Stacks of lobster traps line the corridor of Menemsha Harbor, and gear is piled haphazardly so high among brightly painted buoys and plastic totes that it reaches to the roof of the shacks that skirt the edge of the shore. Copper streaks bleed from the edges of old nails on wooden traps, and on the ground, lines of rope are coiled like snakes. A weathered sign from 1994 proclaims Chilmark’s tricentennial, a piece of history that harkens back to a milestone in an even longer history. Menemsha often resembles a stage set of a quaint New England village — but it is, in fact, a lively port that lives and breathes, and has found a way to not only survive against adverse economic forces, but continually adapt and discover new approaches to sustain a vital industry and keep local seafood on the menu.
This port stands apart as the rest of Martha’s Vineyard becomes more developed and attentive to tourism. Edgartown Harbor, which initially rose to prominence in the whaling days, used to be chock-full of schooners; now, most dock access is reserved for a fiberglass fleet. Many Vineyard Haven and Edgartown fish buyers are now long gone, and so too are the boatbuilders and shore engineers who supported a much larger industry. There is a small but strong fleet of commercial fishing boats in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs, though they are hard to find amid the swell of sports boats and pleasure craft that lap into the harbor through the summer.
“When I first came here, 47 years ago, the O.B. harbor was packed with draggers,” said Johnny Hoy, who’s worked on the water since his teens and earned a place as an experienced fisherman, as well as a legendary local bluesman. Peter Jackson, whose family was around when whale oil harvests financed the Island, said he used to swordfish for 15-to-20-day stints, 18 hours east of the Island, for two decades. Now, the dock in Edgartown can’t even be used anymore, he said.
But Menemsha remains an anchor to the past. Once called Creekville, or “Crickville” to locals, the harbor was dredged around 1900, and the village rebuilt after the “Great New England Hurricane” in 1938. Before that, fishermen used seasonal communities, like Lobsterville, Squibnocket, and Nomans Land, as their base. Those gradually faded from memory as Menemsha rose in prominence during the mid-20th century. In that era, inshore and offshore vessels were tied two or three deep at Menemsha wharfs; Islanders’ fish traps circled the coast, and fishermen harpooned and longlined out in Georges Bank and as far as the Grand Banks.
The Island’s current commercial fleet doesn’t resemble what it once was, all those decades ago; notably gone even more recently are the draggers Unicorn and Quitsa Strider II, iconic fixtures on Dutcher Dock for decades and owned by brothers Gregory and Jonathan Mayhew, respectively. The 70-plus-foot vessels were sold in the early 2010s as pressures from high costs, stringent regulations, changes in climate, and foreign competition became relentless and forced many to leave the industry, especially as on-Island wholesale buyers closed their doors. Soon, owner-operated Island fishermen were rare, just like the species they were increasingly prohibited to catch.
But, years later, despite the empty slips on commercial docks, there’s a persistent thrum of energy in the village as well as some other pockets of the Island where the industry prevails, and the faces along the docks are encouragingly young. There have been different iterations of commercial fishing over the years — depleted and rebuilt stocks, various federal and state management regulations, and many technological advancements. But through all that, the trade on the Island was never lost. Through resolute adaptation and innovation, Menemsha held out, and offers a glimpse of what a sustainable future looks like — one that bolsters local fishermen and their harvest.
These days, aquaculture is a lucrative job, and there are dozens of farms around the Island, all spurred by a group of fishermen, displaced by commercial regulations, who turned inshore. Among that group was the late Roy Scheffer (see sidebar), whose youngest daughter, Martha, now runs his farm; his sons Isaiah, Jeremy, and Noah also continue the tradition in different aspects of the aquaculture industry.
In 2011, a nonprofit corporation was established to safeguard the industry’s heritage and future. It’s called the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust (MVFPT) and supports the small-boat, owner-operated fleet and catch of the Island. That is how the gritty, blue-collar industry now manages to stay afloat through tides of change far beyond their control. The trust works primarily behind the scenes: It processes and donates seafood to food security groups on and off the Island, facilitates scientific research, and creates payment plans to help local fishermen secure expensive permits; the group even runs a seafood market called the Martha’s Vineyard Seafood Collaborative, which purchases and distributes hundreds of thousands of pounds of local seafood from Islander fishers to on- and off-Island buyers year-round.
“Nothing is easy in the fishery world,” Shelley Edmundson, executive director of the MVFPT, said. “It’s easy to think every boat out there is just taking whatever they want, but in reality, they’re really being careful, and they’re following rules that have been set from scientific guidelines and regulations.”
And the truth is, the demand for local seafood on the Island isn’t always there. It was Edmundson who helped spearhead one of the most recent ventures for the MVFPT: the production of “The Sea Table,” a cookbook by the trust and Catherine Walthers that not only encourages and teaches the importance of local seafood, but also preserves in print the faces of the industry, whose livelihoods depend on the demand for fresh fish.
Warren Doty, former Chilmark Select Board chair, was one of the first faces connected to the MVFPT as a founding board member and board president. He died in early March 2026, and he is remembered for his immense advocacy work for the industry. Doty, who was a wholesale buyer, often coordinated Island fishermen and off-Island buyers in the months when local fish markets were closed. That remains a significant part of the trust’s efforts today.
Part of the seafood market was reinvented to be of the same service to fishermen, especially when there isn’t a lot of demand on the Island in the off-season. Last summer and through the winter, the trust began to ship the catch of Island fishermen to off-Island markets and buyers in a consolidated effort. Through the shipments — once a week in winter and three times a week in summer — the trust removes the need for 20 fishermen to take their trucks off-Island to make money. The streamlined process, made possible by a generous grant, is both environmentally and fiscally efficient, Edmundson said, and was especially used by oyster farmers and wild oyster harvesters in the colder months this past year.
Otto Osmers is a 26-year-old commercial fisherman who scalloped all last summer on the Martha Rose and other vessels, and then harvested wild oysters as the seasons changed and other fisheries closed. He was happy to know the trust could ship his catch off-Island when demand wasn’t as high on the Island, since he still needs to make an income. Wild oysters were abundant this year, and Osmers and his business partner, 21-year-old Kent Healey, were able to get $30 for a bag of 100 oysters from Red’s Best, which has a facility in New Bedford; they were each allowed to harvest 800 oysters a day.
The trust is staunch in the effort to keep young fishermen in the trade, where the barrier of access discourages those who can’t afford or endure the inconsistent whims of Mother Nature. It’s expensive to buy a boat, let alone pay thousands of dollars for permits to go out and catch what can be empty promises.
Tegan Gale, the youngest commercial fishermen on the Menemsha docks, has fished his entire life; at 19, he’s also the youngest in the state to have a lobster permit, he said. His father and grandfather worked the water before him, and Gale began practically at birth; at 10 days old, he was out on the boat while his father culled lobster pots. He said he slept in his baby carriage tucked inside a fish tote; he ran his father’s old lobster boat, the Watch Out, at 15 years old. If his family wasn’t involved, however, he isn’t sure he’d have been able to become a commercial fisherman.
“It’s borderline impossible” to enter the commercial fishing industry, he said.
Now, Gale harvests lobster, oysters, sea bass, bonito, and conch — a unique and prosperous fishery that caters mostly to foreign markets — much of which he does on his own, out of Menemsha Harbor. “Who knows if it’s a good business to be in, but we’ll see,” said Gale. Still, fishing is what he knows how to do.
Gale estimated that he’s put in around $70,000 to join the industry — from gear to permits to boats. “The money is the most difficult part, the initial investment, all the other stuff, coming up with all the funds for permits and boats,” he said.
Besides the fixed costs — a boat and permits — the price of fuel and bait is always on the up, and still, the market price for lobster remains mostly the same. Edmundson said that as part of the reinvented shipping program, they are able to bring back supplies and bait for Island fishermen. There was a bait shortage last year because, as fewer and fewer draggers go out, access to skate, used to bait lobster pots, lowers.
Gale is among approximately 50 Island fishermen who harvest for and use the trust. There’s still a solid older, more seasoned cohort — Stanley Larsen, Wes Brighton, Wayne Iacono, Johnny Hoy, Tom Turner, and many others — but Edmundson said the demographic’s started to trend younger. Gale, Osmers, Walter Greene, Matteus Scheffer, and Chris Mayhew, among others, have taken up the flag.
Greene, in his “Sea Table” essay, says, “The hope is that seafood stays local and becomes more appreciated for where it’s caught, and valued for the effort put in. Sure, you can find cheaper fish; you can buy tilapia or farm-raised fish. But helping people to realize the quality of what they’re getting where they’re buying local seafood … they’re getting it direct, sea to table.”
“They’re just all great guys that I feel are super-collaborative with each other and just supportive of conservation and have pride in what they do,” Edmundson said. They bring new perspectives and energy, she added. Gale was one fisherman who decided to try the new green crab fishery, which seemingly no other Islander takes part in, at least not to harvest for the culinary market, as green crab is both invasive and mostly used for bait.
Two of Gale’s most recent investments in the fall included a $12,000 sea bass permit, which the trust helped finance, and $25,000 for his new boat, the Solitude, which he bought from Chris Mayhew.
The Solitude was built in 1984 and has made berth in Menemsha her whole life. Before she was Mayhew’s boat, she belonged to Pat Jenkins, or as the new generation of fishermen call him, Old Man Pat. Mayhew, like Gale, began lobstering through a state program that subsidizes 25 pots to students. Now 27 years old, Mayhew’s upgraded to a bigger boat and passed along the Solitude.
“Pay it forward, that’s my theory,” said Mayhew. “[Tegan] wanted the same opportunity I got. Everyone deserves a shot.” Mayhew primarily harvests lobster, and switches to conch seasonally, though the winter is reserved for “odd jobs.” He also catches sea bass for the collaborative, but typically sells lobster to Edgartown Seafood, owned by his former classmates Crockett Cataloni and Jimmy and Andy DiMattia.
Fishermen need an extensive skill set to be successful. They need to be able to track water temperatures and tides, notice species’ behavioral shifts, examine gut contents, haul gear, repair leaks, manage wounds, splice wires, adapt to the weather, and much more. In the preface to “The Sea Table,” Edmundson called a fisherman the equivalent of a “human Swiss Army knife.”
All of this and more is illustrated in “The Sea Table,” written mostly by Walthers, an Island resident and former journalist turned private chef who wrote for Martha’s Vineyard Magazine for 20 years. “The Sea Table,” on the surface, is a hardcover with stunning photography and luscious seafood recipes, some Walthers’, others collected from Island fishermen, chefs, and friends. But beneath these is an advocacy project for the centuries-old working waterfront. By profiling fishermen, species, and the labor behind each local catch, the book documents a corner of the Island that’s often taken for granted. It’s about preservation, but also industry, history, and culture. It’s a tribute to the Atlantic waters that surround us and the fishermen who work hard to take food from the sea to local tables.
“It’s a cookbook, but it’s also about fishing, so I love that it has the essays from the fishermen in it, because that really just goes full circle. And you talk about where your food comes from, and this is right from the source and right from their words,” Walthers said.
“It’s often hard for people to see and connect to our fishing community, because unlike a farmer, we can’t drive by a field and see them at work close up, or go talk to them,” said Edmundson. “I’m hoping that this kind of brings the fishing community to the general public, and helps them understand, feel more connected to each person and everyone’s uniqueness. To understand why they do what they do, and feel that connection and appreciation for their craft.”
The book features 75 recipes using 19 different local species, and each book purchase supports the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust’s mission to ensure that sea-based culture, livelihood, and food remain strong on the Island.
“Behind each local fish, there’s a person or a family and someone working hard to go out and harvest that food for them,” said Edmundson.
Walthers said that as she collected and created the recipes in the book, she wanted to use ones for this “point in time.” In his essay, Osmers said: “Fisheries in a lot of ways are cyclical, both the markets and the actual fisheries.” Walthers wanted to make sure these were recipes for the locally caught fish now, instead of recipes that have been used for decades. People tend to cook what they know, which is often swordfish, salmon, or shrimp, Walthers said. But this book attempted to highlight less popular but locally caught options, such as, surprisingly, quahog clams, fluke, and bluefish.
“The Sea Table” quietly frames the argument that the future of the Menemsha waterfront is already here, though it may not look — or taste — the same as before. It’s a snapshot of an industry that constantly evolves, and is a testament to those who chart a path forward for this way of life.
“Every one of them was drawn to be a fisherman, to harvest from the sea,” Edmundson said. “It seems like once it’s in you, there’s no turning back.”
Hayley Duffy is a Martha’s Vineyard Times news editor covering oceans and energy. Freelance reporter for The Times Ella Munnelly contributed to this story.