The recent acquisitions of Andy Santapaola and brothers Peter and Enzo Russo are helping to keep the heart of the local fishing industry pumping as it is besieged and threatened by regulatory strangulation, $3-a-gallon fuel and a dogfish plague.
Andy's prep work
"I want to go full-time commercial fishing," explained 161/2-year-old Andy Santapaola, a Gloucester student at North Shore Vocational and Technical School in Middleton.
"I took him out fishing as soon as he could stand up on a boat," said his father, Capt. Jimmy Santapaola, a third-generation inshore fisherman.
Andy has been plying the fishing trade summers and weekends, vacations and even early-release days during the school year, primarily on his father's boats, Amanda & Andy and Amanda & Andy II, and working up to his big move the last 10 years.
"After one half-day of school last winter, I walked down to the wharf, and my father was just coming in from his first trip and was getting ready to make a second trip on his other boat. I jumped aboard for the second trip," Andy said.
When the fishing is good, his father makes a daily trip on both boats.
"I'm not bothered by the weather," Andy said. "I might get a little queasy the first day out fishing, but I get used to it quickly."
Andy's first recollection of fishing is standing amidst thousands of pounds of glistening mackerel in the late spring on the family's former trap boat, Buddy & Pal.
The Santapaolas then snared schools of mackerel heading north along the shore in their fish trap off Magnolia.
"I've been tuna fishing, too," Andy said. "Three years ago I went tuna fishing with my father on Platt's Bank. We landed about 16 tuna there during the course of the summer," he said.
Incidentally, Platt's is about 60 miles from Gloucester.
Since then, Andy has been largely gillnetting with his father.
"I pick and dress," he said. That translates, in layman's language, to clearing snagged fish from the gillnetting, then removing the viscera from the round fishes' bellies.
Andy purchased his first new boat, a beamy and high-sided, approximately 21-foot-long Novi skiff built by Aylward Fiberglass in Clark's Harbour, Nova Scotia.
A 115-horsepower, state-of-the-art outboard powers his new craft, which he named Buddy & Zeus after his current and deceased dogs.
This winter he and his father plan to install either an electric or a hydraulic pot hauler and build some kind of a wheelhouse on the open boat for better protection from the elements.
His father has helped show Andy how, where, when and what to do to still make a buck on fishing inshore. The sprouting fisherman plans to seasonally target groundfish, lobsters, dogfish and striped bass in state waters with his Buddy & Zeus.
Another bold step
Enzo and Peter Russo have just taken another bold step in these challenging fishing times when every cent counts.
The brothers have installed the Icelandic at-sea method of storing slurry-iced, chilled fish in vats aboard their 97-foot groundfish dragger Miss Trish II, primarily "to get day-boat prices for trip-boat fish," explained Enzo.
Day-boat fish prices frequently top those of trip boats by as much as 40 cents a pound.
Trip boats such as the Miss Trish II have traditionally stored their cleaned catches below deck in pens amidst layers of crushed freshwater ice, sometimes for 10 days or longer.
The quality of such fish can deteriorate over time, especially in warm or rough weather due to autolysis and the crushing affect of the top layers of fish and ice bearing down on the bottom fish. Fish graders and buyers get excited about fish with clear eyes, good color, muscle firmness and no odor.
The Russos and at least one other from their regular crew, which includes Frank Groppo, Nino Torrente, Joe Maletti and alternate crewman Nick Vitale, along with other Gloucester fishermen, traveled to Iceland several years ago with Thomas P. Kelly, owner of A.J. Marine in Portland, Maine, to view some of the advanced fishing technology from the Land of Fire and Ice.
The Russos were immediately sold on the slurry-ice system and vats after seeing 7-day-old fish "landed like brand new," and talking to fishermen who use the system and like it, Enzo said. They purchased the approximately 3-by-4-foot vats, which all bear the Miss Trish II's name, and slurry ice machinery through Kelly and also had him install the system this fall with the help of two technicians from the slurry-ice machine's manufacturer in Iceland - Kaeling EHF. Kelly is also the U.S. agent for much of that equipment.
"The Miss Trish II is the first fishing vessel on the East Coast to have this Icelandic system," Kelly said.
Crew likes it
The Miss Trish II's crew is already enthusiastic about the new equipment after making a 4-day and an 8-day fishing trip. The system simply feeds on raw sea water and is powered by the main engine's generators. The crew now has the option to send out bulk ice, 32-degree water, and slurry-ice via hoses to the open deck and fish hold. The super-chilled water hosed into the open deck's washdown tank cools the catch to about 32 degrees before it is sent to the fish hold.
Here, Maletti and Torrente simply hose in a 2-inch-thick bottom layer of slurry-ice into the empty vats before carefully filling them with about 450 pounds of size- and species-specific fish and capping off each vat with another 2-inch layer.
They place flat fish white side up and round fish, like cod and haddock, side-to with their backs up to prevent any blood from getting into the fillet. Storing the fish in the shallow vats further prevents any crushing.
"Icing down the fish is now so easy, there's no more breaking up and shoveling ice in the fish hold, and you don't have to deal with all of those pen boards," Maletti said.
Aided by a special mast with a boom and winches on deck, the two crew members stack the filled vats four and five high in the hold. Each vat seals the one below it and further helps to keep the catch's core temperatures around 32 degrees. These vats don't slide in rough weather.
The crew can also now easily off-load its catch at the dock by hoisting up two to three vats at a time. Once emptied, the vats are quickly returned to the vessel for washing and then storage below deck.
Top price, too
Capt. Mark Carroll, an ambitious short-trip boat fisherman, happened to be at the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction dock when the Miss Trish II took out its 8-day-old haddock catch.
"Look at the eyes. Those fish look like they just came out of the water," Carroll said.
Sam Favazza, a veteran fish grader and buyer, who holds a seat at the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction, was also impressed by the vessel's whole catch. "The fish were fantastic; they looked just like day-old, hook-boat fish."
The crew received top prices for their trip boat fish, too.
