January 23, 2017 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — “We’re really pleased to see such a great turnout,” Fishing Heritage Center Director Laura Orleans told the standing-room-only crowd filling the center on Jan. 11. The capacity audience was there to hear Fairhaven scallop boat captain Chris Wright talk about “A Day in the Life” of the master of not one but two local 200-foot scallopers.
Pleased, but not surprised at the big turnout. “It’s no surprise because Chris Wright is one of my favorite captains,” Orleans said. By the end of the interesting lecture on his life at sea, and a spirited question-and-answer session, Wright was the favorite scallop boat captain of everyone in the room.
“Don’t be in awe of us” braving fierce winds and mountainous waves far offshore, Wright suggested modestly at one point in the question-and-answer period. “It’s just what we do.”
What Wright does is skipper the Huntress out of Fairhaven, and the Nordic Pride, based in New Bedford. A shared captain is not uncommon these days, with each scallop boat limited by fishing regulations to a maximum of 75 days at sea, he noted.
“I’m getting ready for my 29th year as a captain,” Wright said, looking back on a life at sea that started with summer and vacation work on his father’s fishing boat as a youth, and through college. He graduated from a maritime academy in 1983, and spent a year working on commercial vessels, traveling far and wide over the oceans.
“But it was too much time away from home,” he suggested. “After a while, I went back home and started fishing.”
He said he is lucky to have found two good boat owners to work for, and build long-term relationships with over the decades. He alternates trips on the two vessels, helming each for 10 or more trips per year with the same crew.
A captain spends much of his time on shore preparing for the next trip, with each fishing voyage lasting from 10 to 14 days. If the maximum catch allowed for that trip is 17,000 pounds of scallops, the boats generally stay out as long as is needed to get close to the allowed harvest.