Bunker Fishing

Bunker fishing. Shah in small boat.

My husband, Tommy, set bunker nets Sunday and tended them Monday. He fought rough seas and frigid water, but the bunkers came up thick. He shook them out of the nets until one net came up twisted. He struggled with that, picking each fish. Standing in bunkers up to his knees, he didn’t move his feet for an hour. It was like standing in cement. Tommy brought in 7,679 pounds of bunkers, enough shaking, picking and shoveling for three young men let alone a fifty-two-year-old.
Shah, a young fisherman with a twenty-seven foot boat, had borrowed one of Tommy’s nets, but couldn’t tend it. He radioed that the seas were too high for him. A large dredge boat heard him and escorted him back through the inlet.
Bunkers are small bait fish, at eight cents a pound to the fisherman, the cheapest fish sold. Three other Ocean City fishermen are fishing for them this year, but none have deep nets like Tommy’s. They would rather catch rockfish and dogfish, but the rock quota is so stingy, Tommy saves it for fall and the dogfish quota is filled. The state allocates rockfish quota to too many non-fishermen. The ridiculously inadequate dogfish quota is shared by New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia fishermen and filled within a few weeks of opening. Maryland fishermen would like to have a separate state quota, but Maryland’s bureaucrats don’t care. Maryland is destroying its commercial fishermen.
A man I call Brown in my book leased the sea bass quota he didn’t deserve to a New Jersey dragger. Yesterday that dragger landed the entire 11,000 pound quota and gave Brown 40%. When the sea bass laws were agreed on by the fishermen, this was supposed to be caught by pot fishermen on their own boats, but fishermen have leased and sold Maryland sea bass and flounder quotas to New Jersey companies.
Tommy realizes he would probably be better off leasing his quotas than taking so much risk and working so hard landing them himself. He has a small fortune invested in the boat and gear. My book describes the endless work and expense involved.