The days of huge hauls and oceans of money may be on the decline. But as he and three other long-time Westport lobstermen sat before a packed house at the Westport Grange one recent Saturday, Grant Moore said he is happy to be passing his family’s offshore lobster business to his son John, even as the little guys struggle harder and harder to compete with well-funded corporate fishing operations that have all but wiped local independents off the map here.

“When I started off, it was 100 percent owner operators,” he told the crowd at the Westport Historical Society-sponsored talk. “I knew the guy that I washing fishing next to — we all did. That’s changed dramatically.”

Now, 30 years after Westport’s lobstering heyday came to a slow end, the work is as hard as it ever was, there is never a guaranteed paycheck, and it takes a tremendous amount of money to get into and stay in the business. So before he agreed to let his son fish with him and eventually take over the family business, he made sure to show him the worst of it.

After college, when his son expressed an interest in the family business, Moore agreed to bring him aboard but “I made it as miserable for him as I possibly could. I honestly did. Because I didn’t want him to have to experience what I had to” without knowing what he was getting himself into.

Big money, big declines

The recent talk by long-time lobstermen Moore, Richie Earle, Russell Walters and Little Compton resident David Borden, a long-time Rhode Island representative on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, was sponsored by the Westport Historical Society.

For 90 minutes the four, and many more from the audience, told tall and not so tall tales about what it was like in Westport when they got involved in the 1960s and ‘70s, straight through to the late 90s, when factors they still don’t fully understand led to the collapse of the south New England fishing grounds and heralded in a massive shift in the business further and further east and north.

The old days were fast, loaded with money and tons of work, and someone could walk down to the point and hire on for big money with few questions asked. As a result, the point was stuffed with characters and innovators who made the era exciting and optimistic time, including:

• Pete Manchester, “an old swamper” who first hired Borden as a young kid of 16 or 17 — “He had the reputation that he never threw anything away, he just threw it down in the hold. So literally you could resurrect the history of swamp yankees by going down below and looking at all the old stuff he had down there. But he was a great guy to work for; a bit crusty but lots of fun.”

• Westport legend Bill Whipple, who founded Westport Point’s Prelude Corporation and was a true innovator here, developing techniques and gear that made it possible for locals to head further and further offshore, maximizing their catch and in the end employing hundreds of locals over the years;

• Portuguese immigrant Joe Cardoza, who during Westport’s so-called “war” with offshore Russian and other eastern bloc factory boats once steered his Prelude-owned boat directly into the path of a 400-foot dragger, forcing it to stop in its tracks just short of their pot sets even as a Coast Guard cutter on the scene ordered him to stand down.

“In my country, this is what we do with” interlopers, one audience member who was on the boat that day recalled Cardoza saying as he made a cutting motion across his neck while racing out to intercept the ship.

• And among many others, Westporter Bob Haines, who devised an improved system to haul pots — “this revolutionized the offshore industry,” Walters said. “Everybody put them on their boats. They worked and worked and worked, just fantastic. This was one Westport’s big contribution, one of many.”

Exponential growth

For much of its history lobstering in Westport was an inshore affair, with boats heading just a few miles at most. By 1930, Earle said, they were going out 10 miles with the advent of reliable, tough engines.

“After World War II bigger engines came in and the boats were going out further,” and the gains increased steadily over the next two decades. Wooden pots went the way of the dinosaur, the invention of the Hydroslave and other hydraulic pot haulers made the task of pulling heavy pots from deep water much easier and safer, and the boats continued to grow as did the number of vessels tied up at the point.

But over the years, the same thing that was once an attribute became a liability, as the larger boats that came along found it increasingly difficult to navigate in and out of Westport Harbor.

That’s what happened with Grant, who fished in Westport from 1975 until 1983, when he moved his operation to Fairhaven.

When he started, “there were more boats all the time. You had Everett Mills, and Curtis  Duval built the Quest. You had the Sideshow, you had the United States. You had the Sea King,” and many others.

“There were some big players down there,” he said. “Throughout this whole period of time, the fishery was really on a fast track. The boats were getting bigger, the fishing grounds were expanding exponentially. We no longer had to worry about the foreign fleet.

But as everything grew, he found himself in the same situation as many others:

“Westport Harbor couldn’t accommodate the next boat that I built, 77 feet. The harbor was just too dangerous and shallow — the infrastructure wasn’t there to support it. (But) I still consider Westport my home port. It’s still on the stern of my boat.”

Hope for the future

Borden, who cut his teeth working for Manchester in his time capsule of a boat, went into the science side of the business and as a member of the Atlantic States Fisheries Commission, helped work on regulations that he believes have helped sustain what’s left of the stock, despite myriad challenges including long hauls, teetering resources and the very real impact of climate change.

“In my own view, I think the lobster fishery is an example of a well-managed fishery,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be managed better. The southern New England stock ... was an extremely healthy resource right up until 1997. And at that point there were events that I’m not sure anybody totally understands that took place. And basically that resource went from being incredibly lucrative to non-lucrative, which is what you’ve got today.”

An example, he said: In ’97, Connecticut and New York combined to land about 14 million pounds of lobster. In 2023, he said, “200,000 pounds.”

“There’s no real scientific consensus on what happened (but) the long and short of it is, the stock basically collapsed” and is currently about 25 percent of what many in the room remember. While things are better up north in Maine, “we’ve got lots of concerns. Their industries now are declining now in almost the exact same way the South New England stock declined. The big fight now is, we are trying to get the Maine folks to do something to save themselves, which is really a tall order.”

It’s ironic, too, as “one of the aspects that I’m most admiring of about commercial fishermen is that they’re fiercely independent. You could put them on a leaky boat that’s sinking and they’ll figure out a MacGyver trick to keep them going. But that makes them particularly difficult to deal with — they’re just not willing to quickly adopt something just because somebody suggested it.”

Despite the challenges, those still in the game are optimistic about the future. As Moore continues the process of handing over his operation to his son, he knows he made the right decision for his family while others have sold their boats and gotten out of the game.

“To me it’s more important to keep it within my family. We’ll see what happens — I’m sure he’s going to do great with it.”