Chesapeake Quarterly
October 2011, Vol. 10 Nos. 2 & 3

Catching Menhaden on a "Snapper Rig"

Commercial fishermen have been harvesting menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay for 140 years. Today, with the catch at a 54-year low, only one menhaden processing company and a few smaller operations still harvest the fish in the Bay. A fleet of ten large vessels catch fish for the Houston-based Omega Protein factory in Reedville, Virginia, which compresses them for industrial uses. Between three and five smaller, privately owned "snapper rigs" harvest menhaden to be sold as bait. One of these snapper rigs is the FV Hush Puppy, owned by the Rogers family, also of Reedville. In these photographs, Captain Fred Rogers and his crew work a "purse seine" net to harvest a school of menhaden and bring its catch back to shore. Photographs taken in 2002 by Harold Anderson for the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.



Featured Photographers

Harold Anderson, Ph.D., is an ethnographer, folklorist, photographer, filmmaker, and musician. He teaches Urban and Cultural Anthropology at Bowie State University, and is a member of the core faculty of the Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability Program at Goucher College, where he teaches Documentation as an Instrument of Cultural Sustainability. He has conducted research in rural and urban populations in the United States and abroad, collecting high-quality audio, still photographs, and video. Among the organizations he has done research for are the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, the Cultural Affairs Division of Arlington County, Maryland Traditions, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and Maryland Sea Grant.

Maryland Sea Grant Writers and Editors

Jeff Brainard, writer and communications director, brainard@mdsg.umd.edu

Michael W. Fincham, writer and film producer, fincham@mdsg.umd.edu

Sandy Rodgers, art director and editor, rodgers@mdsg.umd.edu

Other Photographers

Chesapeake Quarterly also features the photography of others, including professional photographer Skip Brown. Brown began shooting for Maryland Sea Grant right out of college in the early 1980s and over the years has produced many classic Bay photographs.

Rights to the photographs in this gallery are owned by the photographer or by Maryland Sea Grant. Contact Skip Brown (skipbrownphoto@gmail.com) to inquire about the purchase of his photographs. For use of other photographs, contact Sandy Rodgers (rodgers@mdsg.umd.edu).

Photo Gallery
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