MARC CASTELLI / Paralian

Something of a rarity these days with so many people moving to the island. Such folks have been called “came-heres,” or as the Irish call such folks “blow-ins,” and lately they have been called “implants.” Anyway, I had been oystering earlier in the day, hand tonging, out of Neavitt.  I should say, culling, as I don’t work the hand tongs. This despite many invitations to do so. I quickly remind the oystermen that hand tongs are also called “stupid-sticks” or “widow makers.” For nothing. Few things irritate me more than a photographer or writer who has a publicity photo taken while driving a skipjack or hand tonging. My skill level is culling. Once I am done with the day on the water, I would run down to Tilghman to check in on the Kinnamons and see what they were building. This day there were two not quite finished deadrise workboats in the driveway alongside the building where they were created. While the Kinnamons will say that they build “cheap boats,” many of their long-time customers are always more than happy to come back for a refit, an engine transfer, or a brand-new boat. I personally know of some Kinnamon builds that are still being used that are over 30 years old. The glare of the sun through the high overhead clouds onto the cabin tops and washboards (decks) with the leafless limbs, branches, and twigs etched on the sky all but begged to be photographed.

On oyster boats I can bring my TFL (Tidal Fishery License) oyster bushel limit to the boat to share with the men while I spend hours culling and taking pictures of them at work. I don’t take money for the work I get to enjoy and neither do they take any from me. Sometimes I would try to buy a bushel from them and they would just give me one or give me a dozen or two of oysters to take home. My “pay” is the opportunity to learn from them about oystering, their work, and hear great stories. It is also in the several hundred photos I will take during a full day of work. I want to spend the day working with them under the full arc of the sun. This picture is so strong with the repeated triangles and mirroring of effort contrasted with the textures of recently dredged up oysters. The soft light is from the incredibly dense fog in which we worked and also got lost in while trying to get home. That is a story for another day.

Then, you must set them in a manner that doesn’t interfere with the trapping of fish.  Once you have the poles in place you have to hang the hedging or leader, then the hearts or forebay, and then the crib with its funnel. A pound net can cost around 9 to 12 thousand dollars. All of that before you get to fish. In this painting the net had been fished a day or so before and had a lot of rockfish in it. This day it had probably a ton of sea nettles in it. Working the fish towards the big boat where these gentlemen are standing at the ready involves raising up portions of the crib to move the fish. When you have let’s say a ton of sea nettles in your crib the load gets quite heavy. And, it’s depressing as you discover the fish won’t trap in such a mess. A portion of the fish can be sequestered to one side of the crib, while the other topline is let down to allow the sea nettles to wash out. The watermen with their dip nets are removing any fish they see in the cloudy morass of sea nettles. That gray day there were a fair number of Spanish Mackerel, some Rock and little else. Fish Hawks is a colloquialism for osprey. The men standing with their dip nets reminded me of the way that osprey watch for signs of fish.

Enjoying the early Fall late afternoon light let me take some very nice photos of clouds reflected in the waters as we headed up a small creek. Haul seining is one of the most ancient forms of fishing and probably the most physically demanding. One end of a net is staked on shore while the other end is taken out from that point to encircle the fish seen in an earlier scouting. In the middle of the net is a pocket to trap the fish.  The other end is quickly taken to shore thus, trapping the fish. I saw this done in Oman. On this day the waves started to pick up, and we started to realize that the winds had shifted and were now blowing straight at us. Not only did we have a lot of mud shad in the net, which excited the dog we had with us to no end, we gradually realized that the rising waves would severely hinder us in hauling the net to empty it of fish. Soon we had more fish than we had boats and trying to get the fish out of the net into the boats in the waves which by then were driving straight at us became an exercise of avoiding swamping and capsizing on the shore. The light was failing, the winds were rising, and the dog was not happy. We were in a pickle. To make matters even more interesting we couldn’t get out from under the bluff to get a cell phone signal to tell the ladies we were going to be late. Eventually, we had to move the tubs and crates from one boat to the next boat and then to shore and then back to the boats again, to refit them in a more stable manner (think Tetris). We got enough things straightened out to take that load of fish to the dock, to call the ladies, and put the fish out so we could return to the scene and then finish it up. Time – 9:00 pm in the dark. The men told me to just go home, and they would finish up. They’re not hearing any of my arguments to the contrary, I went home. Not until the next day did, I hear how long it took them to clean it all up. They did not get home until 12 that night. Talk about a teachable moment. The painting is of a good friend of mine standing out in the rising waves in a body-boot to help clear any hangs and to stand on the bottom line to keep the fish in the net as it is hauled to shore.

Tough physical work and sometimes a bit of capitalizing on the scend of the waves can help. Sunrise on the water with the light scattering in the waves and bouncing onto the boat made for an interesting interaction between shape and color. Lowering myself in the larger boat to better frame the waterman against the sky helped to exaggerate the rise and fall of the waves as he made the cut water to the pole. I fished with this young waterman for almost 13 years. Got to learn a lot about fish, gear, nets, and all manner of other things from him. I saw a lot of amazing things, experienced weather, conditions that many would shy away from. He enjoys the challenges, one of which was putting up with my questions. He also let me work alongside him and, hopefully, allowed me to make his day a tad shorter.

In this instance we were hand tonging on Broad Creek for oysters. That season is probably my favorite of them all. The cold, the quick march across the sky of the sun, the physical harvesting of oysters with little mechanical aids is fascinating. Not to mention I get down and real dirty while culling and taking pictures. I enjoy the physical work and, at the end of the day, I am not just mentally tired, but physically exhausted. I have seen painters in the past make dark and silhouette shapes out of such circumstances. But the eye and brain have an ability to correct for that. If one looks close enough into the silhouette you will discover shapes of their own with lights and darks. It is the glinting of light on the waves that caught my eye. Saving the white paper for such bright effects required a lot of drawing and painting around them to begin achieving the effect.  For me, an unlooked-for bonus was the top lit sea gull. Just one more subtle reinforcement about the direction of light and the viewpoint.

The darkness of the hanging oil skins against the white of the washboards and the deep colors of the empty bushel baskets all became the near abstract shapes that appealed to me in both the photograph and the subsequent drawing. The title is a quote from a book I had been reading at the time. A big part of why I still go out to be on the water with the watermen is the anticipation for what will be revealed. It is never the same, nor are the circumstances, or the men on the boats. Yet the unspoken need to witness and experience the work drives me all year long. I average around 100 days a year on the waters of the Chesapeake and its tributaries.  There are possibly hundreds of thousands of photographs I have taken of such scenes, from all times of the year, that go back nigh unto 30 years now. There are hopes when we leave the dock, tempered by the years of expectations and realities. Many watermen would prefer steady harvests rather than boom and bust types.

I am rather proud of the fact that no one has ever gotten a warning or a ticket for anything I have culled. The season last year was a boom year for not only the watermen but also for the oysters as Mother Nature was very good for them to reproduce, to grow out, and to live. Despite the many eco-enviro groups wish and their fight to micromanage the Bay’s resources, you just can’t manage the rain and the climate. Both are important factors in managing any natural resource. The image is oystering out of Hooper’s Island, down bay. Long drives to catch our limit in less time that it took to drive down and home. Again, I am fascinated by the shapes of people, objects that are back lit. Bright, winter light mind you.  We all wear oil skins to stay dry and warm. Such gear reveals little of the wearer’s physique.  A favorite English artist of mine, Arthur Trevor Briscoe dispensed with the sailors’ oil skins to make, in his eyes, better images of the hard labor of able-bodied seamen. While I really like his work, and have several books about it, oil skins are an indicator of the season and conditions. Plus, I like the play of light and darks, especially when they are wet. An added bonus for where the light is coming from is the wet cull board and reflections.

Poles are getting harder to find as landowners sell off more of their land to developers. Yellow pine poles are the best as they last longer with their tighter grain, sap, and weigh less than oak if you can find it straight enough to use, or the softer woods of gum or poplar. The poles are sharpened with a chain saw and then painted with a red bottom, or barn paint, to try and prevent barnacles from growing on them. These pests grow especially fast in the warmer summer months. Barnacles have sharp edges to their shells and if not removed during the season will cut the net. In addition to the saving them for the next season, taking up poles keeps them from breaking off at the water level in the ice and becoming future navigational hazards. It was the radical perspective of the poles as they sweep off to the distance where the waterman is using a winch and chains to pull the poles that attracted me. The 12 remaining poles recede off towards the fog shrouded shore. They will be stacked on a specially built rack fitted to the boat.

The night before there had been a heavy snowfall, and it was snowing throughout the day itself. While it was cold, it was extremely quiet and beautiful to see. In this image the men having beached the bateau are clearing the lines and net to set the fyke. Cold weather and dipped net with lines can make for a very stiff, hard-to-work-with combination. It was easier to straighten out everything on shore. I am pleased with the new winter snow cleanliness and the Morse code-like dots and dashes of the snow laden branches.

It is a very isolated place made even more so by the fact that most of the people are involved in their daily lives with little time for tourists. I have always thought that “If you aren’t comfortable with yourself when you are alone then don’t go to Tangier.” It’s not a judgement, it is the nature of the island. One time, some tourists had thought the island was actually an historical re-enactment. They would go into the yards of houses and look into the windows at the residents while they tried to eat breakfast or dinner, or would be watching television. Needless to say, they were chased off and quickly disavowed of that idea. But the island has a grace, a certain light that no other place in the Bay has, and many of the people are good souls. In the winter I would go down and stay with our son (who was either working in the boatyard or in the museum that he helped to found) enabling me to go out oystering with some of the watermen. Conditions on Tangier Sound in the winter can be right nautical with large swells, strong winds, and chop. Incredible things to see and take photos. And then be grateful for a safe day out and back. In the evenings I would go for a long walk to take advantage of the late afternoon light. The boatyard was always a favorite of mine. It had many types of down bay workboats, like barcats, in various stages of refit. This view with its emphasis on a very large sky and a low horizon has one such workboat on oil cans with the top of the phragmites just catching the last of the light. The severity of the simple composition restates the isolation of the island and appeals to me.

But then J. C. told me that such questions were alright because dumb answers were still for free. To quote from The Book of Eels, “… that compelling need to observe, describe and understand…”. As an artist, I knew that the boat itself would become a big, quiet space in the composition, despite its presence being built. That quiet space became important as I filled in all the tools, spaces, pieces of wood, and such. I did remove a window from the back wall as it detracted from the boat. I did apologize to both Johnny and J. C. for exercising some artistic license. The title is a reference to the armchair and the bar stool. Sometimes when I would walk in the two would be sitting there talking near the wood stove.

This painting is from something that caught my eye as we were cleaning up from a day of oystering. It was the cold winter sun pouring through the empty bushel basket, the warped pattern of its shadow and highlights as they fell across the cull board and oyster hammer. Gone are the wooden bushel baskets. I miss them. For years they were ever present on nearly every workboat.  Some bored person in the health department got a “great idea” and started saying that such baskets could present a health risk and could not be as easily washed out as the plastic ones. To this day I have never seen anyone wash out a plastic basket. I guess I shouldn’t say that as this someone in the health department will want a box to check off on the monthly oyster reports that the baskets did get washed out. I am assuming such an expert has never seen a culler or hand tonger after a day on muddy or hard bottom.

A boat survey from the late 1880s recorded several thousand of them. Almost all of those were actually workboats. They were relatively simple to build, and many were not anywhere as elegant as those being raced today. Many were quite beautiful especially as they became crossover boats. That means that they were not only worked but also raced. Rigs changed, with masts growing taller to carry more sail, springboards came into play as balancing the sails and keelless hull became crucial and the hulls became fairer. I am simplifying the evolution. A wonderful book, Tradition, Speed and Grace/Chesapeake Bay Sailing Log Canoes, by John C. North II, will fill you in on a lot of the history along with an amazing collection of vintage and contemporary photos and artwork. It is available at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Back to Flying Cloud. She was built in 1932 and went through an extensive refit in 2020-21. Here she is portrayed racing in her first season after the refit. I find the racing canoes elegant to watch and brutal to sail. Such a grand dichotomy. As a side note, I had been approached by Judge North (a close friend of 30 years) if I would come up with a design to put on her kite. After some thrashing around, I remembered that many of the fine automobiles in his collection reflect the beauty of the times between the two World Wars, especially the Art Deco influences. Spending some time going through books about that period of time, I came across an image with clouds in it. It was from that image the present graphic was derived. Sometimes one can almost see such patterns in the clouds over a river with log canoes racing on it. I have painted over 450 or so watercolors of these beautiful sailing craft and done countless pen and inks of them, too.

Saving time and making their day shorter became something I wanted to be able to bring to the boat. In the nearly twelve years I worked with them they taught me, with great patience, much about nets, fish, culling fish, the seasons of fish, watercraft, and boat handling. I got to see so many incredible things on that river. Things I would never have seen if they hadn’t been so welcoming and understanding about my need to observe and understand. So many things that are unwritten and seemingly arcane. Anyway…this image is of the as yet to break the horizon sunrise reflected in the wake serrated waters off of Turner Point on the Sassafras River. Some would complain that the wake ruined a perfectly calm water’s reflection of the land and sky. Each to their own…

Much to the chagrin of the handful of veterans on board who already know that these racing machines are not like anything these newbies have ever sailed/raced/experienced before. The first season of Flying Cloud had many such moments. The best thing was that a core crew would develop from that season and become the crew around which the newbies would learn from and do well. The title, “Getting it Right” reflects a moment when the crew, boat, skipper, all were on the same page and sailing The Cloud to her potential. In a lot of wind, it takes quite a few people to balance the boat and man her springboards. She is one of the three largest racing log canoes. The others are the Jay Dee and Mystery.

The work can be mind-numbing in its repetitiveness. And yet you have to be paying a lot of attention to the measuring, and also try to chip off any spat measuring less than 3”. At that time there was a lot of small oysters that while they came close to the 3” measure, they still had to be put back over. In this case the oyster was a keeper. The 2021-22 season saw a harvest report of 535,000 bushels of oysters. The best in over 35 years!  Thank you, Mother Nature!

Once a canoe starts to ship a lot of water, and no one can bail quick enough, it will settle into the water, lose forward momentum, and fall to leeward. I have been victim to this and seen it many times in my 30 years. The fourth is when you have a lot of shifty winds that come and go in the blink of an eye. In such conditions the boardmen are always moving in and out trying to balance the boat and keep up her headway. If the wind falls out suddenly, the boardmen that are all the way out on their boards will get dunked. This results in some being swept off their boards, some just falling off their boards, and others struggling to get back on board. If the canoe doesn’t capsize and regains headway, the crew members must then be recovered, requiring the canoe to come head to wind, lose forward momentum, giving the crew members time to swim back to the canoe or grab a line and be hauled back aboard. The association rules state that a canoe must finish with all the crew members who were on board when it started. In this painting, it is one of the three largest canoes, Mystery, built in 1931, that is in extremis. She has dunked her boardmen and has lost some of them who did not fall forward on to their board and hug it for dear life. To make matters worse, the rig appears to be ready to fall on the crew. That is a most dangerous place to be. People can drown getting tangled in the sheets, shrouds, and lines, and also getting trapped under the huge sails. Capsizing to windward is rare. Mystery has already got her jib boom planted in the water denying any relief from that sail, no one has any control of her fore and main, she is in immediate danger of capsizing. BUT…. for reasons unknown to this author, she stood back up and sailed off with an insufficient handful of people onboard and then capsized to leeward. Have never seen such a thing in my 31 years. And, I got several photographs of the whole incident, too. I used to refrain from painting such scenes. Not anymore.

These boats are technically the only boats other than the log canoes and race committee allowed on the racecourse. You can find yourself in many good places to take photographs if you are lucky enough to know someone connected to a log canoe and have permission to be onboard. But be aware if you are in the wind or in the way of a log canoe a whole raft of abuse will be directed toward you. I’d like to have a T-shirt printed that would read “Get out of the/my way” as my position on the log canoe is up forward, and I am always ready to yell at interlopers. Anyway… these canoes are so wonderful to watch, they are like pieces of origami or swans on the water. Just do so at an appropriate distance.

At certain angles when looking along the bulkhead, it would seem as if the narrows were lined with wooden pilings. It can look like an arena. It is this view that caught my eye as we put out our catch of rockfish and Spanish mackerel for the dock workers from United to take back to the freezing cold building for cleaning and packaging. It’s chagrining to think that when we go to the supermarket to buy fish, we have to settle for less than local fresh fish. I am sure the economics of supply and demand are at play that keep locally harvested seafood out of the supermarkets. Overcoming that issue is hard and probably won’t never happen.

I have a TFL with an oyster ticket/paid surcharge on it. If there is only one hand-tonger on the boat, I can add in my limit to the day’s catch. It is one way that I can repay the men for putting up with me on the boat. They have never asked for money to cover their costs and have never taken any offered money either. I do print photographs for them at their work. I believe that many of them do not have these images and would like to have them to show what it was they did with their lives. To be welcomed on almost any boat under such circumstances is an honor. One which I would hope I have never abused. The watermen would be quick to let me know if I have. I would not be allowed back. So, in this view we are crowded with two layers of multicolored plastic bushel baskets of oysters. I liked the repetition of shapes, and ripple-like circular rims to the baskets.

When it came time for fishing fykes, they wordlessly got into their bateau. Not presuming, I stood on the workboat. The father looked at me and asked, “Are you just going to stand there?” Needless to say, I grabbed one camera and quickly got onboard. Taking photos from a small boat in which everyone is working is close work at best. But it is that viewpoint I strive for and partially why I want to be on the boat and not spectating from off boat. The patterns of the net as it is being stretched to tie up the funnel rising up to the waterman’s face and his focused eyes makes for an active composition.

Catfish have different tastes from river to river. Baiting them up that way calls for cut up mud shad. So, while they are at that task, I am looking around for things to take pictures of.  Shooting digitally these days gives me way more flexibility than when I was using slide film. I can take “risks” by shooting a lot of things. In this image it is the framing of the wood bateau by the corner poles of the pound net and the calm of the water that caught my eye. As it was relatively quiet, I could lay out over the washboards (deck) and lower my camera to just off of the water and take a couple of shots.

When we are running the line, I have some time to look around, and I have been taking pictures of some of the same trees all summer. Some rise out of the corn fields along the riverbank, some are perches for eagles, some are pines standing at the end of point of grass-covered land, others have osprey in them. This isolated vine chocked tree with one lone osprey on a bare limb caught my eye. I enjoyed the simple composition and even more enjoyed the painting of it. It speaks of my favorite artists.

Both of these small boats, smaller than the smallest of the fleet mind you, are quite beautiful. The one from the museum had been an experiment of sorts. It was built to educate in a small way the shipwrights about the use of logs in the construction of a traditional log bottom boat. The real education came when they scaled it up to make a new log bottom for the bugeye, Edna Lockwood. So much local knowledge gets lost in the passage of time. I had always thought the mission of the museum was to capture, retain, and learn anew that knowledge.  Individuals like John Cooke did a lot of planning and hands on learning about what those builders did before him. Eve is a beautifully outfitted log canoe. Her owners have a great sense of humor as the device on her kite is an apple with a bite taken out of it. I have painted and made prints of all the log canoes that are currently being campaigned. There are other log canoes quietly sleeping away, waiting to be awaken by someone with the love, care, and most of all the money to refit and in some instances rebuild them. Log canoes are not for the fiscally timid. These small canoes need some compatriots. Maybe with three more, they can then have their own fleet, to make the association requisite of five, so they can start with the larger canoes but race on shorter courses. There is an historical precedent. Many years ago, there were classes of canoes based on size. So…this print is the 17^th of my log canoe series. A newer canoe was just finished a few years ago and her name is Caroline. She will be featured in next year’s log canoe print.

It is hard to trust that some of these delegates and senators understand the industry. Oyster politics have fascinated me for over 25 years now. I have read books, doctoral theses, watched countless documentaries, been part of many meetings, read the minutes of the meetings I could not attend, been to Annapolis to testify for and against bills using the knowledge I have been garnering over the years, and engaged in hundreds of hours of conversations with oyster biologists. I have no initials after my name that would make me an “expert,” but I can hold my own with many of those who have such credentials. Perhaps you can call me a citizen scientist. The word scientist implies firsthand observation, deductions based on understanding the observed, and conclusions based on facts and not coincidences. I do not mine my information from the comfort zone of shared opinions or from the many websites of siloed information.  I seek information from many sources. I think that sometimes in my sleep that I am fabricating more succinct thoughts and stratagems than I had been while awake the day before. I wake up right away and start my day. Lately, I have felt the need to keep a notepad by the bed so as to be better equipped at remembering the correct phrasing. Then I can go back to sleep without trying to remember those things. I am focused just as this waterman is focused on the oysters in this grab of hand tongs. Look at his eyes. He’s looking for a sign to tell him he isn’t in the black mud and that the oysters are good, he is looking to see if he is on empty hatchery shell or on oysters, and if they are legal three inch (bigger or smaller), he is looking to see if the oysters are covered in spat, or if he sees a lot of boxes (dead oysters).

Very calm waters, unhindered sunlight breaking the horizon and racing across the shore and waters to slam into the boats, the watermen, the nets, and the fish. Then out of the corner of my eye, the birds, osprey, seagulls, blue herons, along with mewling gulls completed the sight. All of these birds now know that when a net of any kind is being fished that there will be fish for them to eat. While fish may die in a pound net, it is rarely something for the Green Shirts to be alarmed about. Now that I say that I have a caveat. Some watermen do not fish their pound nets as often as they should and every now and then one will see a lot of dead fish, which are usually high-strung buggies, also known as menhaden. Yet, sports fishermen are quick to take photos and post them on all the social media platforms crying hysterically that watermen are killing all the fish and pound nets should be outlawed. One could think that from their carefully siloed information that they believe that all fish are from one young of the year class, that they are all wildly healthy, and that no fish is ever sick or weakened, that the waters of the rivers and Bay never experience have what is euphemistically called “bad water,” or that some elderly fish just get trapped and die. Back to the painting. The trapped fish are dipped from the pound net crib and deposited on the cull board. From there the watermen cull out the fish they have market for and are legal to keep. Up in the Devil’s Reach it is the white perch that get measured, no need to measure mud shad or buggies, invasive blue cats are kept, and market size channel cats are kept. This morning the other fish are put back overboard, somewhat stunned by the experience, but yet are able to swim away after a few seconds of reacclimating to being back in the river. It is interesting watching for the ripples that tell you they are conscious again, before they dive into deeper waters. This is not only interesting for me but for the myriad of birds looking for their breakfast. Osprey will swoop down and snatch a fish, bald eagles will also do so, though it seems as if they would prefer to engage in aerial dogfights with the osprey to try and take a fish away. Such dogfights are exciting to watch as both kinds of birds have different tactics. Screeching and jealous gulls swoop in to pick up any kind of fish, wiggling or not. What surprised me the most are the blue herons like the one in this painting. They will not only walk the lines of the pound net, like an aerialist, but will also land in waters too deep for their long legs, spear a fish and then use their extremely large wings to lift their lightweight bodies up out of the water to land on shore and eat their catch. Getting to watch and photograph this was an experience I won’t soon forget. And best of all I get to relive it when I go back to that shoot to find one such image to paint.

I count myself very lucky to have oystered with him for just a couple of times as he retired from oystering singlehandedly just last year. I will try to get out with him and his son this coming season as the family dynamic is very important to me. Anyway…I had quite a few shots of him hand tonging in the just risen early morning sunlight. I liked the play of that light on his wet gloves and the shafts of the tongs. So, I took one of the shots and cropped it down to just his hands, shafts, and background. Then went on to edit the others. For some subliminal reason I kept returning to this image. I even carried it around in my head until I realized it needed to be painted. But I have to add, I will put up a Fuji-Chrome 200 ISO well metered color slide against a digital image any day. Must be the dinosaur in me.

There has been an interesting change in the colors of oil skins. Traditionally they were a dark green. Now they can be orange, orange with yellow panels, white, and camouflage in all manner of patterns. It is nice to have such colors to work with. The oil skins are like punctuation in the composition. I used to look for arbitrary color and if I couldn’t find any, I would then pick one. I remember reading a story about Andrew Wyeth. He would be out painting and would reach behind him to his paint box for a color and not looking would get a tube of paint. He would then look at it and regardless of whatever color it would be he would then fit it in to the composition. Now that is arbitrary.