NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — October 1, 2012 — With an invocation to "bless, preserve and protect" the city's fishermen, the ninth annual Working Waterfront Festival wound down Sunday afternoon with its traditional blessing of the fleet ceremony.
The yearly festival takes over three piers each September to showcase the city's commercial fishing industry and the people who work in it with boat tours, talks, music and even a fish cook-off between professional chefs. The festival's theme this year was "fish tales," and speakers were brought in to explain the facts and fictions, myths and legends of the ocean and the men who fish it, said Kirsten Bendiksen, associate festival director.
The highlight of Sunday was the 43rd blessing of the fleet, an event that was incorporated into the festival years ago. The blessing takes place both on the water and on land and beseeches divine protection for fishermen, whose job ranks among the most dangerous in the nation.
Delivering the invocation, the Very Rev. Constantine S. Bebis, of St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Dartmouth, asked for the fishermen of the city to be protected from the "deep, ferocious waters of the Atlantic."
While the fleet was quietly blessed inside the State Pier's ferry terminal, the festival continued outside with plenty of food, music and shopping for anyone willing to brave the overcast skies and occasionally damp afternoon.
For anyone brave enough to chance the weather, there was plenty of action on the pier.
Later in the afternoon, a cook-off between Mike Fuller, a chef at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and Henry Bousquet, a culinary arts teacher at Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational-Technical High School and city councilor.
The two faced off an Iron Chef-esque culinary showdown with each having an hour to prepare redfish, a species that is under-utilized, festival director Laura Orleans said.
"There's not a big market for it, but it's delicious," she said.
Organizers said the crowds were as big as last year's.
Read the full story in the New Bedford Standard Times