Seafood Industry Masterclass: Bill Gerencer, Author of Working Waterfront

Happy Planet Wednesday!

If you have ever wanted to lift the veil on New England's mysterious working waterfront, this is the podcast for you. Our guest today is Bill Gerencer, a veteran of 40+ years on the New England Working Waterfront.

 Bill served as lobsterman commercial fisherman, fish buyer, salesperson, corporate trainer, fisheries management advisor, and in retirement, a part-time oyster farmer. I have known Bill for years as he used to buy oysters from me on behalf of Boston-based Foley Fish, when it was still a century-old, family-run business.

Bill has recently written a candid memoir titled, Working Waterfront, a Fish Tale. With humour and insight, it dives into everything from near-death experiences on fishing boats to Seaport bar brawls to regulating the fisheries. The tone is Hemmingway-esque, straightforward but soulful. Each chapter ends with a fittingly rough-and-ready seafood recipe.

Transcript

ABIGAIL: 0:05

Welcome to the podcast where we celebrate innovation for a happy planet. I am your host, Abigail Carroll. If you have ever wanted to lift the veil on New England's mysterious working waterfront, this is the podcast for you. Our guest today is Bill er, a veteran of 40 plus years on the New England Working Waterfront. Bill served as lobsterman commercial fishermen, fish buyer, salesperson, corporate trainer, fisheries management advisor, and in retirement, a part-time oyster farmer. I have known Bill for years as he used to buy oysters from me back in the day. Bill has recently written a memoir called Working Waterfront, a Fishtail with humor and insight. It dives into everything from near-death experiences while fishing to bar brawls and policymaking. The tone is Hemingway ask. He doesn't mince words, and he tells it like he sees it. Each chapter ends with a fittingly, rough and ready seafood recipe. I love this book because it provides unparalleled personal insights into the evolving landscape of our fisheries and marine ecosystem, both on and off the water. But let's hear it from Bill. welcome to the podcast, bill.

BILL: 1:25

Well, thank you. Thanks for inviting me and I'm really honored to be here.

ABIGAIL: 1:29

Well, it's a delight. Just a little background information. I know you from the time when I was an oyster farmer and you were my buyer at one point. And now we've both moved on from those jobs. I'm interested to know why you wrote this book.

BILL: 1:45

The shorter answer is'cause I had to.

ABIGAIL: 1:48

Hmm.

BILL: 1:48

You know, I thought about writing books over the years and on this or that, and I never got past the first line, you know, something stupid, like it was a dark and stormy night, and that was it. But when I got close to retirement, I thought, geez, I know exactly what to write about, and I was compelled to write it. So I just felt really strongly that I had a book in me and I wanted to try and write it when I retired. And my, my goal was to retire and do nothing but write. It didn't work out that way, but eventually it, it all came to me. And, and the process was interesting too.

ABIGAIL: 2:20

Well, you have a very interesting perspective to give on the working waterfront because you were a fisherman, you were a fish dealer. You were on the board of the fish exchange in Portland you've worked on oyster farms, you've been in policy making, tell me how all of this work together to kind of shape your view that you communicate through the book.

BILL: 2:46

You know, it all kind of happened by accident. I didn't have this plan. Here's what I'm gonna do. It's just I, I started as a fisherman and got really hooked on quality at sea, which led me to Foley Fish and the Portland Fish Auction as a buyer for them. And I was passionate about the auction, you know, watching it work. And at one time I was doing'em all at once. I was, I was going to fishery management meetings, I was going to PFE board meetings. I was cooking at Fridays at the St. Vincent's Soup Kitchen and. I spent a lot of time volunteering and not making money, but I don't regret any of that. I, I just, I met a lot of great people. I learned an awful lot from quite a few of those people. So it, it kind of, you know, towards the end of it, I thought, gee, I, I'm, I kind of know a couple things about this thing that I've been doing with my life, and that helped with the writing.

ABIGAIL: 3:42

Well, I think that's what's so astonishing is that, you've got these stories from the bar brawls on the working waterfront to to really high-end, perspective of trying to create policy and, interacting with Noah. And then you have this really great ability to tell a story and it's, it's not overly, you know, worked. The writing is really fluid, it's natural. I hear Bill in it. I just kept turning pages. You are in a very special place it seems to me to be writing this book. And it's, I think it's an important time.

BILL: 4:23

I was reading two authors while I was writing because in, a movable feast by Hemingway. He said, you have to write, I have to read in order to write. And so my two authors were a woman named Jill Connor Brown, who wrote a series of comedy books called The Sweet Potato Queens of Jackson, Mississippi. And it was a hoot. And a French suggested it because she ended every chapter with a recipe. And so I copied that and I copied a little bit of her snarky voice. And I was also reading Anthony Bourdain, not because I want to be Anthony Bourdain, but because I loved his voice and the way he wrote and the way he spoke to the reader. And so between the two of them, you know, I'd write some, I'd pick up a book and read it. And I, I felt bad about Anthony because as I got through his third book, I, which I believe was called Medium Raw, it occurred to me that, you know, how did nobody see his suicide coming? You could see the darkness creeping in as he wrote successive books and the, and the sort of self loathing and it. Shouldn't have been there.'cause he was, he was such a hero to so many of us.

ABIGAIL: 5:25

Well, it's funny you mentioned Hemingway,'cause Hemingway kept popping in my head as I was reading and just that raw directness and, and some of the subject matter. Again, getting down into the grit of the life on the boats and the working waterfront. I wanna hear a little bit more about the early days on the working waterfront.'cause you have some stories of, you know, rough times in the bars. Is it different today? I don't mean those specific places. Portland's been gentrified for sure. But is the working waterfront still a rough place or has that evolved with everything else?

BILL: 6:03

Honestly, I think a lot of it's evolved. I was in Fulton Fish Market a couple of days ago early in the morning, and that's not the place it was, you know, it's up in Hunts Point in a big refrigerated building and not down in, on South Street under the the, the Brooklyn Bridge and, you know, the ground covered with a inch of sludge and, and kind of a rough and tumble place. You know, my mother grew up in Brooklyn and there was an Irish guy, and she was Irish, an Irish guy in her neighborhood that used to work in Fulton. He had his own company and she said he used to come home, thumped up all the time. And I talked to some friends who were Irish in the new Fulton Fish Market, and they were like, yeah, that was the old days. None of that happens anymore. There was a time in New Bedford, for instance, where the heroin dealers used to catch the lines when the scallop boats were coming back in.'cause their customers had just arrived home and they're gonna have a boatload of money. But nowadays fishing boats will breathalyze you or drug test you and, and there's so much money to be made on some of these endeavors. And they don't want, you know, bombs, they want professionals. And it, you know, my early days I was a dope. I, I was an idiot. I was kind of a, a butthead running around the waterfront and, you know, and it woke, I woke up to the idea that most of these guys like lobstermen aren't drinking in bars all the time. And, and you know, not partying. And I, I was only home for a couple days at a time when I was ground fishing. And it occurred to me, geez, if I spend my two days home in the bar. If I eventually quit ground fishing, I'm gonna associate being on shore with drinking. And what kind of life is that gonna be? So not just drinking, but being drunk. So I, I spent trip after trip of just not even drinking because you, you were clean and sober offshore. Most of us were. There were a couple weren't. I documented a growth process too, and it was more than just,, learning how to be a citizen and a decent person. But there was a spiritual component to it too, because I read all these books like Farley Moat and James Clavell when I was fishing, and then I read the, just for the heck of it, I read the Bible cover to cover. And that brought me to other authors like Dan Millman and a book called A Course in Miracles. And, you know, a bunch of different people like Sojourner Truth and some of the Eastern philosophers and. Who, I'm sorry I can't remember right now, but, so I was always kind of exploring that while I was going through all this. It was a sort of a, so there's a, if you pardon the pun, an undercurrent of spirituality in the book as well, and

ABIGAIL: 8:34

I think that definitely comes across. I think you talk a lot about the family virtues of hard work and honesty that that were bestowed on you and how that helped shape your career, but your own personal growth out there and struggling with temptation of being in the bars and trying to make right decisions when not everybody around you is making the right decisions. I thought it was a beautiful story and in the context of this changing framework of a fishery.

BILL: 9:36

yeah, it's a fishery that's been struggling to become more sustainable because for. of years. Fishing was just fishing. It was sort of like, based on the right of free plunder, if you could get out there and take something, then it was yours to take. And, and there was never any thought that we could ever, put the stalks in jeopardy. And then that started happening in the late eighties and early nineties, and National Marine Fisheries Service started sounding the alarm. And a lot of fishermen didn't believe it. And then you could see it start to happen. I was on the ground fish advisory panel for 20 years, and we struggled with an industry that needed to become more sustainable and, excuse me, but and, and that, that was sort of soul sucking, energy draining long meetings. You know, I'm looking around in the wall trying to find the vent that's sucking out everybody's energy and joy but that's democracy, isn't it? It's frustrating. It's everybody has to have an opinion and everybody gets to share it, and that's fine.'cause that's how you arrive at good outcomes as opposed to, you know, we're gonna go down one path and listen to one mind. If you bring in lots of different voices, even voices that you, you severely disagree with, there's still something in there. And so if you pay attention to it, you, you know, we actually did some really good things in spite of it all. And the stalks themselves, while the species mix isn't the same, because you can't deplete everything and then expect everything to reach its pre, previous equilibrium. The aggregate species mix in the, the Gulf of Maine and George's bank is as big as it's ever been. There's, there's no question that the, the stock in general, the stocks in general, are fully recovered now. There's still some that are, that are shy, but that's because, not because of anything, you know, fishing mortality, it's because of natural mortality and the, the struggle to compete for the eco space with other species that, you know, jump, you know, filled the empty space quicker. And so they have to, you know, 20 years we may see that previous equilibrium return. The, the real threat now is can we still have a fishery?'cause there really aren't that many fishermen left.

ABIGAIL: 11:50

So, I mean, one of the things that was kind of interesting that you talk about was part of the overfishing problem, if I understand correctly, was that you said every lawyer and doctor had a fishing boat at one point because there was a tax free exemption for the fisheries. Can you talk a little bit about that and you know, how that plays into this whole paradigm?

BILL: 12:13

Sure. The, so we, the United States sort of. Enforced. Its territorial imperative, It said, we're gonna set up a 200 mile limit.'cause they get tired of fleets of eastern block boats fishing within three miles from shore. And they didn't, you know, these were fleets, these were 250 foot boats. We had nothing like that in this country. Followed around by a 600 foot or better mothership. And they'd line up and just vacuum the bottom. You know, they'd line up boat to boat for 10 boats wide and just go up and down a bought piece of bottom and take everything they could. And the, the boats had, the factory ships had, you know fish meal plants on board. So nothing went back over the side. And they really began to seriously deplete the, the ecosystem. And, you know, we think of the ocean as this giant place full of fish. And really it's a giant empty aqueous desert with a few hotspots. And Georgia's Bank, Gulf of Maine is one of them. And it's a really special ecosystem. Yeah. So. When we closed that, the stock started rebounding immediately and the scientists saw it, and the United States government said, well, we've gotta, take advantage of that. So they encourage investment into ground fishing, and it did a lot of things. It put a lot of shipyards to work and a lot of people to work in shipyards. It put more people to work on boats. And so we built these fleets of boats and they did it by making them tax shelters. There were like seven boats named Sea Lion and there were a bunch of other boats. I knew some of the lawyers who owned them, and they weren't really in fishing. They just, these were ways to shelter some money and to make some money. And so we had a lot of fleets boats. We had 2,500 boats at the, at the high end of it, and the average size was about 90 to a hundred feet. There were fleets of 135 footers, nothing like the eastern block countries had, but we had a, a significant fleet and probably too much. For the ecosystem.

ABIGAIL: 14:07

How do you go about managing these, these sort of big questions? You meant there are a few times in your book where, you know, good intended policy goes awry. It's really hard to get the policy. And, and constant for people. What is that like, and how are we doing today?

BILL: 14:31

Well, as far as the fish go, we're doing really well as far as the fisheries go. Not so much the, you know, and then throw on climate change on top of that, which is a thing. And the species mix has changed, and that's part of the reason that the species mix is different. So the interesting thing is, you close an area. Thinking that we'll close it temporarily, and then it becomes this sacrosanct area, which you can never reopen because there are groups of people that weren't around at the beginning of it. And just assume that, you know, these are sacred grounds and we can never reopen'em. And, for some of that, that's fine. But at some point you have to leave some room for some kind of fishing, sustainable fishing, sustainable harvesting. And the fishermen that are left are into that. You know, they're more closely related to environmentalists than industrialists, and that's who they are. They're out in the water, they live on the ocean. They see the change in the climate. They see the natural world better than most of us do. And so that's part of it. And, you know, we've had a lot of fits and starts. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that because of all the restrictions we put in the statistical models, we used to assess fish stocks became very inaccurate. They were, they depended on. Or were founded on sort of free range, free plunder. You can fish wherever you want, whenever you want, using any gear you want, any time you want. And then any, you know, the, the mesh size didn't matter. Taking juveniles was okay. Taking small fish was okay, and we had too many boats to do that. And so that's part of the reason the stocks started to collapse. So when you pair a fishery that's unsustainable and, and learning to be sustainable with, with a stock assessment, you know, the population dynamics group who lost their ability to be accurate, they were producing stock assessments that were plus or minus 40%. And that's statistically useless. But the way the law is written, you have to use it. And there was no penalty for them or incentive for them to stop doing it this way and become more accurate. There's no penalty for being inaccurate. And so they've been putting out this 40% plus or minus for. Over 20 years. And when they put that out there, there's no wiggle room for the fishermen. There's no plus or minus there. Here's the problem, here's what you have to do about it. And to that point, national Marine Fishery Service and Woods Hole, the Population Dynamics Group actually inserted themselves into management. And the way that they wrote, the stock assessment advice not only said, here's the stock assessment advice, but they're also able to say, and here's what you're going to do about it. So they basically took the authority out of the council's hand out. Out on the West Coast, science produces a, a range of what they call a risk table, and then managers get to choose that. But here on the East Coast, what happens is there's a stock, there's stock assessment advice and, but it's not really advice. It comes with, and this is what must happen. And so. When you're 40% inaccurate, telling people exactly how to do things, it doesn't end well.

ABIGAIL: 17:47

Right. Right, right. And so peop the, the yields were much smaller than they needed to be, it sounds like.

BILL: 17:55

Even by the, the sort of targeted landings that were put in place according to this. 40% uncertain. Here's what you have to do. Advice we, let me put it to you like this. If you had a hundred thousand metric tons of something in the past, you could target 17% of those. And if you didn't take more than that, the stock would keep up with you because it's plus or minus 40, you're not sure if it's 140 or 60. So you always assume 60'cause we're precautionary. And then that gives you about 10% of that a hundred thousand. But because they claim, well, we're not really sure that we can assess landings correctly, they took another. Buffer down, and we were actually targeting 6% and we don't catch 2%. So last year, for instance, out of that very restrictive, very precautionary approach, we left 63 million pounds of fish in the water, which we could have harvested as a community in a very sustainable manner. And we've been doing that year after year for 20 years. And the, in the past 20 years, we left over a billion pounds of haddock in the water we could have taken. Now, arguably, if we had taken all the fish that we could have you know, maybe the landings amounts that were allowed would've gone down some. But the bottom line is we're leaving a lot of fish in the water and no threat. You know, 2,500 boats when I started fishing, shrunk down to less than 200, and the average size is about 50, not 90. So the, the actual fishing power is well reduced. But if, if you talk to some people in the scientific community, they're of the mind that there's still this giant fleet out there with the same capacity. It would be nice to see us come, you know, say take 40 million pounds of that 60, we're leaving in the water. That's real opportunity for people. And it's not just jobs, it's livelihoods and it's really healthy food for people. And it, I agree, it has to be managed sustainably.

ABIGAIL: 19:53

As a oyster farmer, I became very aware that there were people who had fantastic intentions about the waterfront in general, about promoting certain ideas or regulating certain ways. And I felt sometimes like those people weren't connected deeply enough to the actual task that the fishermen, the lobstermen, and the Aquacultures were actually doing. And so I felt like the intentions and the policy. We're not aligned in the way they should be. And I felt that was like an undertone in your book that I was, I was very grateful to hear because I think it's really hard for people to talk about in a non angry way. But I think you do it in a really thoughtful and non-threatening way that is that's very positive.

BILL: 20:43

Well, thank you. And that, and that's a great point and a great question. There's a group of people out there and especially younger people that are in the whole Finding Nemo mindset about Fisher friends not food. And if you watch a movie like that, you notice that when they get to the part where the, the fishing boat is in, in the movie, everything gets darker and everything, you know, the, the, the sky gets darker and the fisher. Yeah. And, and, and then if you go to some of the aquariums and you walk around and you look at the little placards by each tank, they're actually character caricatures on the tanks, making fishermen look like these brutes. And the truth is, you scratch a fisherman underneath, you're gonna find an environmentalist and a lot of these very passionate young people that are out to save the planet, which is a great idea and a great life mission. the bottom line is we have a lot more in common as the fishing community with the environmental community than most people realize. And we really ought to be allies on sustainable partnerships and sustainable fishing. We're, we're, you know, I agree that food is a result of something dying for most, almost all kinds of food. And without food, something else is gonna die. And that would be you and me if we stopped eating in, in pretty short order. So it's a sacred thing. And it, it has to be done with care and it has to be appreciated. I like to say when I taught a lot of weight servers and they look at me cross-eyed, but I start with, you know, food's a sacred thing. And that's because without food you die. And for something to become food, it dies. So every recipe needs a cup of gratitude and, and a teaspoon of reverence. you know, this is why we say grace. Cultures have been saying grace. I have three books on my shelf that have different ways to say grace, going back thousands of years, the humans that understood how sacred food was. And that's the approach that needs to happen when it comes to fishing. And I, I don't expect everybody to, you know, bring religion out there. I just think you have to have an appreciation of how you're managing a fishery. And, and I think a lot of fishermen get that. When you watch those sunrises and sunsets and you are, are buffeted by the ocean and you, you have that connection to nature. I think you appreciate that and you appreciate the fact that, you know, you're not just slaughtering food, you're, you're killing things to feed other people, and I took a lot of pride in that, in feeding people.

ABIGAIL: 23:15

No, I think that work on the, on the water and, you know, I don't know what it's like to be at, at sea like that. I can only imagine you're out there and you can't see land for a few days. I've never had that experience, but even just working. In the Scarborough Marsh was, was, was somewhat transcendental. So I get, and that comes across in your book, the sort of spiritual connection to, to the fish and the crew and the and the food you're preparing. Before we get there, I wanna ask you a little bit about aquaculture. How does aquaculture fit into this fish paradigm? What role does it play and, and what are your thoughts on it?

BILL: 23:54

Well, first of all, good on you for being in the aquaculture biz'cause it's, as you found out, it's not easy. It's hard physical and kind of dirty work and it, but it's also very rewarding. And if, if I was a 20 something just starting out on the deck of a fishing boat or a lobster boat, I'd be looking to get an aquaculture lease too. Because one of the things I learned early on at fishing was that the fishermen would say, fish got tails. And it doesn't just mean that they're gonna. Swim'em away from you and you have to hunt them. It means that some years fish that you've been depending upon aren't available. And you have to be flexible. You have to be able to work out a different ports. You have to be able to work on different fisheries. Unfortunately a lot of us have gotten boxed in by National Marine Fishery Service, so it's not as easy to transition from one to the other. But water skills are water skills, whether you're working on a flat bottom, oyster boat or out in the ocean on a distant water boat, and they translate pretty easily from one form to another. And that kind of skillset and that kind of human capital is really important not just to the world, but to feed people. And so I, I love the fact that Aquaculture's becoming more of a thing in Maine, that one of the positive things of the water warming in Maine, if you can see that, although if it gets too warm, it's not gonna be positive anymore, is the fact that shellfish grows so much faster along the coast of Maine. So don't the predators like green crabs, but oyster farming is a thing and Maine has some of the best tasting oysters in the world. You know, I, I, I can talk about that in a minute, but the ROIs that's available in places like Casco Bay and the DeMarco River is on par or better than any that I've s I've, you know, had from any place else I've ever eaten an oyster.

ABIGAIL: 25:50

Yeah, I have a, a French uncle who has been oyster obsessed since his youth in France, and when he first came to, to Maine where now he lives with my aunt. He, he was a little bit suspicious of these Maine oysters that weren't, you know, ocean grown. They tended to be grown in estuaries or, you know, salty rivers and, and, and inlets. And now he can't go back to French oysters because they don't have the complexity. They don't have that nuance that Maine oysters have. So, that's just one of many people who've been convinced of the superiority of the Maine oyster, sorry to everybody else listening to this podcast from outside of Maine. But even Finfish aquaculture, like that's there, there are some new finfish aquaculture plants that are being built. Aquaculture got a really bad wrap and it's really hard to dispel that even among family members of mine that won't buy anything farm raised. And I'm like, you wanna, like, farm raised is good now. Can you talk about that?

BILL: 26:55

Yeah, that mindset.'cause I, I speak to a lot of people and not just, you know, when I'm doing book talks at libraries and community centers and things like that, but in my former career, I'd speak to a lot of chefs. We did a fish school. I have like 16 chefs in a room four times a year. And one of the talks was about sustainability. And if you, I'd always ask do how many people in the room when I hear they hear the term farm fish, know somewhere in the back of their mind. There's something wrong with that. And almost every hand goes up. And I'd say, congratulations, you've been successfully marketed to. And what happened was, you know, I worked for Foley Fish for 35 years, and they were founded in 1906, and I started with'em in 1986. And for the first 75 years or so of their existence, you could only buy wild salmon because that's all that was available. And it was available you know, in a limited time during the season, which is great. The fish was very inconsistent. One box would be beautiful, the next would be rancid. And then. You know, the season ended, there was no more available. So that's, the chef used it. Well, then the Norwegians showed up in the eighties with this farm raise fish, and every fish was still in rigor. And it was available year round. And when you opened a box, you didn't smell fish, you smelled cucumbers or watermelons. It had this really pleasant aroma and the taste was great and it had the right fat content. So in their haste to meet the man, the farmers made a lot of mistakes. And meanwhile, the wild salmon industry just lost the market completely. They, their market was canneries and that was it. And they were getting 50 cents a pound and then nobody wanted wild salmon in a restaurant anymore, because you could get the, the farm 12 months, a year. No, never a mistake. Always tasted great, steady price, steady availability, and the farmers. Would put as many fish as they could in a pen and feed like crazy and put as many pens as they could in the site, as many sites in a bay. And as soon as a pen was empty, they reintroduce new fish. And all these husbandry practices were bad. It was like, you know, if you're gonna raise pork or chicken or beef and not pay attention to husbandry, you're going to not only have a lot of problems, you're not gonna make any money. Which is exactly what happened to the farmers. So Alaska seafood marketing initially tried slamming farm salmon themselves and nobody paid attention'cause you're just running down a competitor. So they gathered up the information, the poor husbandry choices that farms made, which they had corrected by the way, but, and became sustainable. They, they collected all those, put'em in, in a, like a dossier and handed them off to the NGOs. And this happened to be in the early nineties, about the same time as cable news was taking off. So here you have a, an entity that needs content. 24 7, 365 and you have a group of NGOs that need funding and anything they can speak about or champion generally brings them in some funding. And, and it's not just that they, they wanna fight for what's good in the world and the way things ought to be. And I support that. But it's also about funding.'cause you can't survive without funding. So they held news conferences, the cable news showed up and they used the marketing that Alaska Seafood marketing handed off to'em. And Ray Reta, the executive director, admitted this, said we couldn't slam'em ourselves, but we could hand it off to a third party. And it was very successful. So, and I noticed it because the marketing quote, you know, the, the news or really marketing showed up about three months before the wild season every year like clockwork. So it wouldn't happen in, you know, Christmas time. It, it would happen in March, you know, February, March. Oh, farm salmon does this and farm salmon does that and, and all, you know, I could, it's a long story and I could go on for a while, but, but basically the end result was we went from only selling wild as a company.'cause that's all you could get to only selling farm.'cause nobody wanted a wild anymore. All of a sudden we're selling boast. But not only that, the first Copper River Kings helicoptered off the district.'cause that's where they're caught outside the river, not in it. The first Thursday after May 15th, you know, to awaiting Alaska airline jet showed up in Boston and we're commanding$25 a pound for the whole fish, which was like$60 a pound for filets, which is ridiculous. So we were selling both and not only, you know, then the customers would march into a restaurant and chew out the server and chew out the manager and chew out the chef for using this evil farm raised salmon when it really wasn't the case. And I'm, you know, I'm out there at that time. Training servers is part of my job. And I couldn't tell'em that story or I tell'em that story and say, you can't walk up to a table when you've got five other tables working

ABIGAIL: 31:55

right.

BILL: 31:56

hustling around and, and, and engage in this conversation. You've got work to do. Just say, you know, we, and besides, I feel like sometimes Americans like to get their news off a bumper sticker, so I gave'em a bumper sticker, which was our salmon is, is sustainably farm raised and specially fed. And that's all you can do. And if they choose not to have it, you know, don't get in an argument, the customer's always right. But it, the, the sad thing was it poisoned the American psyche for all kinds of farm fish. You know, I know it's kind of a long, drawn out story, but that's what happened. I, there are places like Chile where they still have issues because industry runs government instead of government regulating industry. And when you have those situations, it doesn't always end well. But, you know, places like Canada and Ireland and Scotland. Are very careful on, on how the companies themselves use a couple different the Aquaculture Stewardship Council and best Aquaculture practices, which are auditing companies. So they have to pay money to, but they have to also meet pretty strict standards to meet those. So you look for those seals of approval and, and feel comfortable and confident about the Fisher eating

ABIGAIL: 33:07

It's interesting how you know. We're not fishing enough, we're fishing too much. We stop, we overregulate, we like the pendulum. You know, we only eat wild fish, then we only eat farm fish and, and then we don't wanna eat farm fish. The pendulum in the, in the whole fishing industry, from one end to the, of it to the other, just seems to swing at these huge, huge gyrations. And it would be nice if it were kind of just more in the middle, ticking back and forth,

BILL: 33:38

well. I think the word human is never associated with the word perfection. So, and that's who we are as you know, my mother, people talk about, oh, the world is terrible. Guess what? The world's always been terrible. My mom explained that to me at a very young age. She said, I grew up during the Great Depression, and then we had Hitler and Stalin and, and the the Iron Curtain and, and you know, and pick up a history book and go back. The world's always been a terrible place. Don't let that stop you from being a good person or finding a calling and, and throwing yourself into something that you feel is good and wholesome in helping other people. Just, you can't focus on that stuff. It's, it's better to shut the news off'cause you're not really learning anything.

ABIGAIL: 34:23

that sounds like good advice. In addition to your fishing duties on these fishing boats, you were really trying to raise the bar in terms of fish quality so that the fish smelled like cucumber and and beautiful things and not like fish. Three times in your book you say, don't fish shouldn't smell fishy, which I appreciate. Tell us a little bit, tell the consumer, like what, what kinds of fish should we be buying? What should we be doing with it? How should we be keeping it? Give us some practical advice from a guy who knows a lot about that

BILL: 34:57

it's possible I put that in there three times by accident, but it's also possible I put that in there three times because that's how we used to teach. Tell'em what you're gonna tell'em. Tell'em, tell'em what you told them. So I'm actually re subbing the book and I'll add the line. Are you paying attention yet? But fresh fish? You know, bad meat smells, rancid, bad milk smells sour. When fish goes bad, we say it's fishy. And, and that just illustrates how perishable fish is because we don't refer to anything else as itself when we're talking about it not being good. Meat's not meaty when it's bad. Milk's not milky when it's bad. Cheese isn't cheesy, people could be cheesy, but the the fresh fish shouldn't have a fishy odor. And if it, the, the spoilage bacteria work on it so quickly because it's the most perishable of the proteins. And I don't understand the entire biology, but I did understand how fish spoiled. So the, the, the keys are this, if you walk into a fish market and all you can smell is, is fishy, then that's probably not your fish market. I worked in fish plants two different fish plants owned by Foley. And we cut millions of pounds of fish in a year. And you could never smell fish there. Not even in the parking lot, you know, we cleaned our parking lot. It's about keeping things clean. It's about keeping things cold. Don't let the bacteria have a chance to thrive. And at between 28 and 32 degrees, the bacteria can't work. It's there. It doesn't die, but it doesn't work. It doesn't grow. And that doesn't produce that that nitrogen smell. That's the fishy odor. So start with that cold is important. You want to keep your fish covered so that it doesn't get dried out by the air.'cause the moisture is the flavor you want to use. Very short cooking times and lots of heat. So we used to save 450 degrees preheated oven per and a 10 minutes per inch of thickness. And that's it. People say I have to be confident to cook fish. No. Cooking fish gives you confidence. It's so easy to cook. My mom used to cook stuff for 30 minutes and it would dry it out and it smelled up the kitchen. And that's because back in those days, nobody knew what fish was. And we all hated it. And I don't blame people for hating it. We don't eat rancid meat. We don't drink sour milk. So start with if you're in a restaurant and you smell fish, don't order it. If you're in a fish market that's not yours. If they, if it smells fishy and if they'll let you take a whiff of it, you know, just before you buy it, but you're looking for translucent as opposed to chalky, you're looking for a bright sort of glossy fish. There's other things that involve, but, you know, as far as chemicals added, which makes it almost look too good. But for the most part, if you can get natural fish, then when you on the way home, don't put it, throw it in the back seat, keep it in a cooler with some ice. And if you're not gonna eat it that night. You know, you don't wanna put the fish in ice and have the ice melting on it, but you want to have the container that it's in under some ice in the back corner of your fridge and just keep it cold. I'll also kind of use gel packs on top of the, you know, so that they, they keep the fish cold. So if I don't have ice handy, but the bottom line is if you're gonna cook it today, fine. If you're not, keep it about as close to 30, between 28 and 32.'cause ocean fish won't freeze until below 28. So keep it fresh. And then when you cook it, you know, bring it out, portion it up, it likes a good, you know, pan sear. So you get caramelization. It likes butter. It likes a lot of heat in short cooking times and medium rare is the way to go. You can always cook it some more. But medium rare fish has such a pleasant flavor and it's nothing to be afraid of.

ABIGAIL: 38:40

Should you ever wash fish?

BILL: 38:44

You can rinse off a whole fish and rinse the belly of a whole fish if it's bleeding. And that's a good idea. But if, if you're talking about filets, no because the water will go inside the cells of the fish through osmosis and change the flavor. So it's a bad idea to wash fish. I've seen restaurants where they have fish soaking in the sink'cause it's thawing out and it's like, well, nobody's gonna enjoy that, but they probably don't sell much fish here, which is why they have to pull it out the freezer in the first place. Bad fish leads to fewer sales, fewer sales leads to bad fish. So fish is an intentional thing if you're gonna cook it, if you're gonna serve it. All those things, you really have to pay attention.

ABIGAIL: 39:21

I can't wait to try your recipes, which are hilarious because they're such dude's recipes. I love the way you give them. They're simple. There's no measuring. They're so un fussy. It's just you feel this really visceral connection with that food you're making. It's just a beautiful, beautiful recipe. I want a whole recipe book like that. It's how I prefer to cook. I don't like to worry about teaspoons. So for the client who wants to go buy something and be sustainable and is, are there some decisions when you're in the fish market that are more sustainable than others?

BILL: 40:37

the, you know, haddock, believe it or not, the stock is huge and it's very sustainable. And if you can find a fish market that, and that's bottom from a fishermen and both of'em know what they're doing, that's great. And you can do so many things besides cover'em. And Ritz Cracker comes and bake'em, which is terrific. But, you know, the skin on haddock really fresh, Sears up nice and crispy and is, is, if it's a fresh fish, is a tastiest thing. Tastiest part of it. The, you know, a lot of the I, I love, they call it fluke or, or summer a summer flounder, which is a great fish, which you can, you know, if you get a sushi grade where they actually, they're bled before they're dressed, they, they you can eat those, you know, make a ceviche out of those. So those are a couple of my faves, but I also love swordfish, which is very sustainably harvested fish in spite of the Gibb Swordfish. A break campaign, which is kind of a. A bogus thing. Tuna fish, you know, bluefin, harvested right now is, is being done sustainably. And carefully. And you know, it's interesting. We, we were dealing with we had two on the highly migratory species. We had two, we had all these sessions and we, they broke out on different kinds of species and there were two on bluefin back to back. The first one was whether or not we should up list it. That's a nice sounding word, isn't it? Up list it. What it means is, should we throw it on the, the endangered species list and ban it from being, so we're, we're talking about that and everybody knew it was kind of like a ridiculous discussion. And then the second one was, well, the Mediterranean fishery finally got their act together and stopped over harvesting. And we've got a thousand metric tons. We can take just a thousand on the whole East coast of the United States that split up between all the states that the fish passes by. And because we're gonna see so many more fish, how are we gonna keep from over harvesting? So the, the juxtaposition of is this endangered to, there's so many, we may over harvest our sustainable quota. How are we having both those conversations at the same time? But so things like tuna fish are good. They, they're very few species. If it's in endangered, not only can't you eat it legally, you can't accidentally kill it. You, you know, if riding your bike down the street endangered a, a species that was on the, on the list, then riding down your bike down the street would be illegal. That's how strict the law is. And other entities have created their own endangered species list, which aren't really the US endangered species list. And they say, well, these are endangered according to our standards. But the bottom line is you can also eat things like, I dunno, mackerel or very good fish haddock is one of my favorites. Ha is a great fish. There's a lot of the gulf fish. People ask me what my favorite fish is. It's hard for me to. Nail myself down on it because there's so many fish out there. You can do so many things with'em. And it's not like, you know, 20 different cuts of the same critter. It's all these different species that are so different and so tasty and so easy to cook.

ABIGAIL: 43:38

making me hungry. What do you, what impact would you like to have with this book?

BILL: 43:45

well, I heard the phrase don't write a book to get rich. Write a book to connect with people you'll never meet. And I'm kind of leaning in that direction. I, you know, it's, I, I bump into people who have actually read it. And, you know, it was in Manhattan last weekend and a bookseller called Three Lives had three copies, which I sent them. I said, don't send'em back. I, I don't wanna get paid for'em. And they said, usually we throw books like this in the bin, but we read it, we loved it, and we sold it. And I was walking on the air for the rest of the day. And so those kind of experiences are what I'm looking for. I'm having a lot of fun talking to people, connecting with people. I donate to libraries everywhere I go. Being self-published, you're kind of at the bottom of the literary barrel, but you can still see the stars from there. So I'm out there talking to people who are listening at a great time on Shabi Island a couple weeks ago and 30 people showed up and paid the, the library support fund, 10 bucks a piece. And we talked about fish and I brought fish and we ate fish. And I've decided that in the future, as many times as possible, I'm gonna bring fish with me and serve it whether I can do it at a restaurant. So they have to, you know, they'll pay for it and charge for it. Or I can bring some snacks myself, I was at the Booth Bay Region Public Library. Last week and we had crab, mac and cheese and, and some scallops with a dot of pesto. So there's so many different ways to eat fish and people when they, when they love the stories, but I think they like the fish better.

ABIGAIL: 45:20

I don't know, bill, I, I honestly was blown away by your ability to tell a story Absolutely blown away. And not that I'm any great literary critic or anything, but, but I did study comp lit as an undergraduate. I read a lot of books. It was a really, really well turned story. And I think that's what brings this all home in such a beautiful way, is that you have this incredible breadth of experience, this passion for, you know, raising the bar in the industry on every level, but this and this love for cooking the fish. And, but you have this powerful way of communicating it. And and I think that makes this a really, really special opportunity, not just for you, but also for the readers. Anybody who's interested in the waterfront should take a, take this home with them and give it a read.

BILL: 46:12

My advice for authors is write what comes to you.'cause I tried to write a, you know, the book is kind of a chronology. It starts when I was lobstering back in 1980 and walked it through my career on the waterfront. But I didn't, I didn't write it that way. I tried writing it that way and I rewrite, reread the, the stuff I was writing and I was really disappointed with it. I was like, who would read this? So I put it down for a few months and then a story came to me and I said, oh, I'll write that. And so I started, I just wrote a story and it had nothing to do with any timeline. It was just something that happened like five years ago. Or 10 years ago, or 20 years ago, or a couple weeks ago. And I, I started writing those as they came to me. And then I felt the sort of story come to me. And once I, and I have a brother who's a, who's a author, and he fills the internet with content. But he was rereading some of my writing and helping edit it. But he didn't do a whole lot of editing. He just kept telling me, this is good, bill. I hope you think it's good. And when I had enough together, I kind of sat down. And then I organized ISDA along the timeline. And that's why there's a chapter called Bycatch.'cause there were a number of stories that really didn't fit anywhere else. So I just threw'em all together.'cause I thought they were good stories, but maybe belonged in some kind of offhand fashion.

ABIGAIL: 47:34

So you know, what is your hope for the working waterfront? I mean, where do you see it going and, you know, how is this gonna play out from here?

BILL: 47:45

There's a lot of opportunity, not just ground fishing and, and fishing in general because in the United States we're serious about managing our fisheries and we have control of the water within the 200 mile limit, but, but the bottom line is there's a lot of fish that could be sustainably harvested. So, and there's a lot of, there's fishermen that know how to do it. We need support from science and there's a way forward with that using ai. And instead of this statistical modeling that gathers data from landings and, and some survey cruises where they're using the net, that's too small for the boat that's being fishing, that's using it. There's some guys in UMass Dartmouth that are towing a net with cameras and lights and the open co end, and they can tow it for 20 plus hours straight. And so it's making a video, but it's not a, not a video, it's a digital data stream. And because it's a digital video, ai, which is much better than it was 10 years ago when they started developing this, can watch it. And this, because it's a digital data stream, it's also connected to a GPS and a and a clock. So it's geo located in timestamped and it's got images of all these fish going through it. And the AI is being taught how to watch the video, identify the different kinds of species and not just what they are, what's what approximate age they are, what size they are, so it can estimate your classes. And then. S you know, indicate where it was seen and when it was seen, and how many of'em, this is a statistician's dream and right now Woods Hole is very much stuck to the old way of doing it. The, you know, the virtual population analysis, which is producing these 40% plus or minus stock assessments, which are useless when they can get back to where they used to be, which was two to 3%. You know, we used to have the most accurate stock assessments in the world. Get back there by going forward, not by going back. And, and because of that, we can, you know, there's opportunities for fishing and, and until that happens, it's gonna be difficult to open up fishing again. Then the second thing is. You know, you pair that with Agricul and, and people, that, young people that actually want to get out and work in this kind of environment and be involved in something that's, you know, I, I meet a lot of young oyster farmers and they're very passionate about sustainability and, and as a retired person, I have to say, the best thing you can do with your life when you retire is find a way to work with young people. Young people are uniquely qualified to inhabit the time and space that they're in, and it's their world they're coming into. So, you know, I know I'm talking a lot, but when I'm with young people, I do this

ABIGAIL: 50:33

Hmm.

BILL: 50:34

because they don't want to hear your stories. They want to see you do some stuff, which they'll happily learn from. But, you know, I think there's great opportunities and I think that we have to be intentional about how we do it. I think this is the best time in history to be alive. And people ask me why. I said, well, let's start with craft beer. But, but there's movements like the Billion Oyster Project and, and the you know, organic farming initiatives that are all over the place and all clams on deck down in Florida where they're trying to, add resilience and reinvigorate the, the coastline there. There, there's a lot of things going on where people are paying attention to this. Opportunities there. It's just a matter of there, there's plenty of people that are looking for opportunity, and all I can say is if you choose this life on the waterfront and on the water prepare to be grateful to yourself that you did.

ABIGAIL: 51:27

Oh, I think we should just end there. That was beautiful. And I have to say I, I am a, a better and different person from my, for my 10 years as a oyster farmer. That shaped me in a very profound way. So I agree with you. Thank you so much, bill, for coming on, and congratulations on a really great book and so glad to reconnect with you.

BILL: 51:50

Thank you. Yeah. Stay in touch. And yeah I, I'm really honored to be on your podcast and, and at some point my brother. Who's been helping me says, bill, you, you need to do a podcast someday. I'm gonna do the audio book first, but then I'm gonna look into some podcasting in the future.

ABIGAIL: 52:06

great. Well, I can't wait to hear it.

BILL: 52:09

all right, my friend. Take care.