Along the Gloucester waterfront, people have brought back a business and a boat already in 2008. And a cable TV channel responsible for a top-rated show last year will bring a return of national attention to Gloucester.
Back in the spotlight
Gloucester will soon have its celebrity fishing captains as the Bering Sea crab fishery already does, and the port will be put back into the national spotlight as "The Perfect Storm" book and movie did several years ago.
A phone call from Paul Gasek, executive producer of the Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" series, to Times Editor Ray Lamont in March started the process. The Discovery Channel chose to film its "After the Catch II" series here, with the plan of bringing "our captains, including Sig Hansen, Phil Harris, Keith Colburn, and Andy and Jonathan Hillstrand, along with some of their crew to Gloucester to visit their eastern counterparts for a roundtable discussion at a barroom frequented by fishermen," Gasek explained.
"Choosing Gloucester was my idea," he added. "The Discovery Channel wanted to go to a real historic fishing port," said Gasek, a former tub-trawl fisherman who worked out of Chatham and landed his fish in Gloucester.
Based on my knowledge of the local fishing industry and the people behind it, Lamont directed Gasek to me. Gasek and I soon toured the waterfront along with several of the port's favorite watering holes. He was also given a list of local fishing captain candidates who were chosen in part for their experience and ability to perform in front of a camera.
I later met again with Gasek and people, including producer Mark Fortgang, assisting with the show from Original Productions of Burbank, Calif., and Silent Crow Arts of New York. They had already chosen Jimmy Pratt's Pratty's CAV along Parker Street, but didn't know who to contact. I knew just the person: Jack Magner, a long-time Pratty's CAV family member. Jack quickly lined up everything.
The Gloucester captain candidates have since been interviewed and taped.
"They were great," Fortgang said. Five "After The Catch II" shows, which will include individual interviews with the local captains, will be taped in early June.
Stay tuned for their identities. The shows will air on five consecutive Tuesdays beginning June 10.
Waterfront return
After running Three Lanterns Ship Supply Inc. — first along East Main Street and later in their building at the Head of the Harbor — for 28 years, then retiring for five years, Mike and Nancy Parisi have started up their old business as Three Lanterns Ship & Marine.
"We have had so many people approach us and wish we would open a marine store. Nancy and I also miss our old customers. We are trying to recreate a business that will survive on the waterfront during these times," said the 58-year-old Mike Parisi, whose family has been in the fishing business for generations.
"The fishing industry was always the life blood of the Gloucester waterfront," he added. "Three Lanterns Ship Supply once had a seafood company, a full wire and trawl shop, a net man and a full-time rigger. Now I'm selling fishing poles and hooks. That's what it's come down to."
Harsh fishery rules and federal boat buy-backs beginning in the 1990s have helped shrink the Gloucester fishing fleet. Furthermore, "all of the shore-side businesses have not had financial help to diversify and have also been crippled by zoning restrictions," Parisi said.
During their brief retirement, when a large marine supply company moved in and later out a couple of years ago, the Parisis tried to find a new tenant.
"Nobody wanted to rent space in Gloucester at the time," Parisi said. "Potential customers felt we were on an island, and there would not be enough business here. Nancy and I could have sold the building last winter, taken the money and be done, but we decided to start up our old business instead."
The Parisis also rent out dock space and commercial space on the second floor of their building.
"Our new business caters to both commercial and recreational fishermen. There's lots of gear for tuna, bass and charter boat fishermen. We have also put in a full line of fishing kayaks set up with rod holders. We are trying to carry some of the hardware and fittings other places in town aren't carrying. If customers come in and want something we don't have, we will carry it for them," said Parisi, who also stressed, "We don't want to step on anyone's toes."
The store also continues to sell all kinds of safety equipment, marine paints and foul weather and mooring gear.
Staying afloat
"She's an old boat, but she's fine," said Peter Mullen, who owns a wharf and a small pelagics fleet in Gloucester. His 78-foot, over 30-year-old, steel purse seiner, Western Wave, which he bought from Stinson Seafood Co. in 2000, is even better today thanks to an ongoing refurbishing job, largely by its 38-year-old skilled captain, Peter Galley from Frankfurt, Maine.
"We're getting there; the Western Wave will be ready by June 1," Galley said. That date marks the beginning of the seine and fixed-gear-only fishing restriction for Herring Management Area 1. Galley, helped by regular crew members Bob Royce from Hope, Maine, and John Moores, Kyle Newman, Jonathan Chute and Leo McGonigal, all from Lubec, Maine, have put in new electric and hydraulic systems, a new 50 KW genset, new purse winches, and done lots of metal fabrication throughout the vessel, which is an offshore lobster boat turned seiner.
"I went to tech school at Bangor, Maine. I worked as a welder on and off for 10 years. Welding and metal fabrication are good things to know, especially when you are on a steel boat," said Galley, who was born in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, and grew up on Campobello Island. "Seining is a nice-weather summer fishery," he explained.
The Western Wave seines herring inshore and offshore, sometimes on Cashes Ledge, about 80 miles from Cape Ann. The vessel can carry 100 tons of fish.
"There's not a lot of water on deck when she's loaded," Galley said.
