In celebration of the working waterfront

Updated Aug. 13

Kids hopped carefree from fishing boat to fishing boat as the sun started to set, live music from the Dock Dance Band flowed over the crowd, and folding tables were set up for competition on Dutcher Dock. 

The eighth annual Meet the Fleet, hosted by the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust at the Menemsha docks in Chilmark, was well attended by visitors and Islanders alike. The event raised $60,000 for the trust before expenses.

“It always feels good,” said Shelley Edmundson, executive director of the Preservation Trust. “Every year, you feel like we’ve taken over Menemsha, and it’s gone back to more relaxed days where everyone can just hang out.”

The event is a way for the community to get to know the people behind Island seafood as well as all the different, sometimes dangerous, parts of the working waterfront. The Preservation Trust also recently announced an expansion, after the purchase and impending renovation of the former Poole’s Fish Plant on Basin Road, for which they signed a 99-year lease.

“It really brings the community together, and [helps] spread awareness of where our seafood comes from,” Greg Clark, a shoeless Islander who’s worked for the trust for years, said.

In Menemsha on Thursday, it was the first Meet the Fleet for Lasha Sharadze, who cooks, cuts, and shucks at Larsen’s Fish Market. Sharadze, an intermediary between boats and the seafood distributor, is an exchange student from the country of Georgia who is on-Island for his first summer. When asked what he looked forward to Thursday, he asked, “Is it illegal to say crab racing?”

Among other activities available to the hundreds of people at the docks, such as fish-filleting demonstrations, fish printing, and vessel tours, more than 100 green crabs were donated by the Wampanoag Environmental Laboratory to race. Green crabs are an invasive species that destroy shellfish and marine habitats. Island towns, and some fishermen, have harvested the invasives as part of predator control methods. Recently, 18-year-old Island commercial fisherman Tegan Gale started a green crab fishery through the Preservation Trust.

For the crab race, kids dragged bait on a string in front of the critters through a wooden racetrack above the dock.

The crowd favorite is undoubtedly the scallop-shucking competition, which was open for a new champion. Noticeably absent this year was reigning two-time winner Otto Osmers — known in many circles as “Otto-Matic” or “Otto-Zone” for his shucking skills. 

The shucking competition, as well the net-mending competition — won by Ian Andres of the Martha Rose — was emceed by friend of the trust Matt Merry. (“God, I hope you don’t run out of line. Did anyone measure these holes?” Merry said in the middle of the net-mending race.)

“Paris has the Olympics, Menemsha has scallop shucking,” Merry famously announced last year. This year, he noted good camaraderie between shuckers after Jeff Murray, New Bedford fishermen, won by a large margin. “I don’t know if you’d see that at the Olympics,” he said.

Murray was evidently a pro — sometimes he didn’t even need to look at the scallop in his hand to make a clean shuck. He also showed off his day’s haul of 500 pounds of sea bass and 1,500 pounds of scup, as much as he’s allowed, from his boat, Never Enough, to anyone who asked. He often sells to the Martha’s Vineyard Seafood Collaborative, the wholesale arm of the Preservation Trust. He said he sold 4,000 pounds that week to the collaborative.

This year, Edmundson said, they had some fishermen come from other harbors. The “camaraderie of other harbors,” she said, allows fishermen to show off different skill sets and tell different stories.

The event can also showcase the difficulties that come with making a living on the water. “It’s more and more complicated to make a living from the sea,” she said.

Part of the event included boat tours of the Coast Guard fleet, as well as Environmental Police vessels, which keep fishermen safe and uphold fishing regulations.

“As an Island, fishing has been part of our culture for so long,” Edmundson said, referring to the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). “Sustaining ourselves from the sea is part of our livelihood.”

The event raises money for the Preservation Trust’s programs, after expenses, through sponsors, merchandise sales, and donations.

Editor’s note: Updated to include amount of money raised from the event before expenses.