The following article, published in today’s Daily Press, is the first in a series that will seek to examine the degraded condition of the Chesapeake Bay, and how that change is affecting the traditions and lifestyles that have depended on it for generations. Patrick Lynch is the writer of this insightful day-in-the-life look at the struggles involved in being a waterman in today’s world. You’ll find that photographer, Adrin Snider, does a singular job of capturing the natural beauty of one of the oldest professions known to man – waterman.
…Site Administrator
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James Riggins plies the waters of the York River aboard the Linda J. Watermen rise early to run their traps in quest of the blue crab. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press / June 26, 2008)
The deteriorating state of the bay pushes watermen like Jimmy Riggins to the edge of economic ruin.
Story by Patrick Lynch
Photos by Adrin Snider July 13, 2008
Source: dailypress.com
Jimmy Riggins walks from home to work by the light of a silver moon. It’s not so much early in the morning as it is the middle of the night.
It’s about 50 paces from the back door of his house till his rubber boots hit his pier, pieces of plywood nailed over a narrow set of pilings. The first boat that he walks past was built by his grandfather, who lives just down the lane. His father’s is tied up nearby.
Riggins steps on his boat just after 4 a.m. He immediately gets to the work of the day: shoveling out dead menhaden from a well to rebait his crab pots.
“This is always a wonderful way to start the morning,” he says with a slow, easy laugh. He shrugs off the 3 a.m. wake-up call soon followed by a stiff shot of dead-fish aroma. “A man can get used to just about anything, I suspect,” he says.
But “I woke up every morning with a knot in my stomach,” he says. After a year, he decided to go back to crabbing and clamming.
“Basically, I wasn’t on my boat. I like being around home. This is what I do. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at in my life. It’s all I ever wanted to do. All I’m doing is something my family’s been doing for 100 years.”
The bright lights of Western Refining‘s oil refinery sparkle in the morning darkness. Riggins nods toward it. He has a friend who left the water to work on the pier there. “He loves it,” he says.
“For now, I’m here. I don’t know how much longer, but I’m here.”
Once the morning finally arrives, the orange globe of the sun peeks over the edge of the Chesapeake. A hundred yards ahead, Riggins spots his father’s boat.
“Some of my best memories are on that boat,” he says
. “Me and my sister, culling crabs when we could barely see over the sides.”
Income down 30 percent
It’s different on the water now. The crabs aren’t nearly as plentiful, nor is the income. Even in 10 years — since Riggins has been on his own — his income from crabbing has dropped 30 percent, he says. That’s before factoring in diesel prices that have nearly quadrupled. The cost of zinc, used to keep crab pots from rusting, has more than doubled in a year.
And this year, to protect the ever-more-fragile crab population in the Chesapeake, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission is closing the season a month early and taking other measures to reduce the female crab catch 34 percent.
“Now they’re taking another 30 percent,” he says of the cut. “I ain’t no math scholar, but pretty soon, you’re going to run out of 30 percents.”
Riggins is complying with one of those measures today, though he doesn’t like it and doesn’t think that it’ll do any good: He’s cutting o pen the wires on his pots and twisting in two additional “cull rings” — escape hatches for smaller crabs.
“It hurts so bad,” he says of cutting the pots up. “There’s something about destroying a crab pot.”
On his way to his last row of pots for the day, Riggins sees a boat tearing across the York toward him. He slows, and the boat pulls aside. At the wheel is Bubba Hogg, a Guinea waterman who stopped crabbing two years ago to take a job captaining boats at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. He and Riggins exchange hello s, and Hogg talks about why he left the waterman’s life behind.
“Too much trouble. No future,” Hogg says. “There’s plenty of crabs, but everything’s more expensive. Ain’t that right, Jimmy?”
“That’s right.”
Riggins asks, “How’s your job?”
“I love it.”
Riggins nods. “Let me know when you’re hiring.”
They laugh, say goodbye and wave, an d get back to work.
‘No market tomorrow!’
With the day’s catch at his feet, Riggins steers toward York River Seafood in Guinea to sell his crabs. He comes in with 121/2 bushels, at about $20 a bushel. As he’s untying to head home, the dockworker who unloaded his crabs returns.
“There’s no market tomorrow!” he yells.
“What?” Riggins asks, either not hearing him or not believing what he heard.
“No market tomorrow!” the worker yells. He explains that there’s been a surplus of crabs on the market and that a day off is needed . Rig gins leaves discouraged. He’s missed one day this week due to boat trouble. His income potential for the week now has been shot down by a third before he’s pulled another crab from the water.
A man can get used to just about anything.
On the way home, Riggins sees his father tending to his last pots of the day.
“There’s a part of me that’s never going to be happy unless I’m standing behind him on that boat,” Riggins says as he motors by.
Riggins ties up and is walking down the pier toward his house when his dad pulls up to unload some peeler crabs in a float at the end of the dock.
“Whoa! Look at all them peelers!” he says, impressed by the size of the catch.
Then he yells to his dad: “There’s no market tomorrow!”
His dad cups a hand to his ear, and Riggins repeats himself.
“There’s no market tomorrow!”
The end of a way of life?
Right now, Riggins is trying to get used to the new world of crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay.
His great-grandfather, who built the house that Riggins lives in on Dandy Point at the mouth of the York River, never wanted for crabs. Neither did his grandfather, who built several of the deadrises still plying the shallows around Dandy.
His father taught him the trade and, at 65, is still on the water every day, facing the same problems of rising costs, stricter regulations — and fewer crabs.
But Riggins, at 36 one of the younger watermen still working the water full time, has a decision to make: Can this traditional lifestyle keep him afloat in this day and age? Or have we let the Chesapeake get so unhealthy, leaving so few crabs in the bay — and have costs and regulations become such obstacles — that he simply can’t afford to be a waterman anymore?
‘This is what I do’
The blue crabs in the Chesapeake have dropped 70 percent in numbers since 1990. The number of licensed Virginia watermen hasn’t declined by exactly that much since then, but it’s close. Many of them were men older than Riggins, who either passed on or decided that they’d outgrown the work. But Riggins saw many of his peers quit, too.
Riggins fires up the diesel on the Diana D, his 56-year-old 42-foot-long wooden deadrise, and slips away from the pier toward his first line of pots for the day. The crabs have been catching OK, Riggins says while guiding the boat by searchlight across the black water. But they haven’t been selling that well the pas t few w eeks.
The seafood buyers aren’t finding many customers, probably because the customers’ extra money is going to gas and milk and produce prices, instead of fresh crabs. Without customers, but with a decent number of crabs being caught, the buyers aren’t paying the crabbers much. And imported crab meat has been competing with the local catch for years now.
Riggins shakes his head and paraphrases the law of supply and demand. “If I got a boatload, it’s worthless,” he says. “If I need something, it’s priceless.”
The Diana D skims down Riggins’ first row of pots in a shallow area called the “bay shore.” It’s at the fringe of the Poquoson Flats, once ho m e to huge underwater grass beds that sheltered baby crabs. The grasses are gone today, victim to polluted Chesapeake waters.
Riggins has a mechanical device that could pull the wire traps up through the water, but he prefers to haul them by hand. He w or ks by himself. He reaches for each pot line with a shepherd’s crook, hauls up the pot, dumps the old bait, shakes out the crabs, rebaits the pot and sets it on the ledge of the boat. He steers to the next buoy, tosses the pot in next to it and reaches for the crook to start again.
A single small light bulb holds back the darkness and throws a dim light on the back of the boat. Riggins’ feet shuffle over a pat ch of t h e floorboards where the marine paint has been worn down to the wood. A steady rhythm emerges.
“This is what I do,” he says after a few pots, “every day.” Two hundred pots a day. Six days a week. Eight months of the year.
After filling up three large plastic tubs, he switches his attention to culling the crabs by gender and size. Occasionally, the crabs sti ll bite. Even through thick rubber gloves. Riggins hardly pauses.
“Like I said,” Riggins says, smiling, “a m an can get used to just about anything.”
Back in the cabin, he guides the b oat past the Goodwin Islands. One hand is on the wheel, one on the searchlight. The sun has yet to hint a t its impending arrival.
‘For now, I’m here’
Riggins left the water about five y ears a go, when he was too frustrated with the industry’s declining fortune. He fixed outboard motors for seven or eight months, but that wasn’t enough money, either. So he got a job on a line, making kitchen cabinets. It paid pretty well.
Photos
Jimmy Riggins has been working the water with his father since the age of 9. The 36 year old fourth generation waterman faces an uncertain future with crabbing restrictions, operating costs and smaller crab population. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press / June 26, 2008)
Jimmy Riggins rises early to check 2 00 crab traps he runs in and around the York River. The 36-year-old is a fourth-generation waterman and faces an uncertain future with crabbing restrictions and operating costs. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press / June 26, 2008)
The sun breaks the horizon as Jimmy Riggins runs another one of the 200 crab traps he baits to catch blue crab adjacent to the York River. Watermen begin their day an hour before sunrise. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press/ June 26, 2008)
A trap with four cull rings is tossed back into the York River after its catch of blue crabs was unloaded and rebaited by Jimmy Riggins. Crabbers had to add two additional cull rings by July 1st to meet new state regulations. ( Adrin Snider, Daily Press / June 26 , 2008)
Moving to his next string of traps, Jimmy Riggins loves his job working alone for hours in a series of repetitive chores running crab traps. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press / June 26, 200 8)
Culling crabs, sorting them by sex, size and egg bearing females, Jimmy Riggins takes the ups and downs of crabbing in stride hoping to survive the recent downturn in the industry he has been involved with since a child. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press / June 26, 2008)
A blue crab rests in a bushel basket yet to be filled by Jimmy Riggins. The much sought after blue crab is in a state of decline according to researchers. More regulation has attempted to limit the catch of watermen by shorter seasons and additional cull rings in traps. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press / June 26, 2008)
Jimmy Riggins installs an additional set of two cull rings in his traps, escape routes for crabs to small for harvest. The rings however can let small adult crabs escape to propogate which Riggins contends leads to smaller adult crabs. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press / June 26, 2008)
A set of four cull rings are installed in traps run by Jimmy Riggins giving escape routes for crabs too small for harvest. In addition to juvenile crabs, the rings can let small adult crabs escape to propogate which Riggins contends leads to smaller adult crabs in the species. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press / June 26, 2008)
A blue crab claw hangs out a of a full bushel basket after being harvested by Jimmy Riggins. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press / June 26, 2008)
Jimmy Riggins offloads his take of crab for the day at York River Seafood with the help of Nathaniel Berry. Twelve and a half bushels of crabs were harvested by Riggins on what he described as a slower day of crabbing. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press / June 26, 2008)
Jimmy Riggins holds a small. adult crab which will never get any bigger than it is now, a problem Riggins contends in the result of cull rings which let smaller crabs, juvenile and adult escape traps. (Adrin Snider, Daily Press / June 2 6, 2008)
Nathaniel Berry (left writes Jimmy Riggins the pay ticket for his catch of crab after off-loading his take at York River Seafood. N athaniel Berry later told Riggins that the market was closed the next day due to a lack of buyers for blue crabs leaving him out of wo rk for the next day.(Adrin Snider, Dayly Press/ June 26, 2008)
Deep Creek Pier 