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Chesapeake Bay Watermen
| Article
# : |
16950 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1990 |
1,598 Words |
| Author
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Meredith B. Jordan
Meredith B. Jordan is a free-lance writer from New Jersey.
She specializes in outdoors, environmental, and health topics. |
Mirrored sunglasses hide Capt. Ed Farley's eyes. "Count them," he says, holding out a handful of "good" oysters that he has just pulled up from the side of his skipjack, the Stanley Norman.
"There are only eight. A three-minute dredge used to get four times this." No melancholy. Just plain fact.
His gaze follows the smooth expanse of the Chesapeake Bay, his silver lenses reflection the glare of sun and water. He smiles and leans his tanned face closer, like he's going to share some privileged information. "The local watermen don't know it. They keep thinking things are going to get better. Sad thing is that here, everyone's a waterman."
Farley's talking about the small backwater towns that line the eastern shore of Maryland, where generations have been born to be baymen - to be crabbers, oystermen, shuckers, pickers, packers, and buyers.
"You either work on the water or at something that has to do with the water," says Farley. Yet the seaman's culture as the locals know its is fast disappearing.
It is easy to tell the Captain Farley is not a local. His white polo shirt, khaki shorts, golden hair, and sun-bleached mustache seem better matched to one of the yachts docked near shore. But there is no doubt that he is a bay-man. It is on the bow of the Stanley Norman that he's made his living for the last dozen years. During dredging season, Farley sails from sunrise to sunset in search of his bounty.
"It's getting harder and harder," Farley says. "The payback just isn't what it used to be. I don't go out on really cold days anymore. The others make fun of me, saying I must be rich to afford to stay in." But it's really that Farley's smart enough to know it isn't worth it. He'd lose money if he had to pay his crew and didn't pull up enough oysters to break even.
A Dying Breed
Farley may be more savvy than his native peers, but he knows he is part of their dying breed. He captains one of the remaining twenty-two skipjacks registered in Maryland to dredge the Chesapeake Bay oyster beds. Skipjacks, with their slender, needle-nose bowsprit, use no conventional motor; they literally sail after oysters. The hardy, sleek vessels
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