FISHING CREEK – At P.L. Jones Boatyard & Marina, Phil Jones was installing an elaborate cabin inside a 40-foot pleasure boat he started building from scratch in January.
Ten years ago, such a grand boat would have been a rarity in the Hoopers Island shop, where Jones mainly built working boats for watermen that had no room for luxuries like showers and bar tables.
But he has not built such a boat since 2000. Business changed in 1995 — around the same time the Chesapeake Bay oyster population crashed — and the demand switched from commercial to pleasure, Jones said.
The shift in Jones’ business mirrors a larger change that is turning an Eastern Shore economy that was once driven by watermen into a market dominated by recreation.
“Seafood went from the predominant industry to one which is now far less predominant, but still important,” said John Nussear, director of Dorchester County’s Chamber of Commerce.
And when seafood went, Nussear said, a whole wave of pleasure businesses came to take its place.
A new Hyatt hotel, spa marinas and golf resorts are now major employers in Dorchester, said Nussear — a trend he believes colors the entire Shore.
“There’s a new kind of economy and it’s squeezing out what’s already there,” said Ben Parks, president of the Dorchester County Seafood Harvesters Association.
Watermen were already feeling elbowed out of their lifelong homes by an influx of rich city folks when they were hit last year and this by the worst oyster harvests on record, forcing some hangers-on out of the business.
The number of commercial fishermen who paid the extra license fee to harvest oysters dropped 61 percent in just two years, from 725 in 2002 to 280 this year, according the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Many watermen are now taking half-year jobs to supplement their incomes.
Jones’ nephew, Scott, is just such a waterman. Three years ago, he ran his own boat full-time, crabbing in the summers and oystering in the winter. But when his oyster dredge turned up empty season after season, he decided to find another job for the winter.
“I’m lucky,” Scott said. He is one of the few watermen with a business to fall back on during oyster season, not to mention one that preserves a family tradition: The Jones family has been building boats for more than five generations on the shore.
But other watermen do not fare so well, and are left struggling for ways to support their families.
“It’s all they know and there’s nothing else for them to do,” said Allen Smith, a childhood friend of Phil’s who quit fishing altogether three years ago.
What fishing spots are left for watermen have been taken over by sportsmen and recreational boaters, said Larry Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association.
And high prices charged by new private owners have squeezed watermen out of what used to be public harbors, said Carter Stanton, the director of Kent County’s public works department. Hubbard’s Pier, which was a popular with watermen 20 years ago, is now a posh marina full of yachts, he said.
“The watermen won’t admit it, but they’re not compatible with the pleasure boaters,” Stanton said. “They go out at 4 a.m. and they have a certain smell to them, bait and what have you. You have the yachters who are going out for the weekend, sleeping on their yachts and they don’t want all that noise while they’re trying to sleep, and the smell.”
A classic example is “Ego Alley” in Annapolis. Simns said the dock that once harbored watermen’s boats is now a spot for pleasure boaters to parade their trophy boats.
“There are no watermen in Annapolis anymore,” he said.
The situation is only getting worse, said Simns, who has lobbied in the Legislature on behalf of watermen for 20 years.
The high numbers of condominiums and private marinas being built on the Shore, coupled with skyrocketing property values, indicate that the newcomers comprise a higher income class than watermen, said Michael Paolisso, a University of Maryland anthropologist who has done field work with the watermen. He said that those are all signs of a major cultural shift on the shore.
Cultural shifts are natural, said Paolisso, but the rapid change in property value on the shore threatens to push economically stressed cultures like the watermen out of their homes.
“Cultures just always change and evolve. But what you do see at risk is the heritage of the watermen communities, what they define as their heritage and what they feel is their heritage: That is disappearing,” said Paolisso.
But people usually manage to survive. Phil Jones said his boat-building shop has adapted and business is no worse for it. He thinks people should be willing to change with the times.
When Scott, the youngest and only male in the new generation of Joneses, announced that he wanted to become a fisherman, Phil discouraged him. “There ain’t no money in it,” Scott’s father, Paul, also warned.
But Scott felt a connection to the water and did it anyway. He is currently single, but if he does marry and does not produce a son, or has a son with a different career in mind, the Jones boating tradition will probably end, said Scott.
“It’ll die with me,” he said.
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