NAFOH: Commercial Fishing

Here we have finding aids for collections of accessions focused on commercial fishing, including lobstering, fisheries, and crab-picking. As some of these collections were created around a theme (rather than based on a single donation or class), there is some overlap in the collections.

Related: If you find the finding aids on this page interesting, you may want to check out some of the following resources.

• Maine marine/fishery resources: The Penobscot Marine Museum, Downeast Fisheries Trail, Great Harbor Maritime Museum, Maine Maritime Museum, Penobscot Marine Museum, and Voices From Fisheries Oral History Project, NOAA.

 

MF 037 “Life of the Maine Lobsterman” project
Number of accessions: 20
Dates when interviews were conducted: 1974
Time period covered: 20th century
Principal interviewers: David Taylor
Finding aides: transcripts
Access restrictions: NA0887, 1089, 1131, 1318
Description: The bulk of the nineteen accessions (33 hours) in this collection consists of interviews by David Taylor conducted during the summer of 1974. Accessions NA0726, NA0727, and NA0747 – NA0750 have been added to the collection since they are on the same topic and were done around the same time.

MF 047 “Penobscot Bay Fisheries and Industries Project”
Number of accessions: 13
Dates when interviews were conducted: 1973-1974
Time period covered: 20th century
Principal interviewers: David Taylor
Finding aides: indexes, transcripts
Access restrictions: none
Description: A series of thirteen interviews, totaling twenty-four hours of recordings, conducted in 1973-1974 by David Taylor under contract for the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine, with fishermen from the Penobscot Bay region. Themes include equipment used and techniques; fisheries locations, species, and extent; dangers and satisfactions of the fisherman’s life; industry economics; family and community networks. Includes some photographs. Taylor was an undergraduate at the University of Maine at the time he conducted these interviews. He is now (2002) on the staff of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress (update: as of 6/24/2014 Taylor was still at the LOC, but not longer at the AFC).

MF 049 Penobscot River Commercial Fisheries Project
Number of accession: 8
Dates when interviews were conducted: most in 1974
Principal interviewers: David Taylor
Finding aides: index
Access restrictions: none
Description: The collection consists of a series of interviews with eight fishermen done by David Taylor on the commercial fisheries of the Penobscot River in Maine. Taylor interviewed men who fished for smelt, salmon, sturgeon, alewives, eels, and cod; also an eel wholesaler. Methods discussed include net fishing; weir fishing; and winter fishing. Towns discussed include Winterport; Frankfort; and Bangor.

MF 061 “Tom Tilton: Coaster and Fisherman”/ Gale Huntington
Number of accessions: 1
Dates when interviews were conducted: 1979
Time period covered: late 19th and 20th centuries
Principal interviewers: Gale Huntington
Finding aides: transcript
Access restrictions: yes
Description: NA1278 Basis of Northeast Folklore XXIII: Tom Tilton: Coaster and Fisherman (1982). Tom Tilton, interviewed by Gale Huntington, Nancy Safford, and Nora Groce Kaplan, 1973 and 1979, Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts. The interviews were mostly between Gale Huntington and his father-in-law Tom Tilton, but they were also joined by Nancy Safford in 1973 and Nora Groce Kaplan (and once by Tilton’s wife Laura) in 1979. All of the tapes are on file at the Dukes County Historical Society, Edgartown, Massachusetts, with duplicates here at the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History. Tilton, 92, talks his work on the water around Martha’s Vineyard; his childhood during the late nineteenth century on Martha’s Vineyard; education; preparing salt cod; boxing a compass; childhood recreation; sailing to transport fish to New Bedford; May baskets; trapping fish, including methods, fish species, and prices; salvaging salable goods from the wrecked Port Hunter and disputes over salvage rights; bull-raking for quahogs; comparison of shoal vessels and keel vessels; cargoes carried on ships and why lime was dangerous; how to slip the anchor and when it was necessary; purification process for contaminated oysters; growing oysters; the transportation of goods to Martha’s Vineyard and seasonal patterns; dances; a near-shipwreck; swordfishing off the coast of Nova Scotia, including season, boat preparation, and techniques; use of sail and power on boats; different styles of dragging boats; tales of fishermen lost at sea; use of trunnels in boat construction; limited options for making a living available to him; his father’s lobstering; living on Nomans’s Land (Island) in the late nineteenth century; keeping fish alive in pockets; end of trap fishing; coasting; goods salvaged from wrecks; fishermen helping each other, particularly when the Coast Guard was occupied with military matters; alcohol and the rarity of drinking while at sea; wasted catches when fish were not iced properly; boating superstitions; potato bugs; and the importance of not giving in to fear in dangerous seas. RESTRICTED. Text: 252 pp. transcript. Recording: T 1340 – T 1345, T 1409 – T 1410 8 hours.

MF 152 Swordfishing Collection
Number of accessions: 6
Dates when interviews were conducted: 2003
Time period covered: mid-to-late 20th century
Principal interviewers: James Moreira and David Sanger
Finding aides: transcripts
Access restrictions: no restrictions on interviews; video may not be copied
Description: A series of six interviews about swordfishing in Nova Scotia conducted by James Moreira and David Sanger of the University of Maine Anthropology Department in 2003. This collection consists of six audio interviews, one video and 2 cds containing photographs. Themes include experiences growing up in fishing families; techniques used in catching swordfish; processes involved after swordfish is spotted and harpooned; how to spot and track swordfish.

MF 160 Fisheries/ Ted Ames Collection
Number of accessions: 33
Dates when interviews were conducted: 1995-1997
Time period covered: late 19th century and 20th century
Principal interviewers: Ted Ames
Finding aides: some transcripts
Access restrictions: The copyright is retained by the interviewees in most cases.
Description: There are two parts of the Fisheries/ Ted Ames Collection, but both are recordings by Ted Ames that have to do with fisheries. Part one a series of interviews by Ames about the fishing grounds in the Gulf of Maine and Penobscot Bay fisheries. Part two is recordings from the Localized Fishery Stocks conference attended and recorded by Ted Ames about the implications of localized fish stocks on October 31 and November 1, 1997.

MF 168 Crab-Picking Project/ Blossom Kravitz
Number of accessions: 29
Dates when interviews were conducted: 2012
Time period covered: 20th century
Principal interviewers: Blossom Kravitz
Finding aides: transcripts
Access restrictions: none
Description: Interviews about crab-picking in Maine. This research led to Crab Picking: An Endangered Maine Cottage Industry, Northeast Folklore XLVI.