Stories from Ashore: A Fisherman's Take on the Industry's Changing Tides

Rodney Avila in New Bedford Harbor, the nation’s highest economic value fishing port in operation (Photo courtesy of Rodney Avila).

At Envision Resilience, we support the exploration of science-based, design-led adaptation and we seek to amplify the anecdotal accounts of climate change in our communities. In this series, Stories from Ashore, we share stories of people in our Challenge sites who are rethinking and re-envisioning their connection to place as a result of a changing climate. Through these stories, we introduce you to people who are imagining a future with increased water, reshaping local food systems, harnessing alternative forms of energy and engaging in positive and hopeful conversations about the future. What will be your response to climate change?

By Charlotte Van Voorhis

Rodney Avila was practically born on the ocean. He has been a fisherman out of New Bedford, Massachusetts for five decades. After making his livelihood at sea, Rodney has had a hard time sticking to retired life and now serves as a liaison between families in the fishing industry for Ørsted and New Bedford’s burgeoning offshore wind industry. 

Throughout his nearly five-decades-long fishing career, Rodney worked his way from deckhand, to engineer, to mate, to eventually captaining his own vessel. Afterward, he went on to work for the Fisherman’s Family Assistance Center and spent 12 years working for the Fisheries Management Committee before training fishermen in proper safety measures and practices. He did so with a vision of “safety courses up and down the east coast in every port, for everyone.”

We were connected with Rodney through Laura Orleans, of the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, and Rodney has become a key partner of the 2023 Envision Resilience New Bedford and Fairhaven Challenge Advisory Committee. I sat down with Rodney recently to discuss his ties to New Bedford fishing, some of the hardest voyages he’s been on and how the industry is changing. 

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One of Rodney’s boats, Trident, which he operated out of New Bedford, MA (Photo courtesy of Rodney Avila).

Charlotte Van Voorhis: What first got you into fishing and what has kept you on the water ever since?

Rodney Avila: When I was in high school, I had a teacher who asked, “Why do you want to be a fisherman?” And I said, “I don’t know, my family has always done it, I love the ocean, I always dreamed of being on the ocean as a kid.” And its true. Every day is different, every catch is different, every trip is different. So if you like that kind of uncertainty, or change, or challenge, then fishing is the thing for you. The fear that you might not make it back is always in the back of your mind, but each time I got back into New Bedford Harbor and saw the little Palmer Island lighthouse, it would be such a relief and I’d take a deep breath, like “Phew, I made it.” 

Ultimately, there’s a sense of freedom on the ocean. Every time I go out there, there’s a sense of freedom. It’s not like here on land. At sea, you’re with five or six people on the boat, you all get along, everybody helps each other out. Out there, you’re free.

CVV: Could you tell me a little about how your family got into fishing?

From left: Rodney, Rodney’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather (Photo courtesy of Rodney Avila).

RA: Toward the end of the whaling industry, a whaling ship pulled into the Azores, Portugal and needed more crew because of losses from sickness and injury and so on. They made an offer to provide provisions for families, if a son or husband would go with them to finish their trip. My 15-year-old great-grandfather joined that ship, which landed in Provincetown, Massachusetts three years later. After a second three-year voyage, my great-grandfather sent for his brother and they made their way to New Bedford. He only did one more whaling trip after that and then bought a fishing boat and used it to fish and set lobster traps. 

My grandfather was born on Sao Miguel Island in the Azores and came to New Bedford when my great-grandfather brought the family over. At that time, vessels were cheap and there were plenty of fish around, so my grandpa did really well for himself when he grew up. I remember, during the Great Depression, he bought three houses in Dartmouth for $1,200. Now, you can’t even pay one month’s rent with that. And he worked hard. I remember as a kid, he would put in 18 to 20 hour days every day. If it wasn’t fishing, he was building fishing gear, building boats, quahoging, setting lobster traps—he was never sitting around. And now I’ve got sons and grandsons fishing, too.

CVV: So you’re part of six generations of fishermen and you’ve never left the fishing industry behind.

RA: Well no, it’s in your blood. Every day, I’ve got to go for a ride down by the water to check on the boats, even though I don’t own them. Drives my wife nuts. This morning I went down to the docks at 4 a.m. I talk to fishermen, you know, sometimes I’m lucky enough to run into my grandkids and my sons. We always spend time talking and sometimes even go to breakfast together. 

CVV: Amazing! It’s truly a family business. When was the first time that you went out on a fishing boat?

Rodney fishing “in [his] early days” (Photo courtesy of Rodney Avila)

RA: I started fishing with my grandfather when I was nine-years-old. I would go out in the morning and go back out in the afternoon with him. On the weekends, I would go out with either my grandfather or my father. And then when I got a little older, I’d go out with my uncle trip-fishing. My first trip to George’s Bank, I was about 13-years-old.

When I was about 20, I was on a boat that I’d been on for several years where I’d kind of worked my way from deckhand, to engineer, to mate. One time between Christmas and New Year’s the captain wanted to stay home and he asked me to take the boat out. His partners didn’t want to go out with me because I was so young and they were in their 50s and 60s. So I found three guys my age to go with me as my crew. And I told them right up front, “I’ve never taken a boat before, I want to stay out over New Year’s and be the first boat back to sell fish after New Year’s.” 

So we did. We stayed out over New Year’s and we were in the next auction day after to sell. We ended up having the biggest shipment that year, only because the price of fish was three times its normal price. It was more luck than skill, but it paid off, and it made for a pretty nice trip for the guys who came with me.

CVV: I’m sure there was some skill involved as well. What a great story! What have been some other memorable fishing trips that stand out in your almost 50 years on the water?

RA: I would say my most exciting trips were when I was swordfishing—I don’t know if you ever saw The Perfect Storm, but that’s what I used to do. I used to fish alongside Linda Greenlaw. I was out the night of the Perfect Storm, on October 28, 1991, but I was down off of Virginia and fairly close to land.

You know of all the captains I fished against, or competed with—because you always try to beat the next guy, it’s a very competitive business—the hardest one to keep up with was Linda Greenlaw. It was hard to keep up with that lady. She was very good at swordfishing. She used to run the boat, Hannah Boden. The first time I ever met her was down on George’s Banks. I had seen this other swordfishing boat down south somewhere and I went up alongside to see how they were doing and asked if I could talk to the captain, and when she came out, I was shocked to see [the captain] was a woman. But she was one of the hardest ones to keep up with—she was a good fisherman. 

CVV: In your career, you’ve never been too far from the fishing industry. How have you maintained that connection?

Another one of Rodney’s boats, Seven Seas (Photo courtesy of Rodney Avila).

RA: I fished for 47 years, but I’ve been in the industry for over 50. For a while, I just stayed home and managed the vessels, but I’m still connected to the industry now—I just can’t get away from it! When I first got out of fishing, I was bored and had nothing to do. So I ended up serving as the Outreach Specialist between the fishermen and the Fisherman’s Family Assistance Center for a while. They were helping fishermen transition into different occupations, after realizing that there were too many boats and not enough open positions. 

One day, they needed somebody down on the port because the Harbormaster and the Harbor Development Commission needed some help, and I ended up working there for five or six years. During that time, there were a lot of deaths happening out on the water. The Mayor of New Bedford came down and said “We don’t have any safety training for the fishermen. Is there anything we can do?” And I said, “Well, Alaska has a program called AMSEA.” And I made some calls, got introduced to the Executive Director, and five of us went out there and we got trained and started training fishermen here in the South Coast. 

Around then, I met Laura Orleans, who wanted to start the Working Waterfront Festival and then from there she started the Fishing Heritage Center. I helped her out there with the [oral histories of the fishing industry in New Bedford]. Today, I still provide walking tours for visitors from the museum down to the docks.

CVV: What are some of your thoughts on how New Bedford’s fishing industry is changing nowadays?

RA: When I started at Ørsted, some people were really upset that I was working for the wind industry. And I said, “We have to work together, it’s a changing time, it’s going to evolve.” I mean, the world doesn’t stop for anybody. Just look at when our forefathers got here: they went across the country in covered wagons, now you can fly across!

You have to remember—and this is what I tell fishermen—no matter how long you’ve been out on the ocean, the ocean does not belong to you. It’s a resource that you use. You have to share it. The wind and fishing industries are going to have to coexist. I think [offshore wind and fishing] can coexist, but they’re both going to have to adapt as well. Maybe changes in fishing methods or something like that. But I’m hoping that wind and fishing can get together and develop some new industries that will be fishing-friendly and support the wind farms. 

Right now, I do believe they are on the first steps of adapting, starting to work together and the more they work together the better it’s gonna be for both sides.

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Rodney has fished as far north as Nova Scotia and all the way south to Florida and he knows a friendly face in just about any port along the Eastern Seaboard. Throughout his life both on and off the water, he has never backed away from a challenge, preferring instead the thrill of a hard-earned victory, be it a lucrative catch, a business deal or forging a new connection.

It just so happens that Rodney’s birthday is June 8, which is fittingly World Ocean Day. And he’ll be the first to tell you, “The ocean is for everyone.”