The Doryman’s Reflection
A Fisherman’s Life
Paul Molyneaux
ISBN: 1-56025-669-9
New York, NY; Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005
REVIEW: The Doryman’s Reflection: A Fisherman’s Life
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fisherman tells the real story, April 20, 2008
By Nancy M. Mendenhall
Molyneaux is a beautiful writer, and tells his story so honestly that it is a prize in my collection of books about commercial fishing. As a former commercial fisherman on the west coast, my eyes were opened to the similarity in the east coast struggles to hold onto a way of life.The fishermen themselves did not understand what they were doing to the fish stocks, and then the government(s) in the name of improving the situation, gave what was left to the corporations, are rapidly wiping out the small-scale fishermen, and the environmentalists, in their urgency to save fish, did not recognize that fishermen too are a species worth saving. That seems to be changing, that is fishermen and environmentalists are beginning to see their common interest. His next book, about aquaculture is great too.
From Booklist :
by Deborah Donovan
Former deep-sea fisherman Molyneaux opens a window onto the harsh and fast–disappearing industry in which he worked for 20 years. From his first job packing scallops in Cape May, New Jersey, Molyneaux travels between California and Alaska, finally ending up in Maine, where he works on the scallop boat built by Bernard Raynes, whose family had fished there and off Nova Scotia since the 1640s. Bernard’s family history is a microcosm of the history of ocean fishing in this country, and the author imbues it with his own obvious love for this way of life. Bernard’s recollections reveal how technological improvements and political moves, like the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976, which eliminated competition from foreign boats, led first to the “boom years” of the late 1970s, then to the gradual depletion of fish, one species after another. Now the industry is relying more and more on farmed fish, or “aquaculture,” a sad time for those like Bernard, who wanted nothing more than to make their living from the sea.