There is camaraderie in the air early one May morning in a field off Knight Way in West Harpswell as Mark Cota, Larry and Avery Anderson, and Alan Auclair patiently crisscross a purse seine, a type of fishing net, looking for holes to mend. Between the four, they have more than 100 years of experience in commercial fishing.
Stretched out, the net would cover nearly four football fields. And despite the march of technology, their tools are simple netting needles, knives and twine. With practiced finesse, their hands rhythmically find holes, lace the strands together and move on to the next. As far back as history can be traced, fishing has been a core part of Harpswell’s fabric.
The Harpswell group would soon depart to fish for pogies in Massachusetts before returning to Maine to do the same in July. The fish, also known as menhaden, are valuable as bait for the lobster industry.
Purse seine fishing, sometimes referred to as purse line fishing, has been around for ages. It came from Mediterranean and Asian fishermen circling nets. The purse seine as it exists today was invented in 1826 by Rhode Island fishermen in search of pogies, according to the Sawyer Free Library. They added lines to the bottom of the net that could be closed like a “purse” to keep encircled fish from escaping.
