What does the non-profit Vineyard Fisherman’s Preservation Trust do? Executive director Shelley Edmundson explains it this way, “We try to help keep the island’s commercial fishermen fishing.”
This might sound simple, but there are many layers. Since the Trust first took this job on in 2011, it has pivoted again and again to do what’s necessary. That turns out to be a lot.
When they first started, the main concern was helping fishermen secure and finance permits. Then a decade later, the Trust stepped in when a wholesaler on the docks in Menemsha announced they were closing down.
“That wholesaler was getting out of it,” Edmundson says. “Covid, all sorts of things, were layering up and they were shutting their doors. So, we have a small wholesale fish shack on the waterfront where we buy and sell seafood.”
The initial idea was to simply to keep the necessary infrastructure alive.
“And we soon realized, you know what, there are other wholesalers on this island that are doing that,” she says. We don't want to compete with them if we're not needed. We kind of learned more about the need for fish for the food pantry. And that grew that program because other markets can't do that. We can access grants, we can work directly with the fishermen, and we can [work] directly with our community partners to distribute food to other avenues that aren't getting our local seafood.”
For instance, the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe has a food donation program that can accept live seafood. So now, when the Trust lands more lobsters than it can sell, they’re able to donate them instead of letting the food go to waste. They’ve also worked to get local seafood into school lunch programs and are selling fish at island farmers markets.
“And that's been a great way to directly talk to customers and community members about what's being caught here and how they can cook it,” Edmundson says. “Because we found that at the farmers market, a lot of people would come and say, ‘Oh, I'm really used to cooking cod or salmon, and I have no idea what to do with fluke or sea bass.’”
So, the Trust worked with a local chef and photographers to put together a cookbook to help people learn how to use what’s available locally.
“There are a lot of sea bass being landed, a lot of fluke, a lot of scup,” she says. “We still have a lot of lobster being landed; Jonah crab is being landed in small amounts because we can’t process it here, but there’s a lot of Jonah crab out there still.”
The list goes on: bluefish, bonito, oysters, quahogs. Lots of variety and also way more seafood than the island community can eat.
“And that's one reason why we started a shipping program,” she adds. “So we actually buy seafood, anything that we can't buy for our programs. We have a truck and we ship it off island three days a week.”
It’s a way to connect the Vineyard fishing community with mainland markets. Like each of the Trust’s programs, it’s been responsive to community needs and so successful that this year, the Trust was able to raise enough money to buy a huge building in Menemsha. In its heyday in the 1970s, the building housed a processing plant, fisheries housing, and even a chandlery.
“A chandlery is a ship store,” Edmundson explains. “It's a place where they sold ship supplies, fishing supplies. So you see like crazy hooks and all sorts of things that I don't even know—like hog rings and davits and hose clamps and I think we have every type and size of nail that ever existed.”
On an island where getting parts can take days if not weeks to be shipped over, it’s hard to overstate how important it is to have this resource locally. And it’s a huge boost to the Trust’s processing capabilities.
“And so here we're thinking it just frees up the ability to actually have more freezing space, more refined processing,” she says. “And keeping the bloody gut stuff happening on the waterfront, and the landing, and all of that still occurring there. And the ice making – we make a lot of ice.”
It has allowed them to expand, she says.
It’s impressive—and a sign that even as our oceans change, the island community is still as invested as ever in keeping its fleet.
