When Sardine was King
Economic Impact of Maine’s Herring Fleet and Canneries
Steam driven towboats assisted sloops in transporting herring from weir to factory as the fishery evolved. Gasoline and diesel-powered sardine carriers continued the evolution starting around the turn of the 20th century culminating with vessels like the JACOB PIKE. Photo from Private Collection
At the apex of the sardine industry around 1950, there were 46 active canneries spread along the Maine coast employing an estimated 8,000 - 10,000 workers. That year 90,557 metric tons of herring were landed—the most ever.
The sardine industry had underwritten a way of life for generations of Eastport area families, having expanded with advances in harvesting, processing, and distribution since its beginnings a century earlier. Although the way-down-east area had more fish and more canneries, canneries were built all along the Maine coast in towns such as Jonesport, Stonington, Belfast, Rockland, Port Clyde and Bath where there were fewer fish but easier access to the Portland markets. No matter their location, whenever herring were landed, a blast of the cannery whistle called employees to work for the day.
The fishery had evolved by the 1950s such that weirs did most of the catching and powered sardine carriers brought the eligible fish to the factories for canning. Unsuitable herring went for lobster bait which included the discarded heads, tails and other processing waste.
There was very little automation in the factories so each can of sardines was handled several times by workers before being finally shipped to market. Thousands of cans are waiting above at the Wilson factory in Eastport to be boxed. Photo by St. Croix Historical Society
During its rise in the early 20th century, Eastport gained notoriety for squalid working conditions, exploitation of child labor, and waterfront conflagrations of oil-soaked, wooden factories. From these conditions, Maine’s child labor and fire safety laws were enacted.
It was an up and down business with wide variations in the catch, and fluctuations in the market. After World War II’s boom years, as the fish became scarcer and the demand softened, conservation measures, quality standards, and promotion were called for and the Maine Sardine Council was created. Jeff Kaelin, the council’s longtime Executive Director observed that at one point “Everyone would put a can of sardines in their lunch box. That was the main convenience food there was.” But ultimately, not even the Sardine Council was sufficient to save the sardine industry, and the Council folded in 1998.
Sardine plant of the Seacoast Canning Co., Eastport, in 1911. Photo by Lewis Hines, Library of Congress
JACOB PIKE tied up at Dix Island weir, Penobscot Bay. Photo By Kosti Ruohomaa, Penobscot Marine Museum
Markets besides canned herring were developed through by-products such as fish oil, pearl-essence, fertilizer, pet food and lobster bait. As inshore schools diminished and weirs became less effective, fishermen invested in more sophisticated means of catching herring, going after them offshore with seiners that encircled entire schools of adult fish and pursed them up. With this shift in catching mature fish, the larger the carriers, including the JACOB PIKE, accompanied the seiners and brought the fish to processing plants or canneries.
By the 1960s and early ‘70s, the supply of small fish and the domestic market for canned sardines had declined to the point where factory after factory collapsed like a row of dominoes. Foreign factory ships had briefly entered the herring fishery and contributed to overfishing before 1976 when they were barred from the Gulf of Maine.
As early as the mid-1970s, there were concerns about the fishery’s future. Ann Eaton, who packed fish steaks in Stonington’s cannery could see doom from overfishing. “They would come in with these big fish full of spawn,” she said. “They did it for years. We said, ‘You keep this up and you’re killin’ em’”.
The last Eastport sardines were canned in 1983, having fallen victim to global competition, overfishing, corporate consolidations and a general lack of appetite, at least in the United States, for herring steaks. As one cannery worker told the New York Times, “People could do more with tuna. There are a limited amount of things you can do with sardines.” And finally, competition from lobstermen, who are willing to pay for lower quality herring to use for bait, added an additional source of pressure on the price and supply to canneries.
After 135 years between 1875 and 2010, the decline and demise of Maine’s herring industry offers a cautionary lesson in the risks Maine coastal communities face as the abundance of the state’s catch shifts due to the effects of changing markets, new technologies and rapidly changing environmental conditions.