In Cod We Trust

We continued south and stopped in Gloucester, Mass, for a few days. Gloucester is the oldest fishing port on the East Coast. They are famous for being involved in massive Cod fishing industry of the past three centuries, leading to the over-fishing of the great banks offshore here. Today, the fishermen are still at it – those that are left. It is a tough business and getting tougher.
There’s a fair amount of conflict between the government fish managers, the Gloucester fishermen and the fish farms. The conflict is most clearly seen in the in-depth presentation available on bumper stickers,as in this store-front window we passed:

Tilapia is not fish
National Marine Fisheries Service: Destroying Fishermen and their communities since 1975
 and, my favorite

In Cod We Trust

Gloucester is probably most famous these days as the home port of the star boats that were in the 2000 movie The Perfect Storm. That’s the Andrea Gail heading up the face of that impossible wave.
We caught these tourists visiting the 1925 memorial to the thousands of lost crew and ships of Gloucester.
When we arrived at the dinghy dock we were greeted by our old friends Larry and Lena. They are our favorite token power boater friends (and incidentally sailboat circumnavigators), on their trawler Hobo. Our blog reader might recognize the renown black dog Captain Morgan pacing the dock – known for his famous 2011 Panama Canal Transit so ably documented on this blog.

They sure grow them big here, lobsters that is.

 

Gratuitous Maine boat porn picture

Paul