Last trip of the Ellen Diane: A New England captain looks back on fishing industry in crisis

HAMPTON — Dave Goethel's eyes darted over to his son as they cut away the traps holding the lobsters. The lines had snagged on something as choppy waves banged the hull of the Ellen Diane and the winter storm picked up strength.

Like many fishermen in the New England fleet, Goethel had once warned his son about going into fishing. But a waterman's life was in his blood. Daniel went on to work on his father’s crew for 14 years before becoming a scientist in Alaska for NOAA Fisheries.  

He'd come back to help take the vessel out on a bitter cold December morning in 2021 for one last sentimental day of fishing with his retiring father.

And they were in trouble.

They’d already lost half the lobsters trying to shake the cages free before the storm pounced. Now the wind had picked up to more than 40 mph, and the boat was being thrashed by swells as high as 8 feet.

“We’re gonna have a hell of a time getting home,” Goethel told his son and two-man crew.

The snow was falling thick and fast. He white-knuckled the wheel with one hand, and the clutch with the other, and began to guide the Ellen Diane home through a pounding sea.

Hearing his story, it feels like an important, final tale for this experienced New England fisherman — one that is actually true to life and not some yarn. Similarly, the industry he loves is going through its own moment of truth, with notable forces battering it in a way that might have seemed hard to believe when Goethel was a young man looking ahead at his career.

And, even though he doesn't call it the singular cause of the industry's trouble, he acknowledges that the climate crisis likely plays a role in what's happening, along with other forces and government regulatory mistakes. It is a reality that people in traditional natural resource industries up and down the East Coast are struggling to come to grips with.

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Dark clouds rolled along the horizon one April day earlier this year as Goethel stood at the water’s edge of the Yankee Fishermen’s Cooperative pier in Seabrook. He's at the crossroads in his life facing the kind of trouble that his years at sea could not prepare him for — a cancer diagnosis and the decision to retire from his lifelong career. With a smile on his face, he sees both challenges as storms to weather.

In the wind, the fishing equipment and lobster cages stored beside the harbor building clanked softly like someone carrying a bin of beer bottles out to the recycling. Seagulls swerved in haphazard circles overhead of a nearby boat pulling in to moor.

We were talking to him about the climate crisis that has changed and will disrupt so many things for life on the East Coast. Beyond the classroom, beyond a political debate on TV or a fight on Twitter, there are people like Dave Goethel and his peers who are connected to the land and sea.

These people and their livelihoods are being altered by manmade warming of the Earth. It's a scientific reality that can seem a world away when you are standing on the docks. But the echoes of that truth are everywhere.

“Today is not a good day to be out there,” Goethel said to himself while looking out at the boats bobbing in the water beside the pier.

It’s not the ominous clouds, rain or snow that fishermen fear, it’s the wind and the waves. Getting caught out at sea in an offshore fishing boat with an easterly or southerly wind above 20 mph can be dangerous.

After spending half a century fishing in the Gulf of Maine, Goethel knew those waters better than most.

“Out there” was where he’d often spend 100 to 120 hours a week.

Fishing days were long for Goethel and his crew, who by 4:30 a.m. boarded the Ellen Diane, his 44-foot fishing trawler.

They often worked all day, hauling three or four two-hour tows. The fish would be sorted into 110-pound fish totes with lids to keep the seagulls that swarmed the boat from getting any freebies. He would bring his haul ashore, which would then be lugged inside the ice box building for shipping and sale.  

After all that, the crew would pack up and go home, only to come back and repeat it all again. That was an average week.  

Goethel said that the life of a fisherman was hard on his family. On bad weather days, though, when other parents would be working instead of in the stands, he’d be there cheering his children on at games, present at baseball practices, home on holidays. 

Now, after 54 years, he was retired. The water draws him ever back, though.

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Goethel is clear about his perspective that the temperature changes in the Gulf of Maine in the last quarter century haven't been proved to be due to the climate crisis. He said that will be something future generations will have clarity about.

"The warming of the Gulf of Maine is caused by the warming of the atmosphere among other things," he said. But it his belief that "climate change alone does not account for the rate of warming, which is among the highest rates observed in the world."

Goethel pointed out a warming period that happened in the 1950s. "Our regulations misinterpret species distribution shifts as overfishing," he said. "Fishermen are left without the permits to land the fish that now inhabit the grounds they fish."

No matter the causes of the problems in his industry, the experienced fisherman would like to see action: "Stop fighting about why it is happening and start dealing with how to fix it."

Accidental launching site of a small but mighty fleet

A good fisherman always has his instincts and wits about him. Goethel could scan the sky and waves with the best of them; he trusted his instinct and listened to his gut.  

He also relied on science. 

For the last eight years, he’d been using equipment to read underwater temperatures — and armed with that he’d follow the fish. He’d noticed the temperatures changing and the movement of his potential catch. He could use the bottom water temps to know where the fish would be.

“If I make a big haul in haddock in a certain temperature range, I know by temperature readings where I’m more likely to find them in the future. Or, since I’m limited to how much cod I can fish, I know what temperature they prefer so I can stay away from them,” Goethel said.  

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The co-op where Goethel regularly docked and launched the Ellen Diane was once the barge unloading facility for the construction of the Seabrook nuclear plant across the harbor. After it served its purpose and the plant was completed, local fishermen rallied for the harbor to become a small boat fishermen's co-op, and the rest is history. Five dozen fishermen operate small boats designed to fish for lobster, cod, haddock, scallops or bluefin tuna.

To an untrained eye without gear loaded, most of these moored boats look similar, varying in size depending on how far out into open waters they ride to find their catch.

A trawler like Ellen Diane is easy to spot. It is larger than the others, has trawl doors on the side and a large spool-looking net reel on the back that releases and pulls the otter trawl net. It is a long and funnel-shaped net that is towed horizontally, dragged behind a vessel to entrap fish. If a fisherman is traveling in 200 feet of water, 600 feet of otter trawl net would be set out.

Goethel said that while the co-op fleet is small, it is mighty and has its advantages over the larger boats that fish out of cities like Portland or Boston.  

“Larger boats, sure they can catch more fish in fewer trips, but they stay out to sea for a week at a time,” Goethel said. “Meanwhile we have more boats that can make multiple trips in a day to bring in the catch fresh. Some we sell at our fish market, but many fish end up in high-end restaurants in major New England cities.” 

Faster changes in climate have fish on the move 

It’s a cold spring April day in 2022, Goethel is talking about the temperature, but not the kind that determines what you’re going to wear. He’s talking about the temperature at the bottom of the Gulf.

Subtle changes in temperature under the water are invisible on the surface. Fishermen know that entire ecosystems are impacted. The quantity of fish and the kind of fish that the fleet can catch is changing. Fishermen like Goethel had to get smarter to track where fish are moving.

The Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest warming ocean areas in the world. The warming gulf pushes some of New England's staple species further and further north in search of colder, and subsequently deeper, waters. Meanwhile some mid-Atlantic species are moving toward warmer water.

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Goethel gestured at a large, yellowed map of the Gulf of Maine posted in the hallway of the co-op to explain. His finger rested at a spot close to shore, where he used to fish in the early days.

It slid several inches northeast, miles further out to sea, where he would have to travel to find the same catch today. 

Sea life on the move are not all going in the same direction; it is an ebb and flow of species. He said the majority of the shrimp population have migrated north while an abundance of haddock, squid, black sea bass and flounder have come closer to the New England coast.

Species like cod have ranged Northeast. As some fish move to deeper waters, it also becomes less safe to lay their eggs, which can be swept away by currents or easy meals for predators. 

“Think of the currents under the ocean and gulf as an underwater river, for lack of a better term,” Goethel said. “The Gulf of Maine has a complex current pattern where the water along the coast of New Hampshire to about 12 miles offshore is controlled by the outflow of the Merrimack River. The water outside of that is the remnants of the Labrador Current coming down from northern Canada, down the coast of Maine to the southeast down towards the eastern side of Cape Cod.”

Mixing between these underwater rivers is happening at all depths and locations, complicating things for fishermen and scientists alike, according to Oceanographer Erik Chapman.

Goethel warned that eventually, New England staples like lobster and cod will be pushed too far northeast to fish with small boats.

“A boat like mine, with a drag, can travel 5 miles per hour on the water,” Goethel said. “I’ve now gotta go 15 miles out, and that adds time on each end of the day. At some point, the fish get too far away. We can’t go 100 miles offshore, and haul 180 or 100 pounds back efficiently. It takes too long, and a lot of these boats weren’t designed for that.” 

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Goethel said the biggest challenge now is tracking where the fish are and anticipating where they will be.

“When you fish everyday like I used to, you learn to move with the fish gradually, so it was easy to miss the subtle changes overtime,” Goethel said. “Then you realize the fish you once caught five miles offshore aren’t there, and you’re now riding 12 to 15 miles out before you even think about throwing out the net.”

'A clear shift' in Gulf fishery

Goethel paced along the dock, pausing to rest at the water’s edge. He looked out at the harbor on a late-April day, as the wind wisped his short silver hair. 

There has been a “clear shift” over the last few decades in what New England fisherman can catch, Goethel said.  

Goethel said that the changing underwater ecosystems are part of a complex story. 

“We're trying to do things in fisheries management to help, but at the end of the day there are things we have no control over,” Goethel said. “We can’t change the water temperature; we can’t keep the fish from moving further out to sea; we can’t control where their eggs are laid or hatch. Species continue to move out of reach.” 

He spends a lot of time at the co-op to “keep a pulse on the fisheries” as he puts it. He remains active as a board member of Yankee Fishermen’s Cooperative.

He has also been an advisor to seven state and federal fishery management boards.

“I’m here to bridge the gap between science and the fishing community,” Goethel said. “I can speak both languages, and act as a translator of sorts. 

“Once we had too many fishermen chasing a fixed amount of fish, and now we don’t have enough fishermen to catch fish,” Goethel said, leaning against a stack of lobster cages. “Our industry doesn’t attract young people like it once did. It’s no longer a business that fathers pass on to their sons and daughters.

Goethel and many of his peers encouraged their kids to go to college and find different careers, and many did. There are now too few that followed in their fathers’ footsteps and stuck with fishing.

But his son would be there with him on his fishing boat’s last ride into the Gulf of Maine. 

The end of the 'last trip' story

As the wind and snow battered the Ellen Diane, Goethel kept a tight grip on the steering. 

He could not see past the closest wave approaching the boat. With every wave, Goethel tensed up for the inevitable: The bow would lift 15 feet and crash back down; the world around it became a bobbing monotone blur of snow hurtling down and water surging up and over the boat.  

The adrenaline got Goethel’s heart pumping fast. His seasoned crew felt sick from the heaving and sudden drops of the Ellen Diane. The boat struggled through near white-out conditions. It was impossible to figure out where you were going if you did not have decades of experience under your belt.  

Goethel knew. He knew where he was headed and what she, the Ellen Diane, could handle.

He never felt more alive. 

Four hours later, he got a glimpse of the shore. The ride that took them only an hour-and-a-half to get out to sea was almost three times as long on the return journey, with the boat barely crawling across the rough waves to a shore difficult to see through the snow and heaving walls of whitewater.

“I always say my wife worries twice as much, because I don’t worry at all,” Goethel said with a laugh. “She worries enough for the both of us.” 

Was this the last new seafaring tale he would be able to tell, at the dawn of an age where East Coast fishing stories keep sinking below the line of common memory?

Now 68, he lives in Hampton with the other Ellen Diane and will keep his legs on terra firma, maybe. The ocean he fished? The prey he chased? With the effects of the climate crisis quickening, those fixtures of New England life will be going through as many changes as the longtime fisherman now ending his decades of toil on the unforgiving seas.

— This article is part of a Paste BN Network reporting project called "Perilous Course," a collaborative examination of how people up and down the East Coast are grappling with the climate crisis. Journalists from more than 35 newsrooms from New Hampshire to Florida are speaking with regular people about real-life impacts, digging into the science and investigating government response, or lack of it.