Fishing: the next generation

Is there a place in the human DNA for a "fishing" gene, a strand of protein whose weird chemical qualities impel the holder to cast off terra firma for the satisfactions and cruelties of the watery world?

If there is, it will be found in the chemistry of Peter Kammerer.

The slim, thoughtful 18-year-old estimates he's been light commercial fishing — gillnetting, lobstering, rod and reeling — since he was eight. Breaking in was hard.

"My first boss was (gillnetter) John Thompson; he's passed away," said Kammerer. "The reason I went with him was no one else would let me go because of my age."

Advancement was swift.

Today, Kammerer has a hire-on-the-spot reputation along the wharves of Gloucester and Cape Cod, where he works on inshore and offshore lobster boats, as well as in Seattle, and Alaska, where he has gone for salmon fishing and crabbing treks.

"In the summers of 2009 and 2010, when I was 17, I was in Bristol Bay, Alaska on a 32-footer with a crew of five," he said during an interview at the Times. "We were anchored off the beach on the Naknek, River for 2 1/2 months while the fish were running."

Last winter, closer to home — the once major, now minor fishing port of Marblehead, he crewed on the William Bowe, a 65-foot Hyannis lobster boat, working Georges Bank, on week-long trips.

"I love that the most, the eight-day trips," Kammerer. "It's worth it."

He seemed uncomfortable when the subject of money was raised; pressed, however, he guessed he earned around $30,000 as a 17-year-old. And, with convincing urgency, he quickly added, "I don't care about that."

What he does cares about is what he does. And Peter Kammerer cares about fishing, the excitement, the exquisite isolation, the honorable struggle — man vs. beast with the watery medium, with its buddy the weather there to officiate. "I care about doing it right, I've been taught very well."

Among his mentors is Bruce Gibbs, a retired scalloper of Chatham. Kammerer, who networks netsmen like a veteran, sought out Gibbs in part because Kammerer's father, an investment banker in Boston, many years ago went scalloping with Gibbs.

"When I first met him," said Gibbs, "I was very impressed with his enthusiasm, and it's never stopped. This kid is really genuine. In this day and age, he thoroughly excited about fishing."

Kammerer, in short, is at least a building block for the next generation in the oldest industry that we know of, the harvesting of the sea.

The metrics of fishing favor the young because, for nearly a generation, this nation has been serious about restoring the ocean's ecology. And despite much unnecessary collateral — human damage traceable to flawed science, policies and politics — much progress has been made, and the future of fishing generally seems solid.

So, the future fishermen should enjoy fecund seas and an expanding global population market.

That doesn't mean Kammerer — or, for that matter most fishermen by choice — choose fishing the same way MBAs choose to go to business school.

Russell Sherman — a 1971 Harvard graduate whose mother back in Putnam, Conn., hoped he would become a doctor or a lawyer — understands that the call to the sea is emotional.

Sherman began crewing in the summer of his graduation, earned a lot of money and discovered — compared certainly to the demands of Harvard and to most other anchorages there was a "freedom to it" that became addictive.

Later was added the excitement of discovering the existence of the gift for the hunt — something that not all who go to sea carry to sea with them.

Today, Sherman, like most fishermen, seems beaten down by bureaucracy and its tidal waves of paperwork and red tape that many feel mocks the fishermen's exquisite isolation.

"This one (the 67-foot long, 33-year-old Lady Jane) is my last one," he said less than wistfully. But Sherman also has reason for hope in the future.

"It's my engineer, 25-year-old Charles Williams from Lanesville," Sherman said. "I know his father, and I grabbed him and I'm hoping to hold on to him.

"If my daughter finds a young man like him," Sherman added, "I'll be a very happy father."

Bruce Gibbs said he has met with Kammerer and his parents, Linda and Brendan, to help them sort out the remarkable course that Peter chose for himself.

Recalling how, in his own youth, a pirate movie left him with the yearning to "be out there," Gibbs, who went on to become a highliner with many protoges, said he has counseled the family against fighting something like fate and what Peter and his parents understand to be his "passion."

Peter's mother, Linda, traces it back to his early elementary school days — when the bus route took the children near Marblehead harbor.

In the early 19th century, Marblehead was second only to Gloucester among the Atlantic fishing ports, and according to Joseph E. Garland's history of the schooners, "Down to the Sea," Marblehead boasted 95 schooners over 50 tons in 1839.

About that time, according to the map of Gloucester by the noted cartographer John Mason, there were 443 vessels at anchor in the port on Oct. 14, 1833. That number does not include vessels at sea or at wharves.

Today, there are just over 100 vessels actively fishing out of Gloucester — with most of these operated solo or with crews of one or two. Even so, the fluid nature of an industry that insists on operating labor-to-management with handshakes, there is perpetual room for the ardent novice.

Of this quality, there are any number of good examples, but Peter Kammerer and Jaime Ortiz have been two.

The youngster from Marblehead and the 43-year-old from Honduras, earning for a family of five back in Central America, formed a bond while working on the Black Pearl in 2008, the year before Ortiz, a non-swimmer, slipped off the stern of a lobster boat where he was working and never seen again.

Kammerer called the Times frequently following Ortiz' death, asking if there was anything he could do to help.

Kammerer said he understands the risks in fishing, "I think about (Ortiz) every day. Fishermen are not afraid of fear."

Linda Kammerer said she and her husband are pleased that Peter found his calling while maintaining the parental insistence — for whatever it's worth — that Peter finds a way and time to complete high school and perhaps go to college some day.

Linda made clear she understood how lucky her son was have a professional direction and how foolish it would be to challenge the son who made a habit of getting off the elementary school bus four or five stops before the Kammerer house — at the harbor's edge — to hitch a ride on a dinghy out to a sailboat for bit of after-school hookey.

He'd enter the front door from these school days, she recalls, always wearing a life preserver — and a smile.

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

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