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Exploring Alternative Employment Options

Community Scope
2016 Issue 3
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“A lot of [watermen] that used to shed crabs in the summers, they’ve gone to carrying fishing parties out as their way of surviving.”
- Jeanne Webster Abbott, Voices of the Bay: A Way of Life, Lost30

As watermen attempt to adapt to regulatory changes and as market pressures mount, many watermen may look for alternative sources of employment to supplement their income. We explore below several options that arose based on conversations with individuals within the industry and experts who study the watermen workforce. The alternative employment options range from the marine trades — including maintenance work on recreational boats — to watermen tourism programs to oyster aquaculture.

Marine Trades and Boat Maintenance

With a shoreline of 11,684 miles, the Chesapeake Bay is a hub for marine trades activity.31 Marina workers, boating service providers, marine technicians, builders and other positions characterize this aquatic industry.32

Susan Zellers, executive director of the Marine Trades Association of Maryland (MTAM), supports the notion that maintenance work on recreational boats could be an attractive workforce option for today’s watermen across the Chesapeake Bay region who are looking for alternative employment. Anecdotally, this appears to be true for Virginia as well as Maryland. Noting the availability of jobs in this field, Zellers said, “There is plenty of room to take watermen and move them into the recreational boating industry. They, after all, have knowledge of the boats and how they work.” Moreover, Zellers sees a parallel between occupations in the watermen workforce and the boating industry in that the watermen way of life is a generational type of employment, passed down from parent-to-child. This, Zellers argues, is similar to the way the boating industry has evolved. She calls it “a slightly different path, but potentially more lucrative.” Recreational boating is also a graying industry, so the demand for workers is only increasing. But whether watermen are aware of this potential opportunity is another question, and Zellers does not yet see any interest from watermen, or anyone for that matter, in pursuing this option, citing the push for students to attend college rather than joining the workforce after high school.33

In 2014, MTAM conducted a survey by mail of more than 300 marine industry related businesses throughout the entire Chesapeake Bay region that was designed to assess the industry’s workforce needs. Researchers used data from this survey to complete a three-part skills gap analysis for the regional marine trades industry:

  1. The researchers in this study assessed the economic impact of the marine trades industry in Maryland through research reviews.
  2. They analyzed results from the survey.
  3. They followed up on the survey by initiating personal contact with Maryland marine trade businesses in order to obtain input from employers across the Chesapeake Bay area.

A total of 51 employers completed the survey with 61 percent engaged in boat service repair services, 51 percent in marina/boat storage services and 22 percent acted as boat dealer-brokers.34 Most of the marine trades businesses surveyed were small businesses.35

The MTAM survey found that the job skills most in demand were leadership/management and IT, marine engine mechanics, marine electronics and marine composites (fiberglass repair and molding). The primary skills deficiency was reported as “Other,” which included deficiency in boat mechanics, engine repair and electronics. This was followed by basic math and communications skills. Sixty percent of respondents offered in-house trainings to address skill deficiencies. Many of these trainings included technical programming. These trainings were either through on the job training, manufacturer classes or outside instructors coming in-house.

The survey report identified four potential career pathways in the marine trades (Table 2). Each of these pathways was also given educational recommendations, and MTAM has partnered with a community college and designed a six week internship plus a mini-apprenticeship program to address these gaps.

The Association of Marine Industries (AMI) serves the marina industry around the country. AMI builds affiliate programs with state trade associations, including in Virginia. Wendy Larimer is the legislative coordinator for AMI and she serves as the state coordinator for the Virginia Marine Trades Association (VMTA). “I see a lot of openings in recreational boating,” Larimer says. She ascribes this to boats being increasingly large, while also being equipped with more technologically advanced electronics. Both reasons require more workers to work on the boats. The need, Larimer says, is not necessarily for skilled workers as much as it is for reliable workers who will show up for work. The idea of watermen transitioning to recreational boat maintenance “makes so much sense,” according to Larimer. “They’re out there fixing their own engine when they have to. They’d come with more knowledge than someone newly trained right out of high school.”36

Larimer says that some of the available positions in recreational boating and marina management are very specialized, indicating that the skills may not be as transferable.37 To help address the specialized skill requirements, VMTA, in partnership with Rappahannock Community College and the American Boat and Yacht Council, has established the Marine Trades Technology Career Studies Certificate program. Students are trained to be full-time marine technicians and marine engineer assistants as well as service mechanics for boat dealers, marine equipment dealers and marine repair businesses. According to the program’s description, “Wide-spread use of vessels for pleasure and commerce in this region has created a steady demand for qualified marine technicians as part of the large marine trades industry.” Occupational objectives for the program are listed as marine technicians, marine repair company mechanics, marine engineer assistants, boat dealership technicians and marine equipment dealership technicians.38
 

Table 2: Marine Trades Career Pathways

Table 2

Source: “Workforce Needs in the Boating Industry,” Marine Trades Association of Maryland, 2014.

Watermen Tourism

While the recreational boating industry may offer some promising alternative workforce options for watermen hoping to transition out of their current employment, our analysis identified additional programs that reflect a persistent need for watermen to supplement their current income. One such program is the Virginia Watermen’s Heritage Tourism Training Program. Created in 2013 by Rappahannock Community College and Chesapeake Environmental Communications, this program is designed to assist watermen looking to find an additional income stream by offering tourism training. The Virginia Sea Grant funds the program. “We need to explore every available opportunity to keep our working watermen where they love to be — out on the water, said Glenn Markwith, program coordinator of the program, stressing the need to diversify. “That’s one of the main reasons for the program.”39

Paula Jasinski of Chesapeake Environmental Communications has been involved with the tourism training program from the start. She cites the collapse of the Chesapeake Bay blue crab fishery and its subsequent declaration as a disaster as an indirect initial driver of the program, because the collapse made emergency funding available in both Maryland and Virginia. In 2010, Virginia Watermen’s Association President Ken Smith, inspired by a similar tourism training program in Maryland, discussed with Jasinski the prospect of creating a tourism training program in Virginia.40

Maryland’s tourism training program, called Watermen Heritage Tours, was created out of a concern held by fishery managers regarding a crash of the blue crab stock in the Chesapeake Bay. In response to the declining numbers of blue crab stock, Congress made $15 million available for restoration measures and to support watermen, some of which went to the creation of the training program. The program, which, according to its website, “isn’t meant to take the watermen off the water, but to give them skills they can use to supplement their incomes with a related new business,” has graduated more than 100 watermen since 2010.41
boats

PHOTO BY JACK COOPER

Deadrise workboats used for crabbing and oyster harvesting in Newport News, Virginia.

Through a collaboration based on shared learning with individuals from Maryland’s tourism training program, the Virginia program was designed and launched. To date, about 50 captains have been trained through the Virginia Watermen’s Heritage Tourism Training Program with more on the way, but continued funding is a challenge, and outreach to watermen is extensive. “Most watermen don’t yet know about it,” Jasinski says.42

An article from the Virginia Sea Grant in 2014 described the program as one that offers watermen the chance to “learn how to offer on-the-water tours, get speaking opportunities to highlight watermen heritage and partner with charter boat captains and ecotourism guides. The program also promotes working watermen as educators and stewards of the environment and encourages the purchase of local Virginia seafood.”43

While there are no data to indicate how profitable participating in the tourism program is, the Virginia program’s website connects interested parties with 11 captains along the Chesapeake Bay from the Northern Neck to Virginia Beach and one on Chincoteague Island on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Eastern Shore. Prices for the tours vary but are typically quoted at around $300–$350 for a 3 to 3.5 hour tour per boat.44
boats

Photo by Jack Cooper

Boats used for oyster harvesting, crabbing and fishing in Newport News, Virginia.

Oyster Aquaculture

While many experts agree that the overall watermen workforce is declining in number of employees, Jasinski says that oyster aquaculture, another potential alternative workforce option for today’s watermen, “has gone through the roof.”45 Aquaculture refers to the farming of plants and animals in all types of aquatic environments.46

Tom Murray agrees, though there are caveats. “More watermen are getting into the aquaculture presence. It mitigates the natural ups and downs (of fisheries). There is good diversification, but out of maybe 100 watermen trained in aquaculture, only 10 to 15 stick with it.”47 This is perhaps due to the complexity of maintaining an oyster aquaculture enterprise. A 2001 marketing plan called “Small-Scale Oyster Farming for Chesapeake Watermen” had the goals of helping “local watermen communities around [the] Chesapeake Bay develop small-scale sustainable oyster farms that offer an additional economic option compatible with their lifestyles and traditions” and of helping oyster repopulation efforts. This marketing plan found total start-up costs for watermen to engage in the plan’s aquaculture project to be $6,400. Additionally, the marketing plan notes, “Every aspect of growing and selling — as opposed to harvesting wild — oysters has been new to the watermen, and they face logistical challenges with distribution and sales due to their remote location and limited distribution options and experience.” To assist them with logistical needs, the marketing plan notes that watermen would need support for being able to take orders, schedule deliveries and oversee billing.48

Still, the trends in Virginia around aquaculture are compelling. According to Hollee Freeman, Director of the MathScience Innovation Center in Central Virginia, shellfish aquaculture in Virginia produced $55.9 million in dockside value in 2014, a 33 percent increase from 2013. Oysters are approximately 28 percent of that value. VIMS, in an effort to meet the growing demand for aquaculture employees, runs an “oyster boot camp” internship, and the MathScience Innovation Center says these jobs “appeal to a diverse population: blue-collar positions in the outdoors leading to farm management, laboratory jobs in algal culture or oyster genetics, engineering and system design, marketing, retail sales, culinary arts, fisheries (and) transportation logistics.”49

Doug Lipton, senior research economist at NOAA Fisheries, says that oyster aquaculture is a bright spot in the industry in terms of attracting younger workers. “You see more young people getting into oyster aquaculture. This is just an observation, but it was doom and gloom a couple years ago and there are more optimism and opportunities now.”50

There have been some reports of watermen successfully transitioning to oyster aquaculture as a way to make a living. From 1997 to 2010, the VMRC trained about 130 watermen in oyster aquaculture. One waterman spoke about his aquaculture endeavors to the Chesapeake Bay Journal, “I haven’t looked back one second since I started looking at what we got here .… The oysters are growing. The market is incredible. And it gives us an opportunity to still be watermen and live in the traditions we grew up in.”51

Additional Potential Sources of Income

In addition to the potential alternative and supplemental sources of income detailed above, experts in the field cite other sources of income for today’s watermen. When harvests are particularly low, watermen often haul their boats out of the water and work construction.52 The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the 2015 median hourly wage for construction trades workers is $19.72, which corresponds to an average annual wage of $46,290.53 Working on tugboats is also a popular source of income among watermen during the offseason, as it is a relatively well-paying option with a high degree of skills transference.

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Next: Conclusion
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