TERRY ALEXANDER Maine JERRY SANSOM Florida

BY CAROLINE LOSNECK

Terry Alexander remembers when northern shrimp were abundant in the cold waters of coastal Maine.

“We used to do really well shrimping. I shrimp shed from the 1970s on – until probably around 2010. When we had a season, it used to be a nice little hit for the local economy for the di erent small towns. It was something we could land in Cundy’s Harbor and be competitive [with] places like Portland. It made a huge di erence…and brought jobs to the local economy.”

Back in 2010, when Alexander was still catching shrimp, Maine shermen landed 255,765,092 pounds of shrimp with an ex-vessel value of over $456 million.

Alexander, 61, has spent his life as a commercial sherman in Cundy’s Harbor, Maine, a small shing village on a narrow peninsula nestled between a cove and the mouth of the New Meadows River. Over his career, he has experienced rsthand the peaks and troughs of commercial shing, including the shuttering of the Maine shrimp shery, which saw its last season in the Gulf of Maine in 2013. A moratorium, which is still in e ect, was placed on the shery because the shrimp population had collapsed.

“It sucked,” says Alexan-

Contuinted on page 22

BY KIRK MOORE

For nearly half a century, Sansom has been the voice for and a face of the individual commercial shermen in Florida as the longtime executive director of the Organized Fishermen of Florida. His 2022 award as a National Fisherman Highliner recognizes his lifelong work.

Growing up in the Pensacola area with its “big history of commercial shing for generations,” Sansom says that heritage was the basis for his decades of advocacy.

“Protect the resource so you always have it there, and guarantee access to the commercial side and consumers,” said Sansom. “ ese are public resources, and everyone should have access to it.” Fishermen and colleagues say Sansom’s e orts are why their community has survived in Florida, despite net ban campaigns of the 1990s and continuing political and development pressures. en in 1978 Sansom joined the Organized Fishermen of Florida as executive director. “ e opportunity to be that involved, as a marine biologist, couldn’t be passed up,” Sansom recalled.

Whether working with shermen or politicians, Sansom was always straight-up with his answers and recommendations, as well as outlining options and obstacles, says Florida sherman Gary Nichols, a 1998 NF Highliner. Sansom’s intricate knowledge of the legislative process was his superpower.

“It’s so easy to kill a bill in legislation, it’s a miracle we got anything done,” said Nichols.

Sansom, 75, lives in Rockledge, Fla., and handed o the executive director job to Alexis Meschelle a year ago. But he’s still involved, passing on his deep experience.

“We won’t go for anything that’s not biologically sound,” is one of Sansom’s rules. With degrees in marine science from Florida Tech and Florida State University, he could bridge the language for both shermen and shery managers.

Sansom’s original career path was ingenious. With his knowledge of marine science and Florida’s coastal environment, Sansom, then in his late 20s, had done some part-time lobbying for the boating industry, and gured he could cobble together enough livelihood for a good life. Maybe six months working, he thought, and six months cruising with his wife, Dixie, on their 32-foot wooden ketch Borne Free.

In the 1980s crowding and competition in the spiny lobster shery led the Organized Fishermen of Florida into proposing an ultimately successful solution to reduce the number of traps. “We developed this project that was the rst of its kind, really, and we did it with the help of the shermen,” said Michael Orbach, a professor emeritus of marine policy at Duke University who worked closely with Sansom. “He has always been an absolute master of dealing with the shing community.” e spiny lobster shery had been easy to enter in the 1970s. “It was very lucrative” and producing around 6 million pounds a year, said Orbach. But the trap numbers escalated rapidly to around 1.2 million, with diminishing returns for shermen “by the time Jerry got involved,” he said.

Orbach had met Sansom while working on the evolution of federal sheries management in the 1970s. “Jerry said, “Mike, we have a problem,’” Orbach recalled.

“ e managers knew a lot about lobsters, but not a lot about shermen,” said Orbach, who is trained in anthropology, “so I work on the people side of shing.”

After going out with and talking to shermen on the boats, Orbach had the information that he and Sansom could present in meetings with managers and shermen. ey came up with a trap reduction plan.

Fishermen “all knew they could catch 6 million pounds with one-sixth of the traps,” said Orbach. Issuing transferable certi cates for shermen’s traps set a control limit, where no one individual or company could own more than 1.5 percent of the total, and gave shermen

Photos

Jerry Sansom (right), the newly appointed executive director of Organized Fishermen of Florida, in 1978 outside the Florida state capitol in Tallahassee with Port Richey commercial shermen Jim Clark (center) and Gordon Baker.

Florida shermen working in summer 1994 just months before state voters approved a ban on most net shing. National Fisherman archives.

equity investment in their gear worth about $100 a trap, said Orbach.

Florida state managers told the advocates a new state law would be needed, and Sansom got it done in 1990, said Orbach.

“He organized the best lobbying campaign I have ever seen,” with fact sheets listing names and faces of lawmakers and sta ers for shermen to contact at the state capitol in Tallahassee, said Orbach. “He had his shermen come up and walk in wearing their white shing boots.”

But soon Florida shermen faced their doomsday crisis: the net ban.

In 1990 California voters approved a state constitutional amendment to ban inshore gillnets, a measure pushed by a coalition of recreational shermen and environmental activists. Sansom said that victory, and the rise of activist recreational groups like the Coastal Conservation Association, lit the fuse for what happened next.

“When that passed, the Florida outdoor writers decided to use that as their blueprint,” said Sansom. As on the West Coast, net critics’ publicity campaign blamed commercial shermen for depleting stocks

Some commercial shermen refused to countenance any kind of compromise to defuse the ght. Sansom warned his membership against a ght to the nish: “If Custer knew then what we know now, he wouldn’t have done it.”

In November 1994, 72 percent of Florida voters approved a state constitutional amendment to ban entanglement nets in nearshore and inshore waters,

Highliner Awards

aimed mostly at the then-thriving mullet shery. e ban took e ect July 1, 1995, pushing net shing three miles o the Atlantic Coast and nine miles into the Gulf of Mexico.

Hardest hit were the full-time shermen in traditional coastal villages, without other employment to fall back on, Sansom said.

Commercial shermen could be lulled into believing there was little danger, based on the support they long enjoyed in their coastal communities.

“Twenty miles down the road, it was a di erent story” in Florida’s burgeoning suburbs and retirement communities, said Sansom. ere was a ready audience for the anti-netting, “walls of death” rhetoric that had been pioneered in California.

To their credit, “the Legislature and the agencies fought this really hard,” said Sansom. But it was no match for the publicity machine backed by recreational groups.

State o cials anticipated 1,500 displaced shermen would need training and re-employment assistance. e Organized Fishermen of Florida managed to persuade state o cials to budget $40 million for a two-year transition period, for job training and gear buy-backs, said Sansom.

O cially retired, Sansom is still a resource for the OFF and its members. “I came on in June of last of year and Jerry has been mentoring me ever since,” said Alexis Meschelle, now executive director of the Organized Fishermen of Florida. Like Sansom’s longtime compatriots in the group, Meschelle says Sansom’s institutional knowledge of government policy-making and legislative procedure is beyond value.

“Right now we’re rebuilding and trying to get back on track” to adjust with recent changes in Florida law and regulations, particularly on the stone crab shery, said Meschelle, whose husband Nathan shes for stone crab, mullet and other species. “ ere have been a lot of changes.” Environmental issues are another top concern now for OFF’s 250-plus members.

“We’re working more on the impacts of water quality,” said Meschelle. Recurring red tides and escalating pollution loads coming out of Florida’s burgeoning suburban communities are triggering shery and beach closures, and shermen regularly pitch in to help state and federal agencies track algae blooms. After the angry 1990s, Florida’s sh politics began to settle down after 2000. e Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has “made it a point to treat the commercial shermen fairly,” said Sansom.

“ e new Florida conservation commission has been pretty straight up. It hasn’t been easy,” he added. “But they recognize the value of the commercial shery.”

Looking back, Sansom says, “I think I was the right person for the job. I was

Terry Alexander

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 20 der. “ ere were a lot of boats on the coast of Maine that depended on that for income in winter. Half the lobstermen used to shrimp, back then.” Alexander says he does not expect to see a shrimp shery come back to Maine in his lifetime. at sort of loss, he admits, goes beyond money.

“It was a historical Christmas meal, and people couldn’t wait for it for their Christmas meal. My family would eat it. My mom would make shrimp stew, shrimp dip, it was a big part of the culture along the coastline.” He remembers seeing trucks parked all up and down the Maine coast with “fresh shrimp” signs on them. “It was its own cottage industry.”

Dr. John Quinn, a former chairman of the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) has known Alexander for over a decade – and they were appointed to the NEFMC together in 2021. He considers Alexander to be one of the best in the business, and says that despite the hardships of shing, “he’s an optimistic guy on all fronts.”

“He’s got a combination of skill and likability – and he’s a fun guy to be around while working on important things.” Quinn says Alexander describes himself as “a graduate of Gulf of Maine University” – which is funny, but also something he respects about his friend, how shing and working on management has taught Alexander everything.

Alexander’s education in commercial shing started early. “I’ve been shing my entire life…as soon as I went shing, I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” says Alexander. His dad rst took him out, but his grandfather and great grandfather were also shermen. In those early days going out to sh shrimp and ground sh, Alexander would get seasick.

“I’d beg [my Dad] to take me back out! I still get seasick, but I’m a lot better now.”

He says despite the seasickness, he never stopped shing. “I worked my way up, until age 21, when I got in the wheelhouse. I bought my rst boat at 28, F/V Miss Paula, a 70 ft shrimp and ground shing boat. We’d also sh for pogies.” Nowadays, Alexander shes in his 62-foot F/V Jocka (pronounced “joker”), a dragger built in Cundy’s Harbor following a design by builder Dain Bichrest. He shes for cod, haddock, hake, monk and other ground sh and in the spring, he targets squid in the mid Atlantic and around Nantucket.

He says the squid and ground sh sheries are in great shape. “We’re catching more sh than I’ve ever seen before; haddock, monk, hake…more sh than I’ve seen in 40 years!”

But this is bittersweet, since there are dramatically fewer shermen going after ground sh these days. “ ere might be 25 boats from New Bedford to Maine that are competitively ground shing.” Alexander identi es as an independent owner-operator, and sells most of his catch to a longtime shing industry family in Massachusetts.

Alexander’s long career is also distinguished by service on the management side. He has participated in cooperative research on his boats, from Nordmore grate work in the northern shrimp shery to the industry-based cod survey for the State of Massachusetts in the Gulf of Maine. He also served one term on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council in 2009 and was appointed to three terms on the New England Fishery Management Council, from 2012 to 2021.

“It’s awful tough for shermen to be participants in these meetings, and he made every e ort,” adds Quinn. “He’s really dedicated a decade of his life pursuing management opportunities. He’s a great advocate and a great voice. Mixing his knowledge with his earned respect, even those on the other sides of issues would appreciate his approach. He’s really put…not only a decade of service on the council, but a career of service.”

Alexander remains humble about being recognized as an industry leader. “I have survived by being able to adapt to di erent things. You gotta be diverse, you gotta be able to do a lot of di erent things: you gotta be a mechanic, an electronics guy, a lot of things. I’ve always been able to make a living doing it, but we’ve had to zig and zag to pay the bills sometimes. You’ve got some good friends who’ve done it –and maybe some day you can return the favor.”

He says it would be hard to imagine a life without shing. But there was one job he may have done – shipbuilding. “I would have worked at the Bath Iron Works, like everyone else. Back in the day, you worked at Bath Iron Works or went shing, there really weren’t a lot of options then.”

Even though his own daughters have not followed him into shing, he is supportive of their paths.

“I’m glad…it’s not an easy life at all. But I think it’s a good living. I’m happy I’ve been a sherman my whole life. But not every day is the Fourth of July, is it? I hope I never have to go into an o ce. I can’t gure a way to catch sh from an o ce.”

“You got a guy like me [that] grew up very poor, and I made a decent living shing. at makes me happy.” Because he started shing so young, he dropped out of high school. “I went back and got my GED later, when I was 20 [and] that was because I started dating my wife [and] she came from a family of teachers. I did it for her.”

Overall, Alexander is content with a career and lifestyle that suits him. “We’re a weird bunch, me included. We don’t march to the land-based drum. We would not do well in an o ce, most of us. I think that we’re unique because we can’t function on land as good as on the boat. If we’re on the boat, we have freedom.”

Nowadays, when Terry Alexander is not out on the water, he enjoys traveling with his wife Kathy and spending time with his grown kids and family. He says he thinks one big part of his legacy is to be recognized for being a hard worker. “Hopefully I did the right thing for everybody in the shery, try to be fair. I think what’s good for me is good for them.”

“You don’t always end up where you started. I got in this to catch sh and make money– and here I am trying to save the ocean! You end up forming a relationship with that which you’re depending on.”