Tag Archives: Cape fishermen
September 28 – 1889: Cape fishermen heading for South Africa for mackerel
“Fishing widow” will now become a year-round occupation. A century ago the fishermen on Cape Cod were making plans to spend the winter fishing for mackerel off the Cape of Good Hope off the southern tip of Africa, a distance of almost 8,000 miles away from homeport. For the wives of the Cape’s fishermen that would mean nearly year-round widowhood as the trip a century ago took weeks under the best of conditions and mackerel were believed to abound in South African waters after December 1st, the same fish seen here six months later. >click to read< 14:08
On This Day – September 28, 1889: Cape fishermen heading for South Africa for mackerel
A century ago the fishermen on Cape Cod were making plans to spend the winter fishing for mackerel off the Cape of Good Hope off the southern tip of Africa, a distance of almost 8,000 miles away from homeport. For the wives of the Cape’s fishermen that would mean nearly year-round widowhood as the trip a century ago took weeks under the best of conditions and mackerel were believed to abound in South African waters after December 1st, the same fish seen here six months later. The Cape Cod schooners will salt the mackerel and return to Provincetown to sell their catch. The reprint of the story in The New York Times from a century ago is below. click here to read the story 08:18
Wondering about the success of this venture? click here to read a bit more about it! pg. 196
Dogfish Neck? Cape Skate? Pollock Peninsula? – Cape fishermen anticipated cod collapse
Can this still be Cape Cod without the cod? There still is cod, and they’re still being caught, but the stocks have collapsed and that was further underlined this week when a Georges Bank quota cut of 62 percent to 762 metric tons was proposed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Management Council on Monday. That follows an earlier massive cut during the last three-year management period – totaling a 95-percent reduction over the last four years. Outer Cape fishermen are ahead of the curve – most have already abandoned cod. Read the rest here 07:53
