Fishing All My Days Transcript
- [Narrator] This project was funded in part by the Florida Endowment for the Humanities with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Southeast Fisheries Incorporated. Shrimp has been harvested and eaten for thousands of years. According to local oil tradition, the modern commercial industry traces its routes to Fernandina, the small fishing community in the northeast corner of Florida.
- [Gino Litrico] They were gone when I was growing up. The big fleets had gone, see I was born in '28. I used to have to go to St. Augustine to get to see them. Or, they also used to seasonally go fish Cape Canaveral. This was a fall season thing.
- [Narrator] Gino Litrico's father was a shrimper. He remembers the immigrants who helped begin the industry.
- Of course like I say, you had the Italians, Sicilians, you had the Greeks, the Norwegians, Portuguese, Romanian, Scottish brogue. It was... You know, it was a microcosm of coming up through Ellis Island in New York. They, the thing that I kinda get about Fernandina, is that it's sorta to the shrimping industry, what Detroit was to the automobile. It wasn't invented there, or here, but all of the major technological breakthroughs and improvements kinda were directly or indirectly associated with Fernandina.
- My father was mostly a seafarering man, however he spent some time in New York working as a longshoreman before we came to Florida to engage in fishing. The main production of shrimp was never found until about 1914 I suppose. Prior to those early years, most shrimp were sold through or sold in bars, they were prepared and I guess a lot of salt added to them, to make them buy more beer in the process. And there really wasn't a great distribution of shrimp because very few people knew what they were.
- [Narrator] A real boom in the evolution of Fernandina's shrimping industry was triggered by the adaptation of the otter trawl. A bag like net with iron weighted boards called doors, to hold the net open on the bottom of the ocean floor.
- [Billy Burbank Jr.] Back in them days, they'd lay you webbing out on the dock, put a board down, and just come along and just chop it out, whip it together, it was only just a, but like a two seam net that's all, it was a couple pieces of webbing slapped together, but that started coming in and started shrimping, and that's the local people had these small boats and all, they all decided to go shrimping too. And that same thing, my daddy, he had a little boat and he saw the shrimping, and like I say, he decided one day, my grandfather talked him into, "Why don't you get some webbing, build and make your own net?" So he did, and it worked real good, so grandfather got him to build him one, it worked good, so it just kept on and on, until he just finally, he just got to making more nets and let my uncle fish the boat. He got on the hill and made nets, that's the way it started.
- [Billy Burbank III] Basically you know, a lot of him and my father put into the business is still here. Just some changes like the Mongoose, and a little bit higher technology, pretty much family orientated, you know all the family stayed in the business pretty much. I have two brothers working with me, plus my father and my grandfather, he made flat nets which was a general all purpose net, most of the people of that time used it. Then he came up with a his version of a four seam balloon net, which was another popular net, and they made two seam nets also, which some people call it the two seam flat nets. Then after that, my father he came in with his innovations, and he added to the four seam little corner pieces, different little techniques of the net, and made it even better. So that was probably the most popular net for a long long time. Then I came up with the Mongoose, which was a tongue type net, and it was a net with a tongue, had a big hood over it, which would give it even more lift. I came about the name 'cause there was fellow over there in the Gulf area, the Mississippi area, who built a net, and he built a four seam balloon net, and he put a tongue on it, and he called it a cobra because of the hood. Well, you all know that the mongoose will eat the cobra up, so I called mine a mongoose, and it's done that.
- [Narrator] The crew members of a shrimp boat learn their jobs by apprenticeship, and long hours of observation.
- Nobody's taught to pat you on the back, you gotta learn everything there is to know back then. We called 'em green horn, we then called 'em a deck hand, you know and you'd work yourself up to a striker, rig man, or something like that when you know how to operate all the stuff back there, you know. There's nothing, it's not too complicated you know to learn, just if you pay attention you know, you do most of the same thing over and over again. And from then, you work yourself up, you work yourself up till you make it to the wheelhouse.
- [Narrator] Once the nets are emptied on the back deck, the striker, or deck hand, begins the task of separating the shrimp from the trash fish pile. The captain helps. Once separated, the shrimp are placed in plastic baskets for washing, and are then packed in layers of ice and stored below. 100 pounds of shrimp is referred to as a box.
- They say if everybody work together, there ain't nothing to it. You just, you just got to, you know you can't sleep like you do home. You gotta get up, see sometimes we work around the clock. And you get your hour or two nap, that's why I had fellow working with me, he wanted to go learn how to shrimp, so I carried him out, we was on the West Coast and, and I put a move about 8:30 that night, and I got ready to take up about 11:30, 12 o'clock. And I called him, and he said, "Man you must be crazy. Waking people up out of they sleep." I told him you ain't on no electric line, you come out here to work. He said, "I didn't know, y'all never pick up 'till daylight." I said, "No Bubba, we pick up every two hours here." And he didn't make nary 'nother trip, he quit.
- The shrimpers back in those days relied mostly on markings, land markings on the hill. That was, they would line up two smoke stacks from a mill, or a house, line up two trees that they've seen before, different things like this, to get their bearings of where they were at.
- We used to run from Tampa to Campichi. Well if you, when we pick up land on this side, if something on the land you remember seeing, then you know whether you're in Tampa, Tarpon Springs, Sarasota, wherever you know. And like that, but now you got little revs, so you get on your line, your right line, and you go right to the seaboard, you know it's just that simple of 'em now. But anywhere you go on the water, you're gonna find a landmark somewhere you gonna remember, and it can tell, it'll tell you just about where you're at. It's just something you pick up you know. It might be a big hump on the hill or something that you recognize, or some tall pine trees on the hill, well you say, well maybe that's north of Jacksonville or something other you know, it's just something you learn. Going back in the old days, we had to learn 'cause we didn't have no other way of you know, telling where you're located at you know so. But now like you say, we got modern equipment, all you do is get your little red and go to your chart and then just like that, you're right on the spot, it won't be two microseconds off. Now you got all this modern stuff you know, and then take a front to low RANS, and depth recorders, and all that, we didn't have all that. We had sounding lines and stuff. Well it's you maybe put knot ties into the rope, a foot apart, and you just drop it overboard 'till you feel it touch the bottom, and then you pull up to see how many foots of water you got you know. That was a long time ago though.
- They would use what they'd call a soapstone, a soap anchor, this is just a little piece of lead with a little hole in the bottom with soap in the bottom. And to find the right top of bottom, that they'd expect to find fish or shrimp, they would drop this over the side and let it bounce on the bottom, pull it up, and see what type of bottom they were on. And then they would make the drag, whether it be muddy, or sandy, or shelly, or what. And then a lot of them went, you know a lot by just measuring the depth with the same thing. They'll know how many fathoms of line they had, they'll drop it over board, and mark the spot where it stopped, and go from that aspect of it.
- [Narrator] Weather signs are used every day by fisherman. And are based on both their own experience, and natural factors, such as the sun, moon, and the clouds.
- They got their certain areas, that's where most of the best shrimping is, and then up around the Jayco wreck up there that, and that and over the shoals up here off of Cumberland, stuff like that, they know just about when and where to go according to the weather, and time of year and all that. They're pretty well right most of the time. A full moon next month that we're gonna shore up a few white shrimp with it, we can get going. We're looking for these rose shrimp in it, and that's when they show, they'll show 'round the moon, the new moon, or the full moon. Well we just had a new moon in April, the 20th April I believe it was, they didn't show them. So we're hoping on the full moon which I think by the 8th of May that, that they'll show but that's when you, when you get your weather generally. You get a northeastern rain and stuff, and it'll bring them on out the rivers. They say there's quite a bit of shrimp, way back up in the rivers there now, of course we haven't had any rain to amount to anything in that to bring them on out, to wash them out see. You generally get a bloat around your moon, and that's what you need, is a bloat, which stirs the water up and everything, and that's what makes it better.
- [Narrator] Although most shrimp trawlers today are made of fiberglass or steel, a few traditional boat builders remain highly innovative wood craftsmen. Much of their work demonstrates that regional adaptation stimulates and encourages new forms of traditional expression.
- Well it's a little different than most of these boats here because if you'll notice, this boat has got a chime line, we call it a knuckle. The rib comes out straight, and then it goes up on whatever sheer angle you want. I've had both kinds, I've had round bottoms and a chime bottom. I like this design better, it's more stable in the water. It's a little quicker, you know it don't roll like a watermelon and then come back, it kind of trucks you a little bit, but you get used to that. I just don't like the watermelon bottom. Tired of it rolling, rolling, rolling. So I decided I'd build it this way. When you set the keel down on the blocks there, the stern has got to set lower than the bow. Because you can't draw as much water in the bow as you do the stern of the boat, because you would push too much water in the bow of it. It'll slow you way down, you see would look bow heavy, so you raise it up a couple of feet maybe or something. Then after you do that, you take a piece of live oak, cut the lock notches in this, so when you put it in, it slides in this way. That keeps it from coming out. The thing would stay there after you put the wedge in it without even putting the bolt in it. Of course you wouldn't want to go shrimping like that, put some bolts in it, but it locks itself in. Now that's the old Greek, that's the Greek notch. I got a boat builder that helped me cut that bow stem out, and helped me lock that notch in there; from Fernandina, he learned it from his daddy, and his daddy is the one who got it from the Greeks, and then he learned me how to do it, so yeah. It's three handed. Fiberglass is fine, it's light, the seas throw it around pretty good unless you put a lot of weight in it. You know glass is real light, steel is even lighter than this, this wood is the heaviest of the three. In my opinion, it's the strongest. You'd think, "Is wood stronger than steel?" Boy if you take a two by four you can break it, and you take a piece of iron two by four you can't break it. But the vibration and the twist, and the bend and the wiggle, you know you can take a wire and break it you know. And it's, it's a lot of people with steel hulls, you got to sandblast it to keep the rust down, 'cause the rust will it eat it up. 'Course you got a disadvantage in wood, the worms in the water will eat this wood up. So you got to put a copper paint on the bottom, or I'll tell you a good idea is to take red pepper
- [Interviewer] Yeah?
- And grind it up, and put it in the copper paint. And paint that, and you'll be surprised.
- [Narrator] The dangers and risks of open sea fishing have spawned a strong tradition of folk beliefs and legends among fisherman. Three of the major ethnic groups involved in Florida's shrimping industry: Afro-American, Anglo-American, and the Mediterranean-American, continue to share many of the same occupational beliefs while retaining a strong sense of ethnic identity.
- Well a lot of people are superstitious. Now I got a hang up about Friday. I don't like to leave the dock on no Friday. A lot of people said, superstitions when they had their best trip, you know by leaving on a Friday, but I never could make one on a Friday. I done tried three or four times, but I'm convinced that Friday is just a bad luck day for me. But obviously people don't wanna bring a black suitcase on a boat and all that old stupid junk. But me, bad luck where I came from, there'd be no shrimp, that's the worst luck, I know I ain't gonna make no money if I don't find no shrimp. But at least my guys I got will tell you don't turn that mast to cover up to the sun. One of them, the hatch back there, when we go down in old liner, don't turn that up 'cause it's up to the sun 'cause the boat will sink, you know but that's an old thing. A lot of guys didn't want you to whistle on the boat, don't say "alligator" on the boat, it's all kinda junk stuff will happen. I guess it's just as many now as it was back in them days, you know the old days, it's the same thing. The other guys don't know. Don't buy no salt, all kind of junk like that, it's bad luck to buy a salt over to the other boat. Soon, it's bad luck when you ain't got no salt.
- The old timers are real superstitious. They're very superstitious, there's some captains who would say, "You don't say alligator on my boat." You can give an example, one day I was on a guy's boat, and I got to talking about the Florida 'gators. They just went berserk, you know they ran me off the boat, "Don't you ever come back on if you're gonna say alligator on this boat again." And they were just superstitious the rest of the day. Well that afternoon, they came out to my house, and we had dinner out there, and we went back to look and check on the boat and everything; and they had tied it up with the spring lines too short, the tide dropped and the boat was just hanging sideways on the dock. They said, "See what I told you?" I said, "That's all bull, you tied the boat up wrong, that's all that was."
- [Narrator] A frequent theme in stories of the sea, concerns the belief that the dead return to haunt the spot where they died.
- Yeah the old timers say that they see a, when the weather can get rough down to the east of us from here. That the, that once in a while, they'd see a whole sailing vessel come by, and it'd be real bad weather. And they'd see it come by, and then it'd go out of sight, they wouldn't see it no more, and that kind of stuff heard 'body from the old timers from years and years ago. But they, it'd just show up, and then it would just disappear, you wouldn't see it no more.
- I feel like there's a lot of things that goes on now, that if we was not so busy, we'd see. I've seen some things when I'd be out on the boat myself that were unexplainable, but you don't tell, say too much about 'em 'cause people will say "Oh you're crazy." You know, but we're a special breed of people, all the fisherman are, and I feel like we observe things in nature that average person overlooks. And a lot of people don't even realize that they do it, but we do. I know David has seen things that he couldn't explain, I'm sure he has, and I have too. We just accept them, they're just part of life.
- I think everything down on the water there, you just don't know what it is, so you don't say nothing.
- I've saw in the currents, and I've never said very much about it, but it was similar to that but it was in the bay, and it never got close enough for me to really see it. But it was right down off of town, off, straight out from the city marina, and I watched it come in from the Gulf. And it'd come in, and it went across a bar, where it's shallow, and no way a ship that big could cross it, and it appeared to be a big schooner type, a big sailing ship, sometime. And to me, there's just no explaining it away, it was a ship coming there, and it went across that bar. But I don't know what it was, and I was curious about it, but I never said much about it because you talk about stuff like that, people say, "Aww you're crazy." So you just don't talk about it, but this vessel came in from the old pass, just like it would have done 100 years ago, and it'd come in across Courtney Point, and Courtney Point is too shallow. And when it'd cross, it went behind the bay marker and stuff, and it went right on up the bay up towards Saint Andrews, and then it just wasn't there. It gives you chill-bumps, I'll tell you that when you see something like that.
- [Narrator] The contemporary functions of the rituals still found in Florida shrimping communities operate essentially as they did in the past: to help man cope with with the uncertainties of working in a personally hazardous environment.
- There's a tradition, all the children distant, extended, extended family, you know black folks have an extended family, and like yesterday, we fed about probably 100 people over at the house. It happens every year, folks come and look forward, and we have a good time. We get together and fraternize.
- When I first knew about the Blessing of the Fleet, I was in Louisiana, and it was quite an impressive event. And the people made quite a festival occasion of it, just like they have here. After all, when they're out there exposed to the storms and to the seas and rough weather and so forth, it felt like maybe a little bit of invoking God's guidance would bring them home. If they ever get caught out there in a very tough situation.
- Don't fall off into the sea.
- We've observed over the last 15 years of our lifetime, actively involved in the business, is a decline in a number of species from our point of view, and as I travel up and down, 'cause I don't spend the time in the boats like they do now. I noticed that there's an increase in the use of agriculture. In terms of chemicals, the golf courses and fertilization, and I think that it has a detrimental impact on, as well as the estuaries, okay. That has the effect of reducing I think, the reproduction of the shrimp. Another thing is that you've got a lot of people using seines now, in the rivers catching them, when we didn't have to worry about that before, and that's where the shrimps are basically cultivating. And so, they catch them before it hits the ocean, where the future is, I don't know.
- Right now the industry is in very bad shape, very poor shape, we've got people that are not going to survive this year. This season will eliminate a lot of fisherman, but I feel like, there'll be some of it will last. But a lot of my friends are gonna be out of the shrimp business next year, because they're not gonna survive this year. For the simple reason, the prices are so cheap until they cannot afford to operate.
- I guess the old saying is that once you get the salt in your blood, you just don't get it out of it. Just like you can get sand in your shoes in Florida, you can't, you always come back. It's just there, and you're just saying there's nothing you can do about it.
- What I've had to say to some of the old fisherman up, not maybe the old old fisherman, but some of the older ones would say, "Man, the fishing has been so bad, you know, so bad for the last three or four years, and especially last year, you must be crazy." You know, building a shrimp boat. Said, "Well they told Noah he was crazy too, you know when..." But he wasn't, and I don't think I am, so...
- [Interviewer] Yeah.
- [Charles] I believe it's gonna come back to the way it used to be, but I think the smaller boat is what's gonna come back to this coast. The bigger boats, super slabs we call 'em, I believe is just about a thing of the past, for this coast here, because this coast just don't produce enough of shrimp. For a big boat like that, so that's one reason I'm building a boat this size.
- [Rudy] And I just never went into nothing else. Been fishing all of my days.
