Ebb & Flow
That easterly that hit the night of Feb. 25 was quick and powerful.
Besides its widespread damage on land, the tempest also snarled lobster gear, created work for a buoy tender, drove fish off Cape Ann, and also made for a long, long night for one fishing vessel offshore.
Not surprisingly, the easterly, aided by hurricane-force winds, astronomical high tides — an already rough sea state riled by the previous day's storm and a pile-up of water along the coast from heavy rains and fresh water run-off and persistent onshore winds — really got the ocean moving, bringing the bottom up to the surface and snarling up lobster gear in places with bottom debris, especially along the outer edge of the Sandy Bay Breakwater.
I'm still recuperating from two bad snarls. In one, two five-pot trawls came together and twisted around a mound of old rope and gnarled traps whose wire often had ice-pick-like tips that loved to puncture skin and foul weather gear. In the other, a five-pot trawl wrapped around an approximately 12-foot-long, 500-pound piece of steel from the hull remnants of a Liberty ship that sank behind the breakwater in the 1940s.
I had to tow both snarls to shallow water where I was finally able to cut free my traps after stretching the back and arms for several hours.
The floating groundline ban in all Massachusetts waters to save whales, whether warranted or not, has dramatically added to ghost fishing gear littering the bottom, including the seven traps of mine lost at the breakwater during this last storm.
The sinking groundline doesn't arc off the bottom, making it often hang down solidly or chafe on the rocky bottom in turbulence, while it also pretty much eliminates the option of grappling back lost gear there.
There will be an event at Pigeon Cove Wharf on Monday, March 29, at 11 a.m. to start the Fishing for Energy program in Rockport," said agent Geralyn Falco, also a member of the Rockport Conservation Commission.
Fishing for Energy is a partnership consisting of the Covanta Energy Corp., the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc., which provides a no-cost solution to fishermen to dispose of old, derelict, or unusable fishing gear, and works to reduce the amount of derelict fishing gear in and around coastal waterways, according to the program's literature. Components of the collected gear are later recycled or converted to electricity. More fishermen would be willing to bring ashore ghost gear if an easy disposal option existed.
The foothill-sized waves and seas of the big easterly also moved the three bell buoys at or adjacent to the breakwater — one over 500 feet — and made the 24-man crew of the 175-foot, South Portland, Maine-based buoy tender Marcus Hannah spend last Sunday's dinnertime repositioning them back where they belong.
The cement block anchors of these buoys, depending upon their size, can weigh from 6,000 to 20,000 pounds.
"When each buoy is hauled aboard, we check each one to make sure everything (from lights to bells) is functioning the way they are supposed to," explained Andrew Havens, one of the tender's machinery technicians.
These three buoys weren't the only ones the storm had dragged off site within the Marcus Hannah's maritime zone, roughly from Bath to Boston.
Besides lobster gear and bell buoys, the storm even moved fish. "The haddock showed up (northeast of Gloucester), and the cod were there (on Middlebank, southeast of Gloucester), and that last storm drove everything except for the yellowtails (flounders on the bottom)," said Carl Bouchard, owner and captain of the 45-foot dragger Stormy Weather.
"There were several days after the storm that I didn't get my cod limit (800 pounds a day) on Middlebank. This was the first time since last June," said Dennis O'Connell, owner and captain of the dragger Lady Elaine.
Capt. Russell Sherman and his 72-foot Lady Jane "... were working on the haddock northeast of Gloucester. We went back after the weather, and there wasn't much there. We still haven't found them yet," he said.
Gillnet fisherman John "Spicy" Montgomery also experienced the storm driving away the Middlebank cod that he was targeting. "The nor'easter always drives away the fish from the shoal water. I have no idea where they go," he said.
"The cod really haven't come back yet (as of last weekend)," Montgomery added. "I think we will see another charge (of cod) now that the sand eels are starting to show up."
"That second storm (the big easterly) dumped a lot of fresh water," added Bouchard. "I think that was a big influence (in driving the fish), especially with the amount of wind that really mixed it in (and lowered the salinity). The (grayish-green) water color hasn't come back yet. The tides have also been ferocious. There could have been a combination of things that drove the fish."
The big storm even drove the 85-foot dragger, Harmony — crewed by Capt. Dave Haggerty, Luke DeWildt, Eric Grove and Frannie Mitchell, all from mid-coast Maine — head on into its frothing waves on Franklin Swell in the outer Gulf of Maine much of that night.
"We had just hauled back (the fishing gear) about 7 p.m., and the wind came on good around 9:10 p.m.," recalled Capt. Haggerty. "The gang was still on deck finishing off the last tow (dressing, washing and putting away the last set's catch, while he controlled the vessel from the wheelhouse).
"There was a sustained wind out of the east-southeast at about 60 mph with top gusts around 80 mph for about two hours," he said. "By 11 p.m., the wind dropped down to about 50 mph."
Grove vividly remembers the sound of that wind traveling through the ship's rigging while he worked on deck.
"It sounded like a freight train," he said.
He also remembers the rain, surf and spray, "curling against the side of the boat." "The rain was intense. It kind of helped knock down the seas," Haggerty explained.
"We couldn't go anywhere. All you could do was to hang on and jog into it (head the boat slowly into the wind and waves)," Haggerty said. "It was a long, long night."
Gloucester lobsterman Peter K. Prybot writes regularly for the Times on the fishing industry and other local issues.
