Day: May 20, 2008

Public Service Announcement- Don’t be the person who……..

Posted on by Joey Ciaramitaro

Don’t be the person who wears one of those annoying bluetooth headsets.

I’m here to save you from looking like an ass hat.

My first experience with this evil contraption came about 4 years ago while on vacation in Naples Florida. I was bellied up to a tiki bar enjoying an adult beverage and taking in the gentle Florida breezes while watching the Sox on the TV behind the bar. Well wouldn’t you know that some self important prick sits down right next to me in too-tight spandex biking shorts with his gut peeking out of his sweaty, spandex, screaming yellow biking shirt. It was bad enough that there were 8 empty bar stools at this particular tiki bar and this ignorant SOB decided to park his sweaty ass directly next to me but what happened next was the topper.

This prick takes a business call on his bluetooth earpiece and is babbling away in a loud voice right next to me. Has this ever happened to you?

First off I’m there to relax. I just got away from my business, what makes you think I want to listen to you deal with yours?

Secondly it wasn’t even like he tried to speak in a hushed tone or step away from the bar, he was talking full bore right next to me as if I didnt exist.

Third they look STUPID!     News Flash buddy- YOU LOOK LIKE A DOPE WEARING THAT THING!

There are very few instances where I would say they are acceptable and none of them include the words vacation, tiki bar, social setting, or leisure activity. If you have a sales job and use one in a car while you are driving between sales calls, by all means use it. But FFS take the godamned thing out of your ear once you get out of the car or you will forever risk being ridiculed as the ass wipe wearing a bluetooth around town.

Thank you for listening to this very important public service announcement.

Bluetooth Douchebag

The above is not my image^^^^^^^^^^^^It’s something I pulled from the net.

Offloading Nets on The Western Venture Herring Boat

Posted on by Joey Ciaramitaro

Offloading Nets on The Western Venture Herring Boat, originally uploaded by captjoe06.

This Power Block is attached to this truck on a boom. The power block is hydraulically powered to rotate and pull the net up and over the rail of the boat. This type of work used to be done by hand.

Once offloaded the net can be transported by truck to an open space where it can be stretched out and worked on.

Another technological advance which lends marine work to not need to have such a wide footprint on a harbor. That space that used to be needed along waterfronts to repair nets can now be done in covered buildings in industrial parks like Swan Net does up at The Blackburn Industrial Park in Gloucester.

View From The Western Venture Wheelhouse

Posted on by Joey Ciaramitaro

Here is a view from the wheelhouse of the Western Venture looking down at the herring net being offloaded from the boat. You can see the net travel up through the boat’s power block, over to the power block on the boom attatched to Swan Net’s truck, and then into the bed of Swan Net’s truck.

The net will then be transported up to the Blackburn Industrial Park where it will be repaired, worked on or stored.

View From The Western Venture Wheelhouse, originally uploaded by captjoe06.

Many traditional seaside business have moved away from the waterfront, like Good Harbor Fillet. With modern advances in the seafood industry like The Gloucester Seafood Display Auction and Power Booms, and the Internet, much less a footprint of Gloucester’s Harbor is actually used for offloading fish compared to when every part of the seafood chain occurred on the waterfront.

At The Gloucester Seafood Display Auction, there are a couple dozen fish buyers who bid on fish in one room. Those buyers in that auction room represent thousands of seafood buyers who buy through them. The Auction handles much of the fish that used to be unloaded at places like Mortillaro’s, Captain Joe’s, John B Wright’s, Old Port Seafood, Fisherman’s Wharf and other piers around town. The Auction and their very advanced electronic bidding system doesn’t even necessitate the buyers be present to purchase that fish.

One of our former customers dropped in to say hi last summer at 7:00AM. He was wearing shorts and sandals. I asked him why he wasn’t busy buying and selling fish. He told me that he had already bid for the fish he needed from home and that the Auction trucks would be delivering the fish he purchased directly to his customers.

Technological Advances In Seafood Distribution

He won’t even touch a fish! But that fish is going to get exactly where it is supposed to go. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the seafood industry but even that kinda took a little while to grasp.

My cousin and I and a crew of four guys used to go to the dock at 3:00AM to try to get boats unloaded, the fish packed in ice and on trucks on their way into Boston for the morning markets. Now this guy that I used to sell fish to is getting all that work done without even touching a fish.

Innovations like this and power blocks, the fish being processed at Gortons coming in frozen on trucks instead of boats have occurred throughout the industry but there are many people that have no idea and cling to the idea that the fishing industry operates the same way it did 10, 20 or even 50 years ago think nothing should change at all on the waterfront.