Dick Cooper - June 2011

 

Heritage Tourism
Teaching Old Watermen New Ways To Make Money And Save Their Communities
by
Dick Cooper

 

The morning class of the Watermen Heritage Tourism Training program in the fellowship hall of the Neavitt United Methodist Church starts out with a round of introductions. The 21 men and women who make their living pulling seafood from the waters of Talbot County take turns explaining why they are here.
One says he wants to learn new ways to make money. Another says he is interested in the history of the Bay. Yet another wants to know when he will get paid.
His frankness is rewarded with chuckles and nods as they are assured their checks will be in the mail soon.
This is the second series in a statewide educational program aimed at expanding the skills and horizons of watermen whose traditional ways of working the water are being threatened by a combination of pollution, development and a changing way of life.
By the end of the five-day program, they will learn how websites, Facebook posts and Twitter feeds can attract tourism dollars when the trotlines, pound nets and oyster tongs come up empty.
“I have had a love/hate relationship with coastal tourism,” says program trainer Mike Vlahovich, a well-known St. Michaels boat builder and director of the Coastal Heritage Alliance. “It took me a long time to see tourism as an ally to sustain a commercial fishing community.
“You have a heritage to preserve,” he says. “It is time to teach the public what your life is all about.”
The training program pays the watermen $350 a day to attend the classes and is financed by federal grants through the Blue Crab Fishery Disaster Fund formed by U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski. The goal is to teach watermen how to become waterborne heritage tour guides and run other tourism related businesses from their workboats.
The program partners are the Chesapeake Conservancy, NOAA, the state Department of Natural Resources, the Maryland Watermen’s Association, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum and the Coastal Heritage Alliance.
During the program, watermen receive advice on how to develop a business plan, insure against risk and collaborate with other Talbot County businesses.
Joel Dunn of the Conservation Conservancy says that the program is intended to give watermen sustainable skills.
“It is good to dredge for ghost pots and do oyster bed restoration (two other programs that paid watermen for their time and efforts), but it is time to do something long-term,” Dunn says.
Some of the ideas floating around the fellowship hall were taking tourists out on crabbing day trips, sightseeing ventures into local backwaters, fishing and hunting charters and sunset cruises.
Wade Murphy III of Wittman tells the group he occasionally runs crabbing trips for hire, showing tourists how to run a trotline. “I put them right to work,” he says. “A lot of times, the women are more into it than the men.”
Murphy’s father, Wade Murphy Jr., captain of the skipjack Rebecca T. Ruark, has been taking tourists sailing for years out of Dogwood Harbor on Tilghman Island. “I get a lot of referrals from my dad,” Murphy says.
A concern that pops up early in the day is liability. One waterman says he is worried about what would happen if a tourist fell over or was injured on his boat. His vision of a tourist includes city folks looking for hot tubs and easy chairs, and he wonders why they would pay to go crabbing or oystering on his 35-foot deadrise.
Ed Farley, captain of the skipjack H.M. Krentz, one of the class trainers, tells them that group insurance is available at reasonable rates through charter fishing organizations. He also tells them that tourists who are willing to pay for a day crabbing or oystering are not couch potatoes afraid of getting wet.
“They are looking for an authentic experience,” he says.
Farley tells the class he has been splitting his time between dredging for oysters and chartering for tourists for more than two decades. When he first went to a local banker with his idea of charging visitors for a sail on his skipjack, the banker said, “who’s going to pay you to go out on an old drudge boat?”
“I went to another banker and told him what I wanted to do. He said, ‘What a great idea. Is anyone else doing that?’”
Farley says one of the unexpected consequences of the expansion of the Inn at Perry Cabin in the 1990s was the influx of corporate conferences to St. Michaels. After the company meetings, the employees needed to be entertained, and Farley was there offering skipjack rides on the Miles River. He says one of the regular corporate clients has chartered with him for seven years running.
He stresses the need to work with area bed and breakfast owners to offer crabbing and nature tours by water. “The people who stay in bed and breakfasts spend money.” Cell phones, websites and Facebook are all ways to get paying customers onboard, Farley says.
One of the watermen expressed concern about using Facebook. “I don’t need any more friends,” he says. Farley counters that social media is just one more way of getting people to your website and booking a trip.
He also warns that working charters is not a walk in the park. He says one old captain used to call him “Easy Money” because people would line up at the dock to give him money for a boat ride. “At the end of the day, you go to bed just as tired as if you dipped crabs all day,” Farley says.
Part of the course includes teaching watermen how to build a narrative to entertain and inform their customers. CBMM Chief Curator Pete Lesher uses a slideshow of century-old black-and-white photos to illustrate the history of Talbot County. One photo depicts cars being offloaded from a steamboat at the Claiborne Ferry Landing in 1918.
“That’s Jimmy Murphy’s first car,” one of the watermen quips.
Lesher tells them to mine their family histories for stories that have been passed down for generations. “Tell them about the people that the locals looked up to,” he says. “Spice it up a little.”
Near the end of the day, Debbi Dodson, executive director of Talbot County’s Office of Tourism, tells them that travelers bring $134 million in business to the county a year. She says the emerging luxury vacation home rental business is bringing big money to the county. “Some people are willing to spend $15,000 a week to rent a home. Visitors come to the Eastern Shore to get experiences,” she says. “They don’t want to be just sitting by the pool with 50 sunblock. You are authentic and they are willing to pay for the experience,” she says.
Outside the church, waterman Bert Blades of Bozman, who learned crabbing from his grandfather, says he worked charters in the 1990s but returned to commercial crabbing because he liked being his own boss. He says he also operates hunting charters in season. “I am here to see what I can learn in case I need something to fall back on.”

Dick Cooper, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and his wife, Pat, live and sail in St. Michaels, Maryland. He can be reached at dickcooper@coopermediaassociates.com.