Anonymous, #1
Cumulative Effects in New Jersey Fisheries
The "Cumulative Effects and New Jersey Fisheries" Project was funded by the New Jersey Sea Grant College Program, New Jersey Marine Sciences Consortium. Dr. Bonnie McCay and Dr. Kevin St. Martin of Rutgers University were the principal investigators of this project and interviews were conducted primarily by Dr. Grant Murray (now at Vancouver Island University) and Mike Danko (New Jersey Sea Grant College Program, New Jersey Marine Sciences Consortium). These interviews had 2 principal goals: 1) to document the cumulative effects of regulatory change on the people, businesses and communities most directly dependent on New Jersey's fisheries; and 2) to create a history of New Jersey's commercial and recreational fisheries through the oral histories of people involved in them. Identifying information has been stripped from these interviews in order to preserve anonymity. Thanks to the 44 fish harvesters that participated in oral history interviews.
Individual is a male in his mid seventies at the time of the interview. He was born in Sweden , and began fishing at the age of 14 for herring, mackerel, cod, pollock, and haddock around the early 1940's in Sweden. In the mid 1950's he moved to the United States, a move he attributes to seeing too many Westerns (and hearing that America was a place of freedom, and that he wanted to escape regulations in Sweden). Upon arriving he was immediately offered a position on a fishing boat through a family friend and moved down to Cape May. He learned by fishing with his father and grandfathers and has always been a dragger fisherman, and has fished for a number of different species, including cod and whiting some years ago. Later in the interview the respondent's wife joined in. Towards the very end one of the respondent's sons also joined in (who is also a commercial fisherman).
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