Working the Sea

In 2012, The National Fisherman, a leading Maine-based trade magazine for commercial fishing, donated its entire pre-digital photographic archives to the Penobscot Marine Museum. Around the same time, The Atlantic Fisherman, a predecessor to The National Fisherman, also donated roughly one thousand images. The combined collections include thousands of photographs that provide a remarkable and comprehensive look at the American fishing industry from the 1920s to 1990s. The photographs of boats and the people who worked them are historically significant because they so thoroughly document a critical period of change and growth in the history of American fisheries. Working the Sea provides a curated look at more than one hundred of those images, highlighting the grit, drama, resourcefulness, practical minutiae, and sometimes epic feats that characterize this essential and iconic industry. The book includes an introduction that puts the importance of the collections in context. Expanded captions that accompany each photograph.