North Carolina Conversations Summer-Fall 2008.pdf

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Glossary of Down East TermsLawrence S. EarleyDory skiff. A small, open boat; a skiff.Fish house. An establishment that buys fish from fishermenand then resells them to fish dealers and other buyers. Thefish house often provides ice to the fishermen and dockingfacilities and in some cases sends “buy boats” or “runboats” to offload a catch directly from the fisherman.Fisheries. The term is used variously to refer to areaswhere certain fish populations are harvested and to thefishing effort itself. Thus, “shrimp fishery” can refer bothto the inshore waters where shrimp are caught and to theshrimp fishing industry.Gill nets, gill-net fishing. Stretched across a body of water,gill nets can entrap fish when they try to pass through thenet’s meshes. Fish bigger than the opening of the meshcannot move forward, and when they try to move backwardto escape, they are caught by the gills.Grading. A catch is graded by size or weight in the fishhouse or fish market.Long-haul fishing (long-hauling, long-haulers). A formof haul-seining in which two workboats haul linked netsof different sized meshes between them. They head towardshallower waters where the boats crisscross, creating awide loop that is gradually tightened as the nets are pulledout of the water. In the final stages, the fish are corralledin a small enclosure and are bailed out into a larger boat(called a “run boat” or “buy boat” sent by the fish house).Long-haulers fish for spot, trout, flounder, and other species.N.C. Dept. of Marine Fisheries. The DMF is the stateagency entrusted with the stewardship of the state’smarine and estuarine resources. In essence, DMF establishesmanagement plans for specific fish populations thatinclude setting size limits of fish and the length of seasonswhen commercial and recreational fishing can be done. Itsauthority extends throughout the state’s coastal waters upto three miles offshore.Net skiff. A skiff in the long-hauling operation that carriesthe nets. The fishermen set out their nets from the skiffs.NOAA. The National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration is a federal agency under the U.S.Department of Commerce. Its mission is to understand andpredict changes in Earth’s environment and conserve andmanage coastal and marine resources to meet the nation’seconomic, social, and environmental needs.Public Trust Doctrine. The doctrine states that nationsmanage natural resources for the benefit of their citizensand that private owners cannot deprive the public of accessto the resources that belong to everyone. The public trustdoctrine originated in Roman law, entered English commonlaw, and has become an important part of American law.Shoals. Shallow places in a body of water formed byshifting sand.Trawler. A workboat that pulls a fishing net behind it ata specified depth for specific kinds of fish. Trawlers canbe large or small, depending on where they fish. In theshallow waters of Core Sound, most trawlers are smallerboats that fish for shrimp.Workboat. Any kind of boat usedfor commercial fishing purposes.Generally the term refers to boats of40 feet in length and greater, but itcan also refer to skiffs.Core Sound’s shallow waters invite aremarkably diverse fleet of workboats,large and small. These are sheltered inNorth Harbor at Davis, NC. Photo byLawrence S. Earley.
Confessionsof an AccidentalDocumentarianLawrence S. EarleyTwo fishing boats. One issecured to the dock while a secondapproaches. I took this photographin 1985 while exploring the fishingvillages on the peninsula northeastof Beaufort, North Carolina, an areaknown as “Down East.” It’s an artlessphoto, with little in its compositionor lighting to distinguish it. In fact, Inever bothered to print it until 2004when I was asked to show some ofmy workboat photographs at the CoreSound Waterfowl Museum on HarkersIsland, North Carolina. I titled it“Workboats, Core Sound, 1985.”During the festival, I noticed thata few men had stopped in front of“Workboats, Core Sound, 1985” andstudied it intently. One of them toldme that he had worked on one of thevessels; it was a boat he knew well.Another said that his father ownedthe boat on the right, which wascalled the Wasted Wood. Two othersstood in front of it, talking quietly.One of them, a boat builder by thename of Jimmy Amspacher, said hewas building a model boat like thetwo boats in the photograph. Then,in the distinctive brogue of a DownEaster, he told me about the scenethat I had photographed in 1985.The boat on the right was the WastedWood, he said, although it could wellhave been the Nancy Ellen. The boaton the left was definitely the Linda.Both of them were built in Atlantic— he called them “Atlantic-builtboats” — a fact that was evident intheir styling. Because each communityin the region was fairly isolatedfrom the others before the coming ofroads and bridges, communities hadFrom its very beginning, a workboat lay at the center of a social web that linked the builder, theowner, the person for whom the boat was named, and the place where she was built. Photo byLawrence S. Earley.distinct workboat styles based ontradition and the influence of importantlocal boat builders. Both boats inthe photo were used to do a particularkind of fishing called long-haulfishing which was characteristic ofAtlantic’s fishermen. The photographhad a new title now: “Wasted Woodand Linda, Atlantic, 1985.”Jimmy Amspacher spent five minutestelling me what was in my photograph,and when he was finished,I had learned an important lesson:I was blind to the very things thatmade the photo interesting to thelocal people. To me, the photographwas an ordinary snapshot; to them,the photograph was layered withstories — historical, biographical,technological, and environmental.My “snapshot” was a portal thatopened into a world with hiddendepths revealing multiple humanrelationships. The boats that Ihad photographed as aestheticallypleasing parts of the landscape wereso much more than that.Many things in the photograph havechanged since I took the picturetwenty-three years ago. The WastedWood went to pieces in 1998 or 1999.The weather-beaten Linda still sits atthe Luther L. Smith Seafood docks,but she is decrepit now and unused;her paint is pealing and debris isstrewn over her deck. The last timeI saw her, she was half sunk afterthe bailing pump had failed. In the1990s, a hurricane destroyed thewooden docks in the photograph.In March 2008, at the symposiumon the “Workboats of Core Sound,”Jonathan Robinson spoke as one ofthe panelists. Jonathan’s openingwords were mournful:I came here today expecting tosee some photographs of the oldboats that Larry Earley has beentaking for some time and I waslooking forward to it. But as Ilooked at the photos I becamesad. I know these boats and Iknow the people who workedthem, and when I see themand read the words of people Iknow it seems that what we’redoing here today is like visitinga dying person in the hospitaland trying to extract as muchinformation from him before hepasses away....My photographs brought him face-tofacewith a world that he knew andloved but that was dying. It was afear that he and others had admittedto themselves for years; it was somethingthey told me over and overagain in my interviews. But to see itin pictures was a little like looking inthe mirror in a strange light and notrecognizing yourself.NC Conversations • Summer 2008 • 13
Page 1 and 2: Summer 2008N o r t h C a r o l i n
Page 3 and 4: Table of Contents2John Tyler Caldwe
Page 5 and 6: Americans will live up to our promi
Page 7 and 8: Caldwell LaureatesWe can perhaps ag
Page 9 and 10: een the harbor and the fish house.I
Page 11 and 12: The Long-Haulare being sold at pric
Page 13: Jonathan Robinson: Fisherman and Co
Page 17 and 18: presented in my films resonate with
Page 19 and 20: North Carolina Literary Hall of Fam
Page 21 and 22: Financial OverviewListed below are
Page 23 and 24: Durham County$9,800 to the North Ca
Page 25 and 26: Let’s Talk About ItLet’s Talk A
Page 27 and 28: JACKSON COUNTYNorton/Cashiers Homem
Page 29 and 30: Leah KarpenWilliam Keesler &Barbara
Page 31 and 32: The Eastern 4H EnvironmentalEducati
Page 33 and 34: Seminar Offers Personaland Professi
Page 35 and 36: Again! Celebrating an AmericanIcon;
Page 37 and 38: Council Bids a Fond Farewellto Out-
Page 39 and 40: Visiting the Wright MemorialMy Brot

North Carolina Conversations Summer-Fall 2008.pdf

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?