23
May
2009
Fishermen Gather to Celebrate Revival of Home Port, and Point Their Future
By
SAM BUNGEY
Hope for an ailing Island commercial fishery was on the menu at the Home
Port restaurant in Menemsha Wednesday night, along with some hearty chowder
and fresh herb-crusted swordfish.
Home Port owner Sarah Nixon with Karsten Larsen.
Most of the Island fishing
community was on hand for the first annual meeting of the Martha’s Vineyard
Dukes County Fishermen’s Association, along with representatives from Cape
Cod and Maine.
Guest of honor was Tom Osmers. The longtime advocate for Vineyard community
fishing was praised for his leadership and determination and credited with
bringing promise to a local industry which has been in rapid decline in
recent years.
He even got an ornamental codfish for his troubles.
“One guy, even though we told him he was crazy,” said Chilmark selectman
Warren Doty who hosted the evening, “one guy — Tom — he worked his butt off
to make this happen.”
The business of Wednesday night was to formally establish the
fishermen’s association, and all 72 fishermen who attended automatically
became members.
The group opened a bank account, appointed a board of directors and accepted
a grant from the Edey Foundation, a local philanthropic entity.
Buddy Vanderhoop, who will serve on the board of directors for the group,
spoke of the need for stricter regulations to govern 14 midwater trawlers
currently taking herring on the Middle Ground and beyond.
“Every fishery is going to go into decline in the next five years unless we
do something about this,” he said.
Mr. Doty, also a director, spoke against a proposed bill to
outlaw the commercial sale of striped bass.
And during several speeches throughout the dinner Mr. Osmers urged
wide-ranging action under the auspices of community-based fishing.
“Maybe it’s permit banking, maybe it’s suing the federal government, the
commerce department,” he said, “But we need to get this thing moving.”
Lifelong fisherman Dennis Jason said later he was energized by the potential
for community fishing revival he heard in the speeches.
Johnny Hoy with his young daughter.“I’ve been waiting decades for this,” he
said.
Program coordinator Laura Slifka from the Cape Cod Hook Fishermen’s
Association thanked Mr. Osmers for his work in helping to promote
groundfishing.
“Tom is a great leader and he always gets people together,” said Ms. Slifka,
before presenting him with the metal codfish sculpture.
“Great, I’ll hang this on the wall — the codfather,” quipped Mr. Osmers.
While others wrote it off as a lost cause, Mr. Osmers spent years attending
meetings and networking with fisheries across the state to keep Martha’s
Vineyard in the conversation on the future of the industry.
And when the possibility of establishing the Vineyard’s own groundfish
sector came up in 2007, he wrote an application longhand, trekking to
Portland, Me., to deliver it in time to meet the deadline.
The result is the Martha’s Vineyard Independent Sector, one of
17 groundfish sectors in the region.
Though these are early days (the New England fishing management council must
grant the sector legal status in June and there is a deadline of Sept. 1 for
a management plan) and the full implications are unclear, the sector
designation may give fishing communities power to wrest control from
restrictive individual regulations imposed by the federal government.
Fishermen from around New England would be able to tie into the sector, as
long as they agree to abide by management rules and hold a groundfishing
permit.
“Tom’s sector maybe the only thing available in New England for the likes of
us,” said Ted Ames at the dinner.
Mr. Ames is a Penobscot, Me., fishing advocate and recent recipient of a
MacArthur genius grant.
“The only way we’re going to protect fisheries is if we all
act together . . . Ben Franklin said it best: we can hang together or hang
separately,” he said.
With a new federal administration beginning to focus on local management,
said Mr. Doty, change is in the air.
“Tom would always be bothering me and I felt, go do what you want to do,
Tom, but I’m going to do something else with my afternoon,” he told the
Gazette. “That was my approach in those days. But what has changed is the
administration; they’re interested in community fisheries management quotas
and catch shares and they’re going to go that way whether you like it or
not. Tom was already there.”
The fishermen’s group has yet to come
down on either side of the sector issue, but at least two directors on the
five-member board are firmly in favor of it.
“I’ve decided I’m interested in this and I’m gong to try to make it happen,”
said Mr. Doty yesterday.
Wednesday night was also the first official opening of the Home Port doors
since Sarah and Robert Nixon bought the restaurant last month, There was
something else that brought the fishermen together on Wednesday night, as
Mr. Doty observed.
“You want to get fishermen together? Free food,” he said, “We could get 72
fishermen in here every night.”
Serious about ensuring future of fishery.Mrs. Nixon served mixed berry
shortcakes and pecan pie for dessert.
“Do some rosaries for us!” she asked the fishermen, imploring them to return
to the restaurant as customers as least once over the summer.
Adding that the restaurant would be open for any meetings of the fishermen’s
group, Mrs. Nixon pleased the assembled with her own pledge to obtain the
necessary permitting to buy catch direct from local fishermen.
“There’s some paperwork to do but Robert and I want to do whatever we can to
make that happen,” she said. Working the room after dinner, Mr. Osmers delivered his clear vision to the
assembled fishing community.
“What happened tonight is we hit a champagne bottle on the bow of the ship,”
he said. “So fishing stays alive; we’re trying to make a more
community-based, artisanal, hook and line, non-intrusive, fishing community.
We’re taking in the weary and the downtrodden.”
Mr. Osmers stuck doggedly to the “we” pronoun even as he described his solo
work in creating the Vineyard sector.
“This is a great thing,” he coached as he shook hands and patted the backs
of departing fishermen at the end of the evening. “We’ve got something
started.”
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23
May
2009
Benefit for Tom Osmers Draws Hundreds
By MIKE SECCOMBE
Tommy Osmers’s behavior at the benefit function thrown for him last Sunday
night belied the dire state of his health. He cruised the party, chatting,
joking and checking out the women. He danced, played a little boogie woogie
piano, and even used the occasion to give a little talk on the state of the
marine environment.
“I was charged right up,” he said
a few days later. “I don’t think I looked a sick man.”
Indeed he did not, at least not nearly as sick as the doctors tell him he
is. Thinner, for sure, but still possessed of the same passion which has
always marked the philosopher fisherman, the same mixture of intensity and
irreverence.
As he worked the room, he asked person after person the same question,
poignant and funny: had they ever been to a “kick the bucket” party before?
No doubt many had; benefit nights for people in desperate straits are a part
of community life here. But they probably had never been to a bigger,
better, less somber one.
Put it down to the sort of friends Tommy has. People who know how to fish
and farm and cook and play music and enjoy themselves. Generous people,
eclectic people, people who care about environment and community, like the
man himself.
Bring several hundred of them together in the Agricultural Hall and you have
the potluck party to end them all.
Plenty of fresh shellfish for shucking.“When I got back from Mass General,
where I had the biopsy, the diagnosis that it was a terminal, inoperable
cancer, they told me that they made the arrangements to have this benefit
thing,” he recalled this week.
“I was against it initially. I felt like I was begging out of the public,
and I wasn’t dead yet,” he said.
Yet he saw, too, that he needed help to cover his expenses.
“I realized it was going to put some strain on my whole existence here, not
to be able to maintain my independent life here at the house and keep things
going. I was already unable to work. I’d just been hanging on.
“And I started to think of it as a party, a kick the bucket party, and once
I started thinking in those humorous terms, the idea grew on me.
“And it worked out great.
“More people came than I ever could have imagined. It really was touching,
enough to make you cry.
“The greatest crew were there, every one of them were the kind who, when you
see them, it makes you smile. Everyone kept saying to me ‘Wow, Tommy, what a
gang, what a mix of Island influences and people.’
“All the greatest friends and people of my
life, really. Tons of beautiful women, great musicians. Bushels of
shellfish,” he said, though for once he was not the one opening them.
“Everything was tremendous.”
“I just want to say thanks to the community at large.”
In particular, he wanted to thank the girls who did most of the work.
“Indaia Whitcombe, who was one of those ‘Send a Blonde to Africa’ people,”
he said, referring to a running feature of the radio show he does with Willy
Mason on WVVY, the Friday night Farm and Fishing Report. “She was in the
midst of her voluntary teaching program in Namibia, and she was four months
into her tour and she came home to take care of me.
“I fished with her last summer. The other one was Laura Kealty, who’s a
part-time teacher at the [Martha’s Vineyard Public} Charter School.
“And Sarah Hibler and Krishana Collins — she’s a farmer here on Old County
Road and a nurse, and she’s been accompanying me to the radiation
treatments.
“Alex Karalekis was the one who organized the music. Ballyhoo and Johnny Hoy
and Nina Violet and all of them.
“But so many people helped. Everyone helped.”
And it has only strengthened his determination to continue to fight the
tumor he has nicknamed hideous maximus and to continue to live his life, as
much as possible, as he did before.
“I intend to paint the boat and get ready to try to fish, even if they’ve
got to carry me down there,” he said.
He went fishing last Wednesday.
“I just got my appetite back in the past week and I’m building up strength
for the next round of treatments,” he said.
And he has continued to produce his weekly local radio show, with its mix of
music and news, focusing on issues to do with farming, fishing and the
environment.
“We haven’t missed one Farm and Fishing Report, even though I was throwing
up in the control room,” he said.
“And I’m still one of the directors of the Martha’s Vineyard Dukes County
Fishermen’s Association. We just a had a big boost from the Edey Foundation,
which approved our request for grant funding.
“Now we’re trying to ensure future access rights [to the Island’s fishing
resources] for the Island community. Since they’ve limited access permits,
if people retire and sell their permits elsewhere, the community loses its
access to the oceans.
“So I’m working toward helping form a permit bank of some kind so we keep
access rights that can be used by the young Island people.
“I still have maintained my permits and it’s my intention not to let those
permits leave the Island. One strange irony of it all is, it may be my
permits that first go in to form the permit bank.”
To the extent that Mr. Osmers shows sadness, it is about the way his illness
threatens his activism on behalf of his causes. That regret was on display
when he addressed the crowd on Sunday night.
“I talked about the fish,” he recalled. “I don’t remember exactly what I
said, except I apologized, said I was really sorry to be challenged in this
way by this threat of mortality when I had just kind of gotten my wings in
the much under-appreciated field of artistic endeavor known as fish oratory.
“Finally we’ve got organization now. We’ve got a group, we’ve got funding,
we’re actually moving ahead toward a future which keeps alive our fishing
community here.
“It was a bit of a pep talk.”
And he keeps on giving the same pep talk.
“I’m very positive,” he said. “I ain’t dead yet, and I’m not discouraged.
I’m positive about our hopes for the future and improving our understanding
of the marine ecosystem.
“When the fishing is good and the water is clean and we’ve got shellfish and
the complete chain of life, that’s the sign of good stewardship of the land,
of your Island.
“I said, I say, ‘Get up and do it! Be part of it! Volunteer! Vote!’
“I said, we have enough people here to alter the course of the events of
history.
“So I’m hopeful. This is not a down time.”
He still holds hope that he won’t kick the bucket. He’s still getting
treatment; he’s also trying alternative therapies. But if it doesn’t work, he will have the fresh memory of the hundreds of
folks who gathered last Sunday night and showed how much they care for him,
how much they care in general.
“I got to talk about hopes for the future, not about sorrows,” he said.
“I felt the support of the community. No other place could I imagine it
happening like that.
“There’s no greater place in the world to get cancer and croak than the
Vineyard,” said Tommy Osmers.
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23
May
2009
here we go again tom makes it into the deep dark dungeon of wvvy 93.7 radio show once again …
he speaks to coop from the tackle shop in edgartown mass.
he gets fresh report from the big easy on the shrimp and some lovely twins who grow fresh organic gardens
for summer folk who visit during the year here on the story book island of marthas vineyard mass..
so take a hot bath with some epson salt brew some mint tea and turn up the speakers to hear the man
from west tisbury tell it like no one else tells it ………..
the bee report with our man noah in south east pennsylvania were they have hit natural gas up the ying yang…
hope you enjoy the show each week on wvvy 93.7
or get it free on apples i tunes podcast
go to itunes store search mikemayrand and subscribe to it for nothin………
anyhows thanks for keepin tuned in
mike mayrand unlimited
peace
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23
May
2009
welcome again to the fish and farmmmm report with the world reknown captain tom
and his side kick willy………… tom flys the ship solo on some trips to the bunker
and hes alone once again for
part 2 of the friday fish and farmmmm report……………
tom had a busy week of it he was off dancing with all the wonderfull girls young and old at the
“kick the bucket” fund raiser last weekend…………
uncle tommmy was in all the local papers the m.v times and the vineyard gazette check it out on line ………..
to see tom working hard for the fisherman and advocating for the fish etc……….
this weeks report is exciting once again………
konomo dragons ,west tisbury white perch , swines and all kinds of good news to impress your mom and dad with…..
edited and produced for podcast by
mike mayrand production company l.l.c
for complete shows with music on a dvd
contact
mmayrand@aol.com
thanks for caring
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23
May
2009
fisherman tom osmers is at it once again hes back in the bunker of love……..
at the peace gate farm in tisbury mass. marthas vineyard low power radio station
wvvy 93.7 on your fm dial………..
listen in on tom and willy they got all the correspondents you could ask for and more ….
enjoy the show each week every friday afternoon at 4:20 pm
or as close as tommy can get to it …….
produced by m.e.m. studios
in aquinnah mass.
mike mayrand productions
thanks for tuning in
mmayrand@aol.com
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18
May
2009
from the coral triangle of monado indonesia ,with better organic milk in the united kingdom
mr. ozmers does it well listen in on tom and willy each week with exciting fish and farm reports…
there is a national animal id program along with old queens gettin ready to fly …….
uncle tom gets into reproducing river herring with live correspondents from the shad river to chatham mass.
you name it if its farm or fish related the captain will cover it ……
he gives you the hemp news you can use ……
tom talks about the ” kick the bucket party” a pot luck supper at the west tisbury agriculture barn which was this past sunday
it was a ripping success with all the island folks attending for mr. osmers benefit
to help tom out with his battle
hes facing with the cancer ……………….
lets all pray and give thanks for tom as he fights this horrible disease………..
tommy was looking spry with all his friends at the affair from the old to the new kids on the block….
there was plenty of great food and music for all to enjoy what a nite ………..
god bless tommmy
m.e.m. stuidos inc.
aquinnah
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18
May
2009
from all the corners of the globe the captain tom and sir willy mason kick off the spring with lots of good stuff….
all the updates on the local music scene as well as the honey and bee report with our man noah down in pennsylvania
so dont wait any longer to catch all the good stuff …….
we got swarms of bees , blue agave cactus, with 10 year old agave hearts ready to eat over a roasted fire it is all
available for your listening pleasures……
the low rain fall in florida is affecting the oranges , theres soybean portfolios, tomatoes, and peppers you name it
tommy osmers will give it to you…….
dont hesitate tune into the fridays fish and farmmmm report 93.7 fm @ 4:20 pm
the local low power community radio station on the island of marthas vineyard mass..
the show produced for podcast and archived
by mike mayrand unlimited
remember
all shows are available on itunes 24/7 as a free podcast
search mike mayrand in the itunes store
from apple
enjoy the show
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18
May
2009
here he goes mr. osmers with the infamous willy mason at his side
so gather all your friends and sit around the fire to hear the best news out there…..
spoken like a king of hearts tommy delivers the fish and farmmmm report..
live every friday afternoon from tisburys peace gate farm
lots of fresh news from the fisheries council meetings along with special in the bunker reports
with marcianna jones back from her travels
so kick back a while rest your bones right here while tom and willy do all the work
tune into wvvy 93.7 fm local radio station marthas vineyard mass.
edited and produced for this podcast by
mike mayrand studios
aquinnah mass
for info or full epsiodes with music on the dvd
contact
mmayrand@aol.com
thanks for caring
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12
May
2009
catch tom osmers do his thing with his partner in crime mr. willy mason
like lewis and martin or sonny and cher they take on all the important news and music …….
from lazy bones to the recreational use of the herb in calif. tommy walks everyone thru 
all the buckets of news ……….
live from the station of wvvy at the farm of peace gate in tisbury mass.
listen in on tom the wizard from west tisbury tell it like it is……….
93.7 fm on the dial fridays 4:20 pm of course……..
edited by
mike mayrand studios
mmayrand@aol.com
may 2009
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12
May
2009
star gazing fish farming tommy talks to you from the dry bunker of tisbury ………
listen in on tommy and willy mason the team with fun and piles of news to use ………
gamma rays and radiation wont stop the wizard from west tisbury tell his tales…
enjoy all the shows live or right here each week ….
its the fish and farmmmmm report with mr. tom osmers
produced by
mike mayrand production company
aquinnah mass.
marthas vineyard
enjoy yourself
sip some herbal tea
spray some lemon in the cup
the governor from californina trys to make it easy to relax
have a nice day
mmayrand@aol.com for any comment or for full shows on dvd …………….
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