GLOUCESTER, Mass. — August 25, 2014 — Robert Gross fished for 34 years out of Gloucester as a crew member on boats such as the dragger Midnight Sun and the gillnetter SS Melon III, until about a year ago, when the physical and financial tolls of the trade finally pushed him to other endeavors.
For the past six months, Gross, 53, has worked as a custodian in the Gloucester school system, a job he considers easier than fishing, if for no other reason than his appointed tasks now include sedentary objects: no rocking boats, no frenetic decks and no elusive fish.
“It’s easier than fishing because nothing is moving,” Gross said Friday morning at the offices of the Division of Marine Fisheries on Emerson Street, where the state held a workshop to help permit holders and fishermen navigate the process set up to distribute the federal fishery disaster aid. “But then just about everything is easier than fishing.”
Gross was the second party through the door on Friday morning and the only crew member in the first hour, thus electing him by default as the first face of what has been a faceless contingent in the unfolding process to help victims of the groundfish disaster: crew members.
The process for distributing the $14.5 million heading to Massachusetts from the $75 million in federal fishery disaster funds appropriated in January by Congress has been carved into distinct phases.
Read the full story from The Gloucester Daily Times