Interviewed: Mr. Morse HaynesSubject: Scallop FishingMr. Haynes: Well, uh, scallop fishing started about 53 years ago. It started with little bits of boats then, some of them was only 35, 30 ft. along, 40 ft., the like of that. Three drags they started with. Had a heisted engine on deck t'ain't like that today. And you used to get oh, anywhere from 4-500 pounds of scallops a day and the scallops then started around, they went by the gallon about 3.25, $3.00, a gallon when the first started. Were nine to a gallon, you'd ship 'em all to the States, in barrels, about 130 pounds to barrel, the way we used to ship them. And the scallops got bad, they went down. In the 30's, scallops was caught for $.08 a pound, shelled. That's right $.08 a pound. There were lots of 'em, we'd go down and load our boats, in a couples of days, you stay a day and a night, you'd get, I'd get 20-24 barrels and we'd sell 'em for $.08 a pound, quite a difference from today. Today they're around $ 3.30 today, scallops.Question: That's quite a difference.Answer: Yeah, that's right, But the first scallopers who really went outside was uh, well Wormell had a boat.Question: Wormell?Answer: Rolland Wormell, yeah; and Earl Vantassell. He was one of the first boats that ever started fishing outside.Question: How far out would they go?Answer: They'd go off about uh, the season then, we only had the one season, there was no summer season. Scalloping started in the fall and wound up well, the last half of April. They'd fish off the wharf and three, two and one half, three , four miles, that's about as far as they went offshore down off Scallop Cove, up in that area. Now you hear they have boats 50-60 ft. long and have seven drags on a bar now, where there used to be only three.Question: How big were the three? The same size?Answer: They was pretty well the same size. About 3 by 2 foot- 10 on a bar and oh, I'd say, 14, 15 feet - something like that. Well, we'd have seven on a bar, where would've been the engine then in those year was, well, some common gasoline engine - about 10 horsepower, 20 horse power - like of that. Then we had anywhere from 160 to 300, 400 horsepower then to do it. Dear 3,4 times as heavy as it was then, we have seven and we have a cable almost generally drag the scallop to uh 40 outside, 40, 50 fathoms down in the water, 150 fathom cable to drag in.Question: Most of the ships were rigged with sonar? Answer: Oh yeah, they all had depth sounder-------- C.B. sets and radars and all that other material.Question: That wasn't changed for a few years.Answer: Oh, last few years all we had was a compass, a compass and a clock, that's all you ever had to time yourself. We never laid up on account of no, what I mean no radar or anything like that, we had our compass. Question: Did you used to sound with led?Answer: Oh no, we went by marks on the land, you tell pretty well after you'd been out a few times. Strike a bed of scallops you'd take a mark on the land where it was. Off and on, up and down. Then you could tell pretty well. It increased I don't know how many fold it's increased since then. Years ago we used to get, oh for starting in used to get 3 ¼ a gallon, I guess. It very seldom ever got up to five dollars a gallon. That would be fifty cents a pound, pretty big difference. The boat that was all there are to scalloping. I guess going out and getting them some of them.Question: these young guys down there, they get, what, 25 dollars a bucket?Answer: oh yes, they're getting uh, we used to get anywhere from forty to fifty cents a bucket for shucking a bucket of scallops. And so, shock 5-18 pails in one day, fifty cents a pail- nine dollars of scallops, it only took 8 or 9 to a pound. The other day fill a thirty pound pail, you'd fill about 300 to a bucket. Now it's about 33, 34 hundred to a bucket. It takes anywhere from seventy to eighty to a pound. The other day it took eight, nine to a pound, ten. Question: you must like to see the young fishermen today making all this money.Answer: Well, it's a wonderful thing, for the past seven or eight years, I tell ya-I wouldn't say there's not a many. The price has more than tripled to sell it, doubled a dozen times as far as that goes. Oh you wouldn't make that money in those days. Just to think, 100 pounds meant eight dollars. The fish was just the same then, hake was 30 cents a hundred pound, wit the head cut off, you, it with the head cut off. Now hake is about oh I'd say, 11-12 cents a pound. Used to get 30 cents a 100 pounds, or $3.00 a thousand pounds.Question: where would the market be?Answer: We'd sell it to the Maritimes, Casey's over there. They used to sweat 'em and dry 'em and, of course, they'd sweat 'em and then they'd salt 'em and dry 'em apart. Then they'd go to the West Indies market. Question: okay.Answer: Don't know where I was now.Question: Talking about the hake…Answer: Oh yes, the hake. On them days we'd go out with 4 tons of trawling. We'd get anywhere from, if we didn't get 3000 pounds we would get anywhere from 3-5000. We used to have to dress them out there, heads off, bring 'em back to the…Question: used to pay you out and… or…Answer: Oh yes, soon as we got our trawling and it was fine weather, why we would start cleaning them. Time we got in we would have them half cleaned. Yeah…Question: How many would you have on a boat?Answer: Yeah, I fished uh, 28 years with my father. Out there in Victoria Beach was where I fished. When I fished around there, there was about 100 boats fishing, fishing for hake. There was about 33 small boats used to fish for Pollock across to Bay View. Out there used to fun and land 3 or 4 thousand pounds of Pollock. But lately, in the past twenty years, 15 years, why no Pollock comes in like they used to. I don't know the reason. No Pollock and no hake comes in the Bay now.Question: No? Well. How long ago was it when you and your dad used to fish?Answer: Oh, we started in uh, I wasn't very old, about 15, 16 something like that. We fished 28years. The hake comes up the Bay of Fundy, I don't know why, and the Pollock comes up the Bay of Fundy, it looks to me as if the herring is going to leave the Bay of Fundy. They ain't gettin' half the catch and what they're gettin' is not big herring like they used to. No, too many big boats, no big herring. Over to Parker's Cover they've got a big place over there and I believe it's going out of business. Plan on puttin' up trippers. They got about 50 boats down there rigged up, 10-11 nets to a boat on uh, some morning they wouldn't get 500 to a boat. END OF TAPE.