Jennifer Mitchell, also known as Jennifer Demalo, is part of the Mitchell family business. She grew up in New Bedford and attended Bishop Stang High School before graduating from Emmanuel College. Initially working as a business manager at a preschool in Boston, Jennifer joined the family business after her father asked her to work with him. She has been involved in bookkeeping and similar administrative tasks. Jennifer has been with the business for around eight years and is married with two children.

In this interview, Karen Joseph describes her experiences growing up in her family’s business, the RA Mitchell Company, on the New Bedford waterfront. She discusses her experience being a female in a leadership role in a male-dominated industry, as well as the positives and negatives of working in a family business. Finally, she discusses her hopes for the future of the fishing industry.

Karen Willis Amspacher is a dedicated advocate for the working waterfront community of Harker’s Island, North Carolina, where she was born and raised. She is the founder of the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center, an institution that celebrates and preserves the local traditions of boat building and decoy carving. Amspacher's family has a long history in boat building, and she has worked tirelessly to support and develop new markets for local seafood. She is also actively involved in addressing the challenges of gentrification and regulations that impact her community.

Ms. Reed operated a bed and breakfast in Fairhaven, MA for many years. She tells the story about visiting the New Bedford fish auction which used to take place in the Wharfinger Building on Pier 3.

Kevin Curole is a seasoned fisherman with a career spanning 37 years in the shrimp industry. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Curole grew up in Baie L'Fuje, Guiana, and is of Cajun ethnicity. His family has a long history in the fishing industry, with both his father and grandfathers being shrimp fishermen. Curole started his journey in the industry at the tender age of three, living on a 22-foot shrimp boat with his grandparents. In addition to his fishing career, Curole has also worked as a support boat driver for the offshore oil industry in Louisiana.

Kevin Dawson is a settlement house owner and has a background in the fishing industry. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and his parents emigrated from Newfoundland. His father used to run trawlers out of the Fulton Fish Market in New York but moved to Fairhaven, Massachusetts, when Dawson was ten due to the convenience of the freezer trucks coming from New Bedford. Dawson started working on boats at a young age, painting and performing various tasks.

Kevin Hart is a former lobsterman who now runs the only water boat delivering water to fishing boats in New Bedford and Fairhaven. He grew up in Westport, where his father was part-owner of a lobster boat; he now lives in Dartmouth. He talks about being the only water boat provider, the decline of the industry and its current status in New Bedford, even with current prosperity of scalloping, as well as voicing future ideas for New Bedford with and without the industry.

Cape Verdean men have struggled for generations to work in professions, guaranteeing enough income to provide for their families.  They have gained a foothold on New Bedford’s docks unloading and loading foreign ships, particularly because workers on those ships often don’t have passports or papers that allow them to debark from the ship within the United States. Thus, longshoremen up and down the United States seaboard provide those services.  Many of these longshoremen are part of the International Longshoremen’s Union, abbreviated as the ILA.

Reidar and Kirsten Bendiksen are a Norwegian couple residing in New Bedford, involved in the gear business, specifically net making and mending. Reidar was born in Norway in 1946 and moved to the United States when he was sixteen. His father was a fisherman who migrated to the US in 1951. Reidar himself held various positions in the fishing industry, including skipper, before transitioning into the gear business. Kirsten, born in New Bedford and raised in Dartmouth, comes from a family with a fishing background. Her father was a fisherman who met her mother on an ocean liner.

Kirsten Bendiksen talks about her work in her family’s business, Reidar’s Manufacturing, a gear manufactory/support industry in New Bedford, formerly in Fairhaven. Talks about her Norwegian immigrant heritage and marrying a Norwegian fisherman, and later starting their busy gear shop, one of the few left to serve the industry. Kirsten works as bookkeeper in the business, which also employs her husband and their two sons and other workers.