Local Heroes: Keep the Catch Local 

If you step into the salty waterfront shack in Menemsha to chat with the folks who run the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust and Martha’s Vineyard Seafood Collaborative, don’t be surprised if the ice machine roars to life mid-sentence. It happens every eight minutes. The place buzzes with the daily rhythm of the commercial fishing season — boats unloading, fishermen popping in for ice, gear, or conversation. It’s from here that marine biologist Shelley Edmundson and John Keene (of John Keene Excavation) coordinate an impressive suite of programs designed to keep Island fisheries, and the people who depend on them, afloat. From safeguarding fishing permits to running a seafood donation initiative, their work ensures that the Island’s sustainably harvested catch can feed both families and local food systems. 

We sat down with Shelley and John to hear how they got involved, how the Collaborative grew from a scrappy permit bank into the thriving, multi-faceted organization it is now, and why the future of fishing here depends on infrastructure, education, access, and a whole lot of ice. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Britt Bowker: How did each of you get involved in the MV Fishermen’s Preservation Trust?

John Keene: I got stopped in traffic by one of the founding members, Wes Brighton, and he asked me if I wanted to join. That was around 10 years ago. It was all pretty much in its infancy. Shelley and Wes started it, then we started having meetings, we got more board members, and I became president and Shelley became executive director. And we just started rising to all the different challenges — mixing some successes here and there.

Shelley Edmundson: I helped originally do all the paperwork and get the 501(c)(3) certification for it. And then everyone got busy and it sat for a little bit. But it got reinvigorated and formed a board, and we started needing a lot. We had a lot of great ideas. But we didn’t have a bank account; we didn’t have any staff. So I would say the first two years were just idea development, but a lot of passion in trying to focus on our mission and goals. At that point, I was still in school. After I graduated, they said, “Okay, you’re free — why don’t you run it?” And that’s when I became executive director, and we started putting all these visions into play. 

Britt: What’s the mission of the Trust, and how has it evolved?

Shelley: The mission is safeguarding the Island’s commercial fishing fleet and their sustainably harvested catch. During COVID, when we had the need for a lot of food and also jobs, as a fishermen’s organization we had access to food but hadn’t necessarily done any seafood donations, or found ways to connect that food source to all members of the community. So we launched our seafood donation program during that time, originally with a one-time grant that allowed us to make black sea bass and scup stews to donate to food pantries. And it was really successful. Obviously COVID has subsided, but the need for food continues, so that program has changed and evolved, but we secure grants from the community and other foundations and fundraising sources so we can continue that program to keep Island fish here and feed more people. 

John: We started out as a permit bank as well. We saw a lot of the permits were leaving the Island. They’re very expensive and hard to get. So they were very valuable. People were buying them up off-Island, and if you don’t have a permit, you can’t fish. So that’s kind of what we started, and what we realized very quickly was that it’s great to have a permit, but without the infrastructure, if you go catch a fish, there’s nowhere to sell it, and there’s no marketing. So we started branching out pretty quickly to other things than just getting permits for people. The seafood donation program has been a great example, because it doesn’t compete with existing fish markets. We’re a nonprofit. They’re for-profit. So that way we support them without hurting them, but we also get fish to people that would have maybe never had it. 

Britt: Why was it important to create the Seafood Collaborative as an extension of the Trust? [The MV Seafood Collaborative opened at the location of the former Menemsha Fish House, which closed in 2020.]

John: As Shelley mentioned, with COVID hitting and the market that was already here kind of fading and stopping, that would have had a huge impact on the harbor if it became a vacant building. So we saw that opportunity to expand from just being a permit bank to becoming a more dynamic group. This building enables us to really expand that way. Having a presence on the harbor — a place people can come to and really get a hold of us. 

Shelley: And as John said, our permit programs started first. You could have all the permits in the world, but if you don’t have the infrastructure or land or the markets to sell to, you really don’t have a commercial fishing industry on the Island. So this gives us a footing to make change and adjust and help as problems arise. So if we didn’t have this facility, the seafood donation program really wouldn’t exist, because we wouldn’t be hands on. We wouldn’t have the permits to even hold the fish and figure out how to get it out to the groups that needed it. So it really makes us intricately involved in that, and gives us a way to share what’s being landed here with the community. 

Britt: Tell us more about the infrastructure you’ve created.

Shelley: We fundraised in January 2021 and were able to take over this building, and that launched our Seafood Collaborative program. That program gives us the infrastructure to buy and sell seafood, but also the ability to build up the necessary pieces you need on the waterfront to do that. So we have a gin boon, which is a big hydraulic crane that allows you to unload heavy catch from a boat or put ice on a boat. We have this ice machine that you keep hearing. Every eight minutes it unloads I think five pounds of ice. We probably make over 300,000 pounds of ice a summer, which is necessary if you’re working with commercial fishermen. If you’re a fisherman and you don’t have ice, you go out on a hot day like we’ve had today, you don’t have enough ice to keep your product cool, you basically have bait. So making sure that there’s ice for the community has been essential. 

In this building, we have permits to process fish, and that allows us to not only donate the seafood, but also to buy it and pay as fair prices as we can to the local fishermen. It’s a necessary linkage between the water and the land, and having a structure where we can be involved in that process has been really important. 

John: We’re restricted by our lease agreement to only be wholesale. So we can’t be a retail outlet. But that’s fine with us, because again, we don’t want to compete. Ten feet down the street is a retail store. It’s been there forever. It's this great family business, and we would never want to diminish their efforts. So being only wholesale might be another kind of handcuff to us, but that’s a good thing. 

Britt: What kind of support do you offer when it comes to logistics, permits, and financing?

John: Shelley is incredible with all the hiccups that happen with permitting. One lobsterman lost his permit — I think it expired because he lost it in the mail — and Shelley was able to get it back with her connections. [It involves] a lot of paperwork and helping with loans and banks and business plans — all that stuff that’s not fun and that no one really thinks about. But it’s super important to keep the infrastructure alive. And everything’s expensive. Boats are expensive. Permits are expensive. It’s not like you can just work harder sometimes, because they have seasons. Once the season is closed, you can’t fish that species anymore. So you have to be diverse.

Shelley: Fishing has become more complicated with all the regulations. Even just transferring a permit from one boat to another is really labor intensive. And if you’re making a living on the water, you’re not operating during standard business hours. So being able to get things notarized, or respond to emails — it’s really hard. So helping facilitate that process is one thing that we do a lot. 

Also, having permits in the community is really important, and fishing permits are really expensive. Some are fairly cheap, but the ones that you need to make a living can range from $10,000 to $10 million. So having that access is essential, and it’s become harder and harder. So we work with fishermen to create customized payment plans. We have an arrangement with the state of Massachusetts: we’ll purchase a permit, and [the state] links our name to that permit, and then we’ll sell it through an application process to the most qualified fisherman. And that comes with a payment plan to pay it off, so they’re able to use that permit while making a living. Any other program would require you to come up with all the money at once, and sometimes if you’ve already used all your money on a boat, you don't have any money left to put toward the permit, so you’re not able to make money to keep your business going. So we do that. Our system has helped keep a lot of permits as fishermen retire; making sure that those can transfer to the next generation of fishermen and keep them in our community has been part of the work that we do. 

Britt: What do you think are the biggest challenges facing the local fishing industry today?

John: Lack of access to the waterfront, and the diminishing of places that still offer viable access. That’s one thing that we’re trying to stop. We want to keep the access open. [Also,] before the internet, there used to be fish markets that had fishermen that went out and caught the fish, and the restaurants would call the fish market and work with what they had. But now, if you’re a chef, and you worked all day and it’s 11:30 at night, you just want to get your next order done. You just go online and you call Sysco, and you order exactly what you want, the exact amount of pounds, and it’s there on the 5:30 am boat coming across. You go to bed. You don’t have to hear, So, this lobster boat broke down. That all gets eliminated. So that’s part of the marketing that we try to do to kind of qualify how important it is to buy local, support the local industry, and not have everything shipped from off-Island. It’s a big challenge. 

Shelley: Also just being on an island in general means that there are challenges that we all deal with on a day-to-day basis already, and then you add in having a perishable product that has to be sold quickly. And if every market is saturated on the Island, you’re either stuck, or you find a way to ship it. The moat we have makes running any business more stressful, but when you add in a perishable product, it becomes even more exciting. So not only are we trying to keep as much of the product as possible here, but when we can’t absorb any more, we offer a shipping service to fishermen so their product can get connected to other markets off-Island that aren’t saturated. Obviously, the end dream would be that nothing would be shipped, that everything could be kept here, whether it’s for food donations or for the restaurants. But right now, the supply is higher than the demand, and trying to find a way to create that balance and still help those businesses be able to sell their catch is one thing we’re working on right now. 

Britt: How do you adapt when there’s more seafood than the Island market can absorb?

Shelley: We actually got a Food Security and Infrastructure grant that gave us funding for a new refrigerated truck that won’t break down and can actually go off-Island. So the first shipping day is tomorrow. We’re in the process of loading black sea bass and going through the trial run of being able to ship a lot of this excess seafood off-Island. 

We’ve also been freezing fish with our flash freezer that we got a grant for from the Martha’s Vineyard Bank. We have a vacuum sealer from another grant, and we vacuum seal and flash freeze fish. Freezing fish has helped us buy and sell: Buy when we have a lot and sell as the need is there. All last summer we were buying and freezing like little squirrels, and all that fish went to the Winter Farmers Market shares, and also to Morning Glory Farm and North Tabor Farm and Mermaid Farm and Beetlebung, who all were wholesale. We wholesaled to them, and they sold freshly flash-frozen fish all winter, which is kind of a cool thing; we could help the fishermen when they needed a market, but also the community when you crave that fresh fish that’s from here, but you can’t get it because it’s winter. 

Britt: How many fishermen do the Trust and Collaborative support?

Shelley: It’s hard to quantify exactly, since we’re not a membership-based nonprofit. We support any fisherman that comes and is involved and needs assistance. It’s really hard to estimate a number, because you have different levels of fishing. Some are deckhands, some are the captains, some might not have a commercial boat, but they dig clams commercially. But I think if we consider all of those fishermen and women, we probably support around 70 different commercial fishing businesses. Some years it changes, based on what’s going on and who needs to sell or get a permit transferred, or some other kind of assistance.

Britt: How do you support new or younger fishermen?

John: Permitting, and helping with the applications with the banks. Reaching out together, with the fishermen and the loan officers, and getting things connected and set up. And in general, encouragement. The fishing industry is really tough. You have to almost apprentice in some way. You can’t just be the captain all of a sudden. You have to work on the deck, learn all the different ropes, and it can be intimidating if you don’t know who the captains are, or if you’re younger. We kind of soften that whole transition; we know the captains, and we can see who wants help and introduce people.

Shelley: Right now we have a permit, a black sea bass rod and reel permit, which is a perfect beginner permit, so we have an open application for that. Whoever applies to that, their applications will be vetted, and then that person, or whoever gets it, will be able to launch a business. So we have those kinds of opportunities where you have some beginner permits and then more advanced permits for fishermen that are more seasoned, and also connecting retiring fishermen with younger fishermen. 

John: A few years back we bought some sea scallop quota — which is a right to catch a certain amount of the total amount that’s allowed to be caught. We purchased a small percentage of that. So every year, the amount of pounds that we sell varies because the percentage never changes, but the total amount gets smaller or bigger. We bought a million dollars worth of sea scallop quota that we sell to Island boats. And the beauty of that is that it helps captains that own the boats — it allows them to get revenue by the pound for what they catch, and they get paid a lot more than what they pay for the [quota] lease. And they might also go out with younger fishermen that never would have been on a sea scallop boat, who can learn the ropes that way. So it’s another “in” for a younger generation being mentored by experienced captains who want the help. And it’s a very sustainable industry. 

Britt: Where can people find the fish?

Shelley: We sell at the farmers market every Wednesday and Saturday, so that’s fresh and frozen seafood, and also through our packed community fishery shares. So that’s the main outlet where we sell to the public. In an effort not to compete, we’re not wholesaling to a lot of restaurants or private chefs. But for people who want our local seafood, and who are willing to come to pick it up, we’re happy to work with them and make sure that they have access to local seafood. We do sell to a few restaurants — Outermost Inn, Lamberts Cove Inn, State Road, Beach Road, and sometimes the Home Port — because they support our mission and we support their love of having really high quality product and being able to tell the story behind it. We’re smaller than the for-profit fish stores, and if restaurants want to work with us, it doesn't mean they can’t work with the other sellers as well. So I think it’s kind of a collaborative effort to share the story behind the seafood that you’re eating, and be connected to it. 

Britt: You’ve both taken different paths to get here. Can you share more about your backgrounds and what led you to this work?

Shelley: I got connected by doing research on boats with the fishermen during school. So I was studying the conch fishery, channeled whelk, and working on boats to understand a lot about their biology that wasn’t known. I became close friends with many of [the fishermen], and realized how much more we could do and need to do — and how the future of our fisheries is not only science, but it’s also the collaboration between science and fishing and how you need that partnership between the fishermen and the scientists to make sure that we have really sustainable fisheries. Also to make sure that we’re ahead of what’s to come with climate change and everything else happening. Being able to collaborate is essential for the future. That’s kind of what led me into it, and then it grew from there. The only way to have sustainable fisheries is to have that intersection between the science and fishermen. 

John: And if I may, Shelly’s the top conch and channel whelk researcher around here. She’s being very humble. 

I grew up in Menemsha. I worked at the fish market right down the street here for eight years, cutting up fish and everything. It was ‘76 to ‘84, so it was the heyday of fishing down here. I fell in love with it. I lobstered. I had a student commercial license with quahogging. And then I went to college, and started cutting firewood on the side with a friend of mine. That started a business that grew into an excavation company, which is what I do now. 

So I’m not a commercial fisherman, but I love the industry, and I’m thrilled about all aspects of it, and I’m learning more every day. Growing up, I watched the whole harbor fading out, so when I was stopped in traffic, I was like Oh, this is great. And it’s been a great challenge to be involved with this. I still have my day job, which is my primary focus. I’m a volunteer here, but I love doing this, so I spend a lot of time on it. 

Shelley: John does the work of 50 people. 

Britt: Are you still serving on the State Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission, Shelley? How does that position help you advocate for the Vineyard’s fishing community?

Shelley: I think it helps give a voice to the Island’s concerns and perspectives, directly. So fishermen can talk to me, and I can bring up their concerns at meetings. Every meeting there are regulations that we approve, and having the perspectives of the Island fleet is essential, because if something’s going to be proposed that could really be doing damage or cause immediate concerns to the local fishermen here, I can share that perspective.

To learn more about the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust and Martha’s Vineyard Seafood Collaborative, visit their websites. Sign up for the Community Supported Fishery membership here.