LB2017.19.4916

LB2017.19.4916

A fisherman leans on a tub of fish on a boat in Tenant's Harbor and addresses Kosti's camera. Ropes and pulleys for lifting are pulled taught to the left, and the shoreline is visible in the distance. This photograph was published in a photo essay titled The Face of New England, which was comprised of 16 Kosti Ruohomaa photos in Coronet Magazine in 1950. Kosti Ruohomaa documented the herring fishery from every angle over a number of years including 1953, 1957, 1958, and 1960. He photographed the boats, fishermen, and nets. He photographed the weirs and seines from the open cockpit of an airplane. Kosti drew detailed diagrams of the nets and weirs, and wrote down folk phrases spoken by the fishermen. He photographed herring fishing up and down the coast of Maine, including points off of Vinalhaven, Owl's Head, Port Clyde, Eastport, and Grand Manan Island. Kosti's photographs were published in Maine Coast Fisherman in November 1956 and September 1958, and Down East magazine in July 1958 and October 1962. In 1958, Kosti flew over Penobscot Bay with Hugo Lehtinen from Tenant's Harbor. Hugo, a Finn like Kosti, was a herring spotter and fisherman who flew over waterways to look for large schools of herring. Kosti also flew with George Curtis, an artist and pilot of Owls Head, in his Piper Cub plane to take aerial photos. The sardines one finds in Maine are juvenile Atlantic herring, caught in weirs or seine nets, and then cleaned, scaled, and canned. Atlantic herring live their lives in the ocean and grow to a little over a foot long. They live in both the eastern and western waters of the North Atlantic ocean and once were one of the most plentiful fish species in the world. Herring prefer warmer shoal waters, but have moved away from many estuaries because of pollution. The populations can fluctuate dramatically depending on weather; recently the population has declined steeply due to overfishing and habitat degradation. Herring are a crucial part of the ocean ecosystem, eating zooplankton and feeding a wide range of wildlife from whales to terns. Herring are delicious smoked or pickled, and are used as bait for lobsters. NOAA.Fisheries.Gov Bonner-Ganter, The Photographer Poet (2016)