BARNEGAT LIGHT, NJ — August 6, 2012 — Viking Village sounds like a theme park gone medieval, but Barnegat Light, where it’s located, may be the least-known of Jersey’s six commercial fishing ports. The dock has been in business since the 1920s, when it was founded by a group of Scandinavian fishermen Today, 45 boats call Viking Village, at the north end of Long Beach Island, home. Three kinds of fishing are done: scallops; long-line (including tuna, swordfish, mako sharks, tilefish) and net (including monkfish, skate, bluefish, croakers). The boats bring in about 2 million pounds in each category annually
One by one, glistening, silvery tuna land on the scale with a loud wet splat.
“64 big eye,” says Chris Sprague, giving the weight in pounds and the type of tuna. “37 yellowfin. 39 yellowfin …”
The tuna is from the Showboat, which berthed an hour earlier at Viking Village. Thirty feet away is the scallop boat Elizabeth, where 20,000 pounds of scallops are being unloaded.
“It’s got nice color,” Sprague says of the tuna on the scale. “A little bit of fat. Good clarity, good deep color.” The veteran dock hand smiles. “I like to compare it to a Jolly Rancher kind of color.”
Viking Village sounds like a theme park gone medieval, but Barnegat Light, where it’s located, may be the least-known of Jersey’s six commercial fishing ports. The dock has been in business since the 1920s, when it was founded by a group of Scandinavian fishermen Today, 45 boats call Viking Village, at the north end of Long Beach Island, home. Three kinds of fishing are done: scallops; long-line (including tuna, swordfish, mako sharks, tilefish) and net (including monkfish, skate, bluefish, croakers). The boats bring in about 2 million pounds in each category annually
Viking Village did go Hollywood at one point — one of its scallop boats, the Lindsay L, was used in “The Perfect Storm’’ — but you wonder how many people on LBI, much less the rest of Jersey, know it’s even there.
“The (scallop boat) crews work 75 days or less a year,” Karter Larson tells a group of 70 people on one of Viking Village’s Friday dock tours, held through the Labor Day weekend.
The long-held stereotype of the commercial fisherman was that of a bearded rogue who squandered his earnings in the nearest bar once his boat landed. These days, commercial fishermen are drug-tested, and immature or irresponsible behavior gets you tossed off a boat faster than a deckhand in a hurricane.
Read the full story at The Star-Ledger