watson. In 1910 a sugarcane planter named E. J. Watson was gunned down by a group of his neighbors, perhaps in cold blood, perhaps in self defense. Years later, E. J.’s son Lucius tries to discover the truth of his father’s life and death. And even as Lucius tries to redeem his half-lost life by gathering the testimony (and braving the threats) of poachers and renegades, he
struggles for the future of the remote country in which they live.
Fiction/Literature
AFRICAN SILENCES
A powerful and sobering account of the cataclysmic depredation of the African landscape and its wildlife. Through Peter Matthiessen’s eyes we see elephants, white rhinos, gorillas, and other endangered creatures of the wild. We share the drama of the journeys themselves, including a hazardous crossing of the continent in a light plane. And along the way, we learn of the human lives oppressed by bankrupt political regimes and economies.
Current Events/Travel
AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF THE LORD
In a malarial outpost in South America two misplaced gringos converge and clash. Martin Quarrier has come to convert the elusive Niaruna Indians to his brand of Christianity. Lewis Moon, a stateless mercenary who is himself part Indian, has come to kill them on behalf of the local comandante. Out of their struggle Peter Matthiessen has created a novel of Conradian richness that explores both the varieties of spiritual existence and the politics of cultural genocide.
Fiction/Literature
ON THE RIVER STYX
And Other Stories
“Mr. Matthiessen proves himself here to be a connoisseur of coiled tensions, between men and women, between people of different social classes, and, repeatedly, between races.… There is something almost mysterious about his achievement … qualities for which one can think of only classical or old-fashioned words: gravitas, grandeur, beauty.”