Ebb & Flow
"We're finally getting some eels," reports Jack Reagan, general manager at New England Marine Resource Inc. The recent arrival of the E-Z Rider and Undaunted and their zealous crews is one reason Gloucester's sole slime eel buyer, processor and exporter is getting more of the eels.
"I heard you are the guy for slime eels. I would like to send a couple of my boats down to you," Chris "Budda" Byers from Winter Harbor, Maine, told Reagan over the telephone several months ago.
Byers, president of DC Air & Seafood Co. at Winter Harbor, owns and homeports four Novi-style combination scallop-quahog draggers, including the Undaunted and E-Z Rider. He had Bruce M. Atkinson Boat Builders in Nova Scotia make him the 44-foot-11 by 23-foot Undaunted three years ago and soon purchased the 7-year-old, 45-foot by 22-foot-5 E-Z Rider, a Hubbie model, from a fellow Maine fisherman. Both boats are powered by 400-horsepower Cat main diesels.
The Undaunted and E-Z Rider and their respective crews — Capt. George Bamford, 34, Matt Small, 29, and Jay Imhof, 38; and Capt. Scotty McKenna, 31, Joey Dennison, 27, and Donald Robinson, 28 — arrived in Gloucester and began fishing for New England Marine Resources Inc. about a month ago. All of the men, except Imhof, are from Winter Harbor; he's from Essex.
"They are fishermen; they're in and they're out," Reagan said.
Before relocating to Gloucester, the crews and owner spent about a month converting the draggers into eel boats and making each vessel's five trawls of eel traps — 200 pots plus their high fliers and buoy lines and groundlines. The eel traps are made out of plastic barrels.
"The fishing gear for each boat costs about $16,000," Bamford said.
The conversion involved clearing the decks of dragging gear, except for the stern A-frames; here overhead trap storage bins were built around and setting up starboard hauling stations were equipped with 17-inch pot haulers, rope lockers, davits, barrel tracks and dumping tables. The overhead trap storage bins "can each hold 200 barrels. We usually take the gear in between trips," McKenna said. Doing so eliminates the risk of having it towed away by mobile gear fishing vessels.
During their typical 3 1รขÑ2-day offshore trips, primarily in the Gulf of Maine, "weather permitting, we go through the gear three times," McKenna said. The crews often put in 16- to 18-hour days to get that hauling, emptying, re-baiting and re-setting routine done. The captains then control the boat and gear hauling while their crew men handle the fishing gear and the catch aboard. The unsorted eel catches are dumped into the vessels' fish holds; ice is added to help keep them alive.
"Our biggest problem on the Undaunted has been keeping the eels alive. We can't fill our fish hold full of water like the E-Z Rider crew can on their boat. This limits our trip lengths. We would like to stay out longer and come in with 30,000 to 40,000 pounds of eels a trip," Bamford said. The two boats typically each bring in under 20,000 pounds of eels a trip. They are paid over 50 cents a pound for only the live eels that weigh at least .18 grams. Their catches are pumped out at the dock just as herring and mackerel are.
"We fish until we can't fish anymore, and that's usually when the wind is blowing over 35 mph," said McKenna. Bamford added, "The boats can take it all right; but, when the wind blows that hard, lines start snapping, and it's not worth it."
But, as big as the E-Z Rider might appear for its small length, its crew feels "the boat is not big enough. That's why we have the deck (storage bin) overhead," said McKenna. The Undaunted has more deck room which allows two trawls (80 traps) to be stored there. The E-Z Rider's deck has space for only one trawl at a time.
Both crews are novices at slime eeling. "We've eeled only about two months. I think there's money in it. You have to put in your time to get them," McKenna said.
"Eeling is a lot easier than quahogging," Small said. A vessel harvests these relatively small hard-shelled bivalves that live in the bottom sediment by towing a heavy dredge. In the case of the E-Z Rider and Undaunted, that bottom is about 240 feet down, seven miles off the Maine coast. Their crews then spend hours on deck hauling back, emptying and re-setting the dredge, often seven to eight times an hour, and handling the heavy catch in between. "After three days of quahogging, you feel it," Small said. The men plan to return to quahogging next summer. The captains have also scalloped out of Gloucester.
The E-Z Rider and Undaunted crews "go out regularly, and they produce good eels," said Yang Cho, owner of New England Marine Resources Inc. These fishermen are gung ho and work under the mind set once they have unloaded a trip, and the weather allows it, "As soon as we can get food, water, fuel, bait and ice, we'll be right back out," said Bamford.
The increased eel supply has been especially reassuring to New England Marine Resources Inc.
"Our eel processing has been very slow the last three to four years. Now, we're processing eels four to five days a week," Reagan said. The company exports frozen eels for food to South Korea and sells live ones to out-of-state restaurants.
One reason for the company's recent slow production period has been repeated mechanical breakdowns on its own 94-foot eel catcher, Camano. "Thanks to (local, expert mechanic) Guy Trudell and Rose's Marine, the Camano is in good shape. It started fishing on Oct. 1," Cho said. Veteran eel fisherman Dave "Heavy D" Sutherland skippers the vessel.
"The demand for eels is still there, even though the Korean exchange rate has been devaluated 40 percent. The (eel) market is not as strong as it should be. You have to sell the eels cheaper now," Cho explained. That trend rings a bell with many things nowadays, especially with lobster.
Peter K. Prybot often writes about fishing issues for the Times.
