Stuart Vorphal: Oh, I ain't nothing to it.

I start working on this gear about middle of February.

I catch my first fish about last week in April.

You work about two months on the gear just to get it ready.

Then you take what you get.

You have good years, you have bad years.

I'm going to say them sea robins.

Oh, nice red sea robins.

Red robin goes bob bob bobbing along .

I'm going to bob him.

Bob him right in the boat .

I don't work for any unions.

I don't have any sick pay.

I don't have any vacation time.

None of that trash, just go to work.

That's all.

I'll get this thing back down.

[singing] ♪ My Daddy was a Bayman ♪ right here in Springs.

♪ ♪ on Fireplace Road.

♪ ♪ Never had much school, but he knew a few things.

♪ ♪ on Fireplace Road.

♪ ♪ Never had much business up across the tracks.

♪ ♪ with the highfalutin and the Cadillacs.

♪ ♪ Just sold his catch and he came right back ♪ ♪ on Fireplace Road.

♪ ♪ When the sun comes up on a brand new day, ♪ ♪ and you see them boats out on Gardiner's bay, ♪ ♪ well wave goodbye to a long tradition, ♪ ♪ life spent raking and farming and fishing,.

♪ ♪ and holding on is a man's ambition.

♪ ♪ on Fireplace Road.

♪ Brent Bennet: The first time I ever went fishing, I went to a pound trap.

That's what I do now.

It's like beginning of my life, probably going to be the end of my life.

I started fishing full time when I was 16-years-old.

I quit school and went fishing full time.

The principal said to me, "You'll be sorry. "

I said, "I don't think so.

You can't teach me what I want to know."

I've been fishing ever since.

The only time I didn't fish was only two years that when I was in the army, when I was drafted.

Actually, I did fish those years, too, because whenever I got a chance, I came home on leave, went fishing.

You hear people all the time complaining about their job.

This is not a job.

This is just a way of life.

I know a lot of fishermen that have done a lot of other jobs on the side, especially when fishing was poor.

But I've always made it go, whatever I had to do, clamming, scalloping, gill netting and hand lining.

You don't consider it a job.

It's just what you do.

It's your life.

Not too many people can say that.

They've done what they loved all their life.

I am one of the old bubbies, I guess.

I'm kind of a new Bonacker, because I only been here 54 years.

Bonac we used to call this Bonac Springs.

It was Accabonac.

That's where it come from Accabonic Harbor.

Hugh R. King: Springs was part of the early history of the town of East Hampton.

Hugh R.King: First of all, the town was not settled in 1648.

Because the Montauketts were here already.

That's the first thing we got to remember.

The first family settled right around the green, right in the village, where the town pond is and the cemetery is.

Then immediately, they started trekking down to Accabonic because of the salt hay that was down here, they used that for bedding, for animals and feed at times.

It was small farming, fishing, raising animals.

I think that's where Springs began.

You see, in the town records, the road to Accabonic or the trip down to Accabonic.

They called them the Bonackers.

Originally, it was not a term of endearment.

It was a term of derision.

Coming down from Bonac Creek and then they come up to town in their clothes that don't look like ours.

It was a hard knock life.

Well, the definition has changed.

A Bonacker is a revered term now.

There's so many people.

People of Montauk and Amagansett, they're not real Bonackers because they didn't grow around Bonac Creek, but that's gone now.

Prudence Talmage Hamilton Carabine: Being a Bonacker means to me that I know who I am.

I know the people from whom I came, and there were a lot of them.

I have 3,200 cousins here in East Hampton.

Deanna Tikkanen: My mom would say when you go to school, be careful of what you say and who you say it to because you may be related.

Albert Lester: My grandmother told me a couple times, the second boat, whatever that means.

We came on a second boat.

Whether it was a second trip to the Mayflower over here or whether it was a second boat on the Mayflower or whatever.

Bonackers, they say the people from Springs, but we all lived, related, interrelated and everything.

So I'm a Bonacker.

Definitely a Bonacker.

Debra Miller Gates: You have to be born and raised in East Hampton.

One of your parents has to have been born here.

My dad was born here.

So yes, I'm a true Bonacker.

Charles D. Niggles: I'm not a true Bonacker.

I'm from Wainscott.

It's East Hampton town, but I'm still considered an outsider in East Hampton.

Kelly A. Lester: Back in the day, they're like, "Oh, the Bonackers are from Springs."

That's how it was dubbed.

I'm a Posey Lester.

I'm a part of the Lester tribe from Amagansett.

Bonackers are from Springs.

John Barley Dunne: It's basically a whole water based culture.

People going out, getting their waders on, getting into their boats, going out to the flats, harvesting whether it's their dinner or it's something they're making a living on.

There's a whole culture behind that.

Will Lester Bennet: I consider myself a Bayman.

Yes, I'm from Bonac.

Steven Niggles: How it was always portrayed to me was, your family history or traditions gave you the opportunity to be Bonacker.

Billy Carman: I think a Bonacker is like an East Hampton fisherman.

An East Hampton fisherman that went to East Hampton High School?

Will Lester Bennet: In the high school and everything else like that, they call their kids the Bonackers, the Bonac Football Team and stuff like that.

Steven Niggles: If you grew up, missing school on the first day of scallop season.

That's a good example.

You probably can call yourself a Bonacker.

Will Lester Bennet: I don't really think, a Bonacker is in the fishing world realistically.

I don't know.

Steven Niggles: You miss school from the first day of hunting season again.

Then once you get into high school, it translates to you drive a pickup truck do you take tech class.

Billy Carman: We all drove Bonacker trucks to East Hampton High School.

We all went fishing right after school and that's my definition of a Bonacker.

Hugh R.King: See, I didn't grow up in this experience.

I grew up in Amagansett, which is different.

Still, it was local.

Brent Bennet: Actually, I grew up in Poseyville which was Amagansett.

To me, a Bonacker would be somebody who lived here their whole life , not somebody moved here.

You know what I mean?

Then they want to claim they're Bonacker, well.

Hugh R.King: I'm a local.

I'm an aspiring Bonacker.

That's what you say.

Brent Bennet: Well, the old bubbies I am.

You call it bubbies.

Hugh R.King: Yes yes, bub.

Well, that's one of the most famous expressions.

Yes yes, bub?

Yeah.

Yes yes, bub.

It's just the saying yes, friend.

I don't know.

Albert Lester: You called everybody, bub.

Everybody was bub.

They had these sayings, how be you bub.

Instead of saying, how are you?

How you doing?

They'd say, how be you bub?

If someone's acting a little wild, they'd say, well, that guys, he's so far offshore you can hear one hand clap.

Hugh R.King: They don't say it upstreet.

That's for sure.

Albert Lester: Hanging on the walls, his clam hooks is here.

Now, this one here, I think was my father's, over here on this, I don't know if you can even see it because I got so much junk on it.

But this one was here, I think was my grandfather's.

They called her an eagle claw because of the shape of the claws.

We wen't clamming, and we sold them.

It was like hunting for treasure.

You go crazy, that's all you want to do is go clamming.

One day, I found that one shell.

Do you see how this is the blue in it?

They have the purple edge on them.

See the dark.

I always call that the wampum part, I don't know what.

But this was a violet color.

It was pretty, and it was on my grandmother's property down "Salt Hole Dreens".

I took that shell, and I think I took stones and carved it.

Just cut it out and made a cross.

I look for something in it, if I see something in it, and then all I got to do is cut it out.

You can make a horse's head and use this for his mane.

You cut this you cut that off there, you can see a horse in there, right?

I think I got better as the years went on .

I got more creative, but it's like anything you learn.

As you're going, you learn.

I could go down, and I don't know, I'd be downstairs and it'd be in the morning and be carving and all of a sudden, it'd be night, I'd get into it.

It's like reading a book.

You know what I mean?

You don't stop.

Swampa's Wampum, I say they call me Swampa because I was raised in the swamp.

This is my favorite, the eagle.

Shane Weeks: Today, a lot of people make wampum indigenous and non indigenous.

I think Albie is a good artist, and he's been able to capture the essence of the clamshells.

That's interesting to see the evolution that wampum has gone through.

It's an art form.

This belt, this is the traditional way that it really was used.

It's not even an art, really.

It's a document.

The indigenous colonial relationship was controversial.

We all know the story of Thanksgiving and how Native Americans helped the settlers first survive here, which is absolutely true.

Most of the modern day fishing techniques are actually traditional fishing techniques.

Long lining, rod and reel, gill nets, pound traps, seine nets.

All of those techniques are still used today.

When the colonists first got here, they would say that the waters here were boiling with whales, you could almost just throw a rock out and catch whale.

There were so many.

Colonists saw the opportunity to industrialize whaling.

It became so profitable that by the end of the 1700s, the Atlantic had almost been completely outfished of whales.

It was understood in our teachings that everything is freely given by the Earth.

Everything is freely given by the creator.

All you have to do is just go out there and work for it.

It's not somebody else's right to control how you use the resources.

First, the people here, they understood the connection, they understood the balance, but when the settlers got here, it was all about driving the industry.

How do we create money out of this?

I've worked in the fishing industry.

I grew up clamming, hunting, fishing.

When you're out there, you're able to see the resources.

You're able to see how many fish are really out there.

There has to be a further understanding of what balance looks like and what sustainability looks like.

There has to be a way for people who are fishing to be able to maintain a livelihood, but also at the same time, how to utilize the resources smarter, where to place the laws and how to structure the laws.

The fishermen understand that as well that there could be better laws to create better practices to be able to use the resources more sustainably.

Right now there's not.

Brent Bennet: This is a 16 foot trap.

The idea is that they're going to find the leader and they're going to follow it all, and they're going to go into the inner pound.

Some will swim straight in through the funnel.

Some will mill around in there, they call the inner pound because they circle around in there.

It's like a fence.

If you say you was walking along and you run into a fence, so you want to go around it.

You're going to walk past it.

That's the leader.

But on the end, there's little corral or something .

The idea is to lead them, make the fish do that in through the funnel where it narrows down into the box.

The reason for having the funnel narrow is so they can't find their way out as easy.

This is a measuring board, and I have measurements on here.

This is the smallest, about the smallest you can keep, 26 inch.

It's a little over, if you notice.

This one is about the largest.

The limit is 38 inches, which this board is, and he's just under that.

He makes it.

If he was another half inch longer, he would have been too big.

Well, the state regulates the size now.

Well, they always did, but yeah.

Ask me the reasons why, I really don't know why they do it, other than they want to control the amount of catch, I guess.

There's plenty of fish around.

The only problem with the limits, we weren't allowed to bring anything home, other than that.

That was the worst part.

When we catch them, we're not allowed to bring them in, and when we're not catching them, then they raise the limits.

That's the way it goes, I guess.

That's today's world.

I think it just keeps evolving and changes and you just have to keep adapting to it.

That's all you can do.

As far as inshore fisheries, it's almost pretty much over with.

There's only a few left doing it because you can't make a living doing it because it's too hard.

I don't do it for the money part anymore because my children have been through school, got them taken care of, they're on their own.

It's just me now, so I just fish because I love to fish.

That's my thing.

Arnold Leo: Back in the mid 80s, I had been working for Grove Press.

Grove was making huge amounts of money, but the owner was spending even more.

We all got fired and I came out here to East Hampton.

At least I had a cottage here.

I had been very interested in what the East Hampton Baymen were doing about speaking up at town meetings and writing letters, and so out of curiosity, I decided I would go to an East Hampton Baymen's meeting.

People like Jimmy Reutershan and Milt Miller had begun to fight with the town trustees about development that was being permitted on the harbors and the wetlands.

They were so friendly and they welcomed me right in.

In those days, a Baymen's meeting would have 25, 30 guys.

Of course, some of them were there because there was always free beer at the end of the meeting.

There was a former retired insurance man who had been acting as the secretary, but he really was fed up with it.

One day, he points to me, Arnold can be your secretary.

How to deal with contaminants in fish.

There's been no cooperation whatsoever with the commercial fishermen.

It became clear that the Baymen's community was suffering from regulations that were too damaging to their traditional fisheries.

Adelaide de Menil, a great believer in the worker with a unbelievably lovely home up on the dunes in Amagansett.

She had been introduced to some of the Baymen by Doug Kuntz, a photographer.

Adelaide decided to sponsor a writer Peter Matthiessen to do a book.

Men's Lives.

From Sir Walter Scott, "It's No Fish You're Buying - it's Men's Lives."

She also engaged about ten major photographers to come out and record the Baymen's life and work.

Who are the Baymen?

What's the history?

What are the problems?

She was just so impressed by the tradition, the communal spirit that was involved in these Baymen fisheries.

Don Eames, Jr.: I never read Men's Lives until about a year ago.

I've had the book since Peter wrote it.

Couldn't read it.

Picked it up a dozen times or more and finally forced myself.

You got to read this book.

Read it in a day.

It's an easy read.

I knew everything in it.

A lot of it, I'm in it.

A lot of it is me.

I can reiterate those words over and over again.

The day in the boat with Peter Matthiessen, I was loading the net and he's helping me load the net, and we're talking.

Then, you know, years later, I'm reading about that conversation in the book.

This, it's unique.

Peter Matthiessen: Actually, the story I like the best is the one that's at the very end of Men's Lives.

One of them I'm talking to Milt Miller about Lindy Havens' funeral.

He drowned, unfortunately, over on the off the northwest woods there in East Hampton.

Arnold Leo: There was a city boy who got fishing with Lindy.

They were out scalloping, and the boy fell overboard.

The boy couldn't swim.

Lindy jumped in and Lindy couldn't swim, and they both drowned.

But the fact that Lindy went in after him, that's what community meant.

Don Eames, Jr.: I fished right up until about '84 or '85.

I was a commercial fisherman.

Everybody drives down to the ocean in the morning to make sure, look and see what's going on.

It used to be a real big gathering place for all of us.

Five or six haul seine crews, 30 guys, 35 guys amongst all of them, and a lot of mornings, there'd be 35 or 40 of us.

The ocean's rough, we couldn't fish.

We would just hang out, talk.

What are we going to do?

Where are you think going to go?

Tell stories.

All the things that you build a community and a relationship out of.

Arnold Leo: It became clear there was an overwhelming superiority of the recreational fisheries.

In particular, in the striped bass fishery, the commercial guys, we got screwed worse and worse and worse.

Bob Bendick: We had to curtail the harvest because the fish were not reproducing effectively, regardless of what the reason was.

Byron Young: State policy says that we recognize the recreational and commercial use of all species were appropriate, but the primary goal is to maintain those stocks.

If we have to restrict human use of a stock to preserve it, we will.

Danny King: But if you take away the bass , that's a money fish.

We get like anywhere from $1.50 to $3 a pound for bass.

MALE_1: If they put a ban on striped bass, you know what's going to happen.

They'll never take that ban off.

They put that ban on the fish, they'll never take it off.

MALE_2: We're not talking about the ban, I'm talking about pollution.

MALE_1: Anything.

They're going to ban the fishing because of the pollution.

MALE_2: Yes.

MALE_1: Big deal.

If they ban the fishing now and they stop the pollution ten years down the road, you're never going to get back in that fishery.

You're all done.

Because the sportsmen's lobby in this country is too damn strong for us to do anything if we don't do it now.

No way.

They're just going to wipe us out completely and take away something that's been here when the first settlers came to this country.

Arnold Leo: We had to demonstrate to the public the importance of striped bass.

I get this call out of the blue.

He says, Arnold, this is Billy Joel.

What can I do to help you?

To get attention, I came up with the idea of a protest.

We feel that we have no other recourse.

We are willing to break the law to protest what has become an intolerable injustice as we watch this fishing community die before our eyes.

MALE_3: These people have really defined the essence of what this part of the world is, and that's why I'm going to support them in whatever way I can.

Arnold Leo: Danny King's crew launched off and they caught some bass.

Child: Now that is a bass.

Arnold Leo: Billy Joel had agreed that he would get arrested with us for illegally taking striped bass.

It was incredibly effective.

We got all kinds of media coverage and could make our point about how important the striped bass was to the future of the Baymen's community.

Reporter: Billy, is this an arrest you're proud of?

Billy Joel: Well, I'm never proud to be arrested.

I had to do something.

It's just symbolic really.

Hope it helps.

Arnold Leo: What we managed to do was fight a holding battle.

We kept losing, but we didn't lose everything.

We'd lose little by little by little.

Don Eames, Jr.: Arnold did everything he could to get everybody what they deserved, let alone, try to preserve our livelihoods.

I'm a small town guy from a small town in Amagansett, grew up a commercial fisherman, and now I sell steel for a global steel distributor in the oil and gas industry.

I really feel bad that I couldn't pass that down to my son.

It bothers me a lot.

But I'm glad that he went as much as he did, and I think he's a better kid for it.

I think he's a better person for it.

I think somewhere along the line that we embedded something in him about a good, clean living, I think that'll stay with him forever.

When I come back here to Amagansett in East Hampton, I look around and I'm like, wow.

I wonder how the kids do it.

They're struggling.

It's hard.

James Bennett: My family has always been clammers.

Just pass it down from one generation to the next.

My grandfather taught my father, his father taught him, so on and so forth.

When my grandfather was fishing, you didn't need a fishing license.

When it was my dad's turn or my uncle's turn, they had to get a fishing license.

Now, it's my turn and the state won't give me a fishing license.

They give me a commercial clam permit, and I use it to the best of my ability.

But I just I don't see it getting better, and I don't see the fishing industry sustaining the next 20 years.

I don't see it.

As you can see, it's not your everyday job.

You got to work at it.

But at the end of the week, end of the month, there's a paycheck in it.

You can't live beyond your means.

When I was a kid coming up, you couldn't see to the bottom of any harbor, and that's because there was grass on the bottom of the harbor, the eelgrass, the sputnik grass, and you couldn't see to the bottom.

You might be eight foot of water, six foot of water, you knew the bottom was there, but it was covered with grass.

Now you go out here, there's no eelgrass.

Very little rock weed.

I think it's attributed to the fertilizers that are being dumped in the harbor from the lawns surrounding the harbor.

The pollution of the water, the quality of water is not the same.

The thing that I see has changed so much is the town we live in, really.

When my dad's grown up in the '50s and '60s, it was a community of people who worked and lived together.

Now, we're a community of people who are second home owners here.

We need those people to buy our fish, but they don't recognize who we are and the community we once were.

This is where we live, this is not where we come to get away from the hustle and bustle.

We live in the hustle and bustle.

The thing that is overlooked is our sense of pride and our sense of community, our way of life, our everyday struggles.

People are coming more and more every day.

It's a beautiful place to live.

Undoubtedly, one of the most beautifulest places on Earth.

For us, we're just trying to keep it that way.

Keep it simple.

This is our office, this is what we do.

Before long, we won't even be able to do this.

I have a feeling.

It's hard.

It's hard to see people who you've known your whole life, having to move away, get out.

When I was a kid growing up, I never thought I would ever think about leaving, never.

Now every day, I'm like, what am I still doing here?

Hopefully one day, one day I'll just look at the wife and say, let's go.

But it's not always greener on the other side, either.

But unfortunately, I can't stay here.

Debra Miller Gates: We'll walk over this way and make a loop.

This is my 1951 Chevy that I've had for about eight years now, and I drive it every day.

Elsie, Oreo.

These are Elsie and Oreo, and they are three-years-old.

They're a Shropshire and Scottish blackface mix.

This is just one of my deer proof gardens.

I grow rhubarb.

My grandpa always used to grow rhubarb because my grandmother liked it.

I have some lettuce over in a cold frame that my husband just built me this winter.

It keeps getting bigger.

It started out as a little tiny thing, and then I just keep pulling it out a little bit more and a little bit more.

My husband built this greenhouse for me.

Matter of fact, all these small buildings that you see, the barn, everything my husband built.

Patchy, come on, Patch.

This horse right here is the one, he's 38-years-old.

That's why he looks a little bit thin, and he's shedding.

But if you were as old as him.

My dad and I used to ride horses all the time, and my grandfather and I used to ride.

When I was about five, he had me on a horse.

Then he got into boarding horses, and for a while, we had about 30 horses that we boarded.

Some would only come from the summer from Belmont race track and Aqueduct.

They bring him out here to graze.

I'm just going to catch Patchy so he can hang out with us a little bit.

Come here, Patch.

This area here, you can look over, and there's a gate over there and that fence back there.

That's the last of my family property.

Altogether, the field is about 4.5 acres, and our house is about an acre.

All totals about five acres, which is all that's left of the family property, Miller property.

I think it was 1649, if I remember, there was a governor delegated land to different families in different areas, and my family was one of them, and they had parcels all over the place.

My great grandfather moved next door, and that's where my grandfather and all his brothers and sisters grew up.

This was all of their land.

It went all the way over there and all the way in the back.

Then as they got older, they decided to sell it.

Then it got split up, and that's how we got the very last piece.

When my mom passed away, she left her house to my sister and I.

We rented it out for a couple years.

All we were really making on the rental was enough to pay the taxes.

The taxes kept getting higher, and so we decided to sell, but we wanted to do something that my dad would really like.

Also, I needed the land because of my animals.

We looked into selling it to the community preservation, and they were quite pleased.

We sold it to them, so this whole area here will remain open.

There's still quite a few Bennetts, the fishermen.

They're still here.

But I know a lot of my classmates and stuff and some of the people I work with, they want to leave.

They feel like they're being pushed out.

You know what?

I just think that if everybody had just put a firm foot down and not let people come in and push us out like that, I will never, ever leave here.

Nobody will ever force me to.

This will always remain the way it is.

Nobody's going to get me out of here.

Even after I pass on, this will never be in the hands of a city person because they will not respect it.

First thing they would do would be to tear everything down.

Then they put in a giant swimming pool and a McMansion, and I couldn't have the thought of that happening here.

I couldn't ever even move to another section because my feet are right here, knowing this has always been my family's property.

How could somebody that had that leave and uproot even to another spot?

It's right here.

I'll be here forever, one way or another.

Charles D. Niggles: I consider myself a fisherman and a farmer.

If I had to choose once because I've had guys ask me, what do I prefer better than the other?

I prefer both of them.

I can't pick one or the other.

When the ground is plowed, stuff starts to germinate, and then you look at the stuff grow and you pick a nice, beautiful red tomato.

It's a lot of self satisfaction that I got it from the dirt, from the seed right on up to you eating it.

The same as fishing, you go out, you go out in the water.

This is where I'm going to set my net.

Hopefully, I catch some.

Next morning, the Good Lord, if there's fish in the nets, I'm good.

Now there's a lot of people I'm going to feed from that.

I could survive on either one of them one way or the other, and I like that.

I like that feeling that if the stock market crashed tomorrow, I would survive.

Not a problem.

I would feed my family.

I don't know if a lot of people can say that.

It's a different way of life.

I'm 65, and I'm at the younger end of most of the guys.

Brent is in his '80s.

We just can't last.

Don't last forever.

This is where stuff gets stored, pulled out in the springtime.

Hey, get out of here.

Why do you think this is so wonderful?

My father in law who ran this farm, Harold Snyder, he was farming, and he was also fishing.

But at that time, we could purchase any license that we wanted.

That's since changed, and that's where the issues are coming into effect now on the next generation.

To get the license, you have to earn $15,000 a year for three years or a total of $45,000 in one year.

I'm fishing two traps.

My checks were coming out just under $400 a day.

I can't get out every day, the wind blows.

I can't get out every day.

I'm not making enough money to support another person to come with me.

He can't make the money to get the $15,000.

He can't even get started, is what it is.

This is where some of the regulations are going to have to change.

Nobody new can get it.

You can get these licenses handed down if you're direct member of the family.

Right now, my boys have licenses.

They see all the unpaid time that I put into it.

Then they're saying, dad, you're crazy, all that stuff.

Why do that?

I could go cut three lawns and make that amount of money, and nobody in East Hampton is ready to jump into it because it costs a lot to buy the boats, the trailers, the truck.

You need a lot of equipment to do this work.

The gear is expensive.

It's 100 hours to make the net.

There's two days worth of painting the poles.

There's a lot of getting the poles, getting the permission to cut the poles, hanging in there, there's no benefits in this.

We pay for a farmer and a fisherman, all my health insurance I pay for.

That's where we're losing the generations and you have to be raised like that.

James Niggles: Well, I like to fish as more of as my hobby, not really a commercial fishing.

Here, I mainly do the seeding for all the plants.

This is what I like to do.

Is my favorite part of the whole process.

To see everything go from the seed to a full plant, that's the nice part.

That's what I like about it.

It's good to have dirt in your life.

It reminds you a little bit where you came from, and it's a good natural feeling.

I love the dirt here on the farm.

It gets everywhere, but it helps everything grow.

It's given us everything we have, so got to respect it for that.

I'm a huge history guy, I love history.

The farm is a tricentennial farm.

It's nine generations in the Lester family line.

I don't know if I'll be the one to keep it going.

I doubt it, honestly.

I'm probably not the direction I'll be heading in, but I'd like to see this land get agroed so that it would stay as agricultural land.

That would probably be my thing for it.

But to see me here farming the land, I just I don't see it.

It's not the interest I have in it.

Steven Niggles: When I said I grew up on a farm, most people found that very interesting or hard to believe in East Hampton.

This literally was my family's homestead.

It wasn't like we came here and purchased this and wanted to do what we're doing now.

It's just evolved.

I'm fortunate with the police department, I have a set schedule, so I'm able to work this job around that schedule.

I don't view it as I have one job and I can't do another job.

This still interests me.

I feel that it will get passed along, and, well, then I'll take over the operation.

I've seen in my lifetime, that's how it works.

East Hampton, from my perspective of it, have always needed outside people to come here to support this type of community.

That comes with the good and the bad.

I don't want it to sound like it's a terrible thing that things have changed, and it's just the way I'll say the world works.

It's increased the amount of people.

There's only a finite amount of resources here.

Things are going to be more expensive.

Definitely, as I grow older, I really take it not for granted.

Charles D. Niggles: I'm fortunate right here at round swamp.

What I grow, I utilize 90% of it.

Meaning if all my number 1 produce goes over the counter, my number 2 stuff gets cooked.

My wife, Lisa, is a main reason how we've evolved into the prepared food end of this business.

I can sell a head of lettuce for three dollars or I can have it cleaned and sell a salad with a little bit of dressing in it and get three times the price for it.

People will buy the salad, not the head.

On the customer end of it, time is the biggest commodity that they have.

This is the next generation that a lot of stuff has changed, and we have to go along with it.

There's no fighting it.

Kelly A. Lester: Summer times with dad, we're always fishing with him.

It's one of those things you say it's in your blood.

I quit school just to go fishing, and I'll never forget the first time I went offshore, it was so rough and I'm watching these guys on deck, and all the baskets are washing over and fish are washing over, and I'm like, I couldn't even see.

I didn't even know how these guys were even standing up.

I couldn't figure it out.

I'm like, oh, my God, then I was so seasick.

They figured I would never go again, but I loved it.

My grandfather was Bill Lester and he was known as a Posey Lester.

My great grandfather used to wear a posey in his his hat or something on the Sundays to go to church.

That's what they say.

They lived down the road across highway down here by Brent's.

Brent's was owned by Brent Bennett, his dad.

This whole road was all fishermen or family members.

Aunt Edie lived right around the corner.

Avonda lived two houses down.

The Havens lived a couple of houses down.

We knew everybody.

We hardly know our neighbors anymore.

Seventy percent of my family had sold and moved out of here because they could no longer afford to live here.

I always said I was one of those people that I would never sell and move, but I'm thinking about it, too.

I made more money back then than I do now.

Well, when you're young and you're making lots of money, you don't think about the future.

That's what I keep trying to explain to my son that he really needs to think about getting a full time job because there's really no career in fishing.

You're young now and you're making all this money, and it all looks really good.

But eventually, you're going to get older, and it's going to catch up to you.

I said, go become a police officer.

That'd be a good job for him.

Will Lester Bennett: To be a commercial fisherman, you got to be a criminal.

You're better off being a murderer or a drug dealer than this day and age to be a commercial fisherman.

To go and make a day's pay, basically breaking the law with something every single day going to work or if you realize it or not, how many fish you're allowed, the size of the fish you're allowed, when you're allowed to fish, pretty much you have to be up to date with everything every single day.

It is a hard way to make a living.

I like it for that reason.

There's nothing else that's made me as happy as I ever been before.

You're away from everyone.

You're away from the chaotic things of this place.

Every direction you look, you don't have to look at a person.

You're in your own peace of mind.

I get done working, I go grab a fishing rod and go back fishing.

I don't understand why I do it.

It's worse than a drug addiction.

I'll tell you that.

It's an expensive one.

I try to hunt every single day of the duck season.

Duck season's usually 60 days long, and if I miss one day, it's very strange.

It's something I love to do, and there's not much that gets in between me and the duck.

I do a lot of hunting over top of my grandfather's decoys that he does carve, which is very, very meaningful to me.

The way he carves his birds and the way he paints his birds, they're not fully detailed.

They don't look exactly realistic, but that's just his technique and that's his style of carving.

My grandfather has shown me how to carve, how to paint and everything else.

I want to get into learning it.

I would love to do it myself.

I don't have the patience for it.

Billy "The Kid" Carman: I've had Will hundreds of miles offshore gillnetting monkfish when he was 10-years-old.

Me and Will just pretty much done it all.

He's jumping into boots right behind us all.

Years ago when I wanted to go fishing with this person, that person, my old man said, don't pay my son.

I don't want to be a fisherman.

But once it's in your blood, it's in your blood.

My father also caught clams and oysters.

It's not that bountiful anymore, not enough natural, wild sets coming up.

Probably getting into aquaculture a little bit, not as a full time job, but just to subsidize some of the other income.

It's changed so much.

John Barley Dunne: Our overall mission is basically to grow as many shellfish every year as possible, seed them out onto the bottom.

The idea is basically start early, just like land-based greenhouses do to get their seedlings up, get as many shellfish grown to as large a size as possible in one season, seed them out onto public bottom so that they're available for public harvest, both commercial and recreational, and they're seeded sub-market size.

While they're growing to market size, they're filtering the water, providing habitat, hopefully spawning and creating more shellfish.

We do hard clams, Eastern oysters, bay scallops, the three main commercial species of the East End.

A lot of the areas that we do seed were originally suggested by the old timers, the folks that knew the Bay bottom better than anybody.

In the economy out here in East Hampton, one of the most expensive places to live, it's really hard to make a living in the hunter gatherer lifestyle like they used to be able to do out here.

It's just too expensive.

Aquaculture could help sustain the lifestyle.

I think pivoting to farming, it's sacrosanct to say, almost.

Maybe that pivot to farming is the way.

Really, if you think about it, people that work the water are the most equipped to make that pivot.

Amanda Jones: Our slogan is, respect the ocean, harvest the bounty, feed the people.

I think that's what the culture is, is if you respect the ocean, she'll respect you back and give you what you need to survive.

We have three generations of fishermen on the dock.

Those guys are tough.

They fish I would say 350 days a year, if not more.

If that boat's tied to the dock, you know that the weather's absolutely horrendous.

In here, I mostly send the fish that everybody catches in Montauk to the city or to various cities, different buyers, different dealers, and try to get the best price.

Also to Dock to Dish, we try to keep as much local as we can.

K.C Boyle: Dock to Dish is a wholesale fish company that sources directly from fishermen.

It's an old-fashioned model.

It's as simple as meeting the fishermen at the dock, packing in their van, and bringing the fish as quickly as possible to restaurants and customers.

The goal is simple for the fishermen, we want to pay them a better wage for local fish.

Get as much local fish on local plates as possible.

It's that simple.

Hundred percent is probably not realistic, but that's ultimately what we're striving to do.

We'll absolutely be working with all the bonackers and baymen going out fishing for 12 hours and then doing a two hour round trip drive to Montauk.

This adds another step to the process.

But if we can take on that burden and go to them, it's that much easier.

Amanda Jones: Ninety percent of New York State's seafood is imported from other countries because it's cheaper to buy it from overseas than it is to buy it from local US fishermen that are catching it in our waters.

The next generations coming up are so much more health conscious than ours, and they want organic.

They want farm to table.

They want to know where their food's coming from.

I think that slowly over time, it is going to get better.

I just think it's going to be long and slow.

I would say that my kids going into it is inevitable.

I think to some degree, they'll always be a part of it in some sense, because it's more cultural than it is a job.

We're not going to be able to rely on the market the way that our fathers and grandfathers did.

I think that the market is not it for our generation.

We have to think outside the box whether that's start canning or processing here.

We're just trying to roll with the punches because we get hit from every direction, and it's a tradition.

We're trying to keep it around.

Hugh R. King: Now, isn't this a beautiful place to live, isn't it?

You can go down the ocean, look out at that ocean anytime.

You can take a canoe and paddle around Accabonac.

We live in a very beautiful place.

It's just not as beautiful as can be.

But why is everybody here?

They're not going to Queens for the summer.

They're coming here.

We're a victim of our own virtue.

We kept this place and tried to keep it and tried to keep it, and now other people get to enjoy it, which is now diminishing it in so many ways.

What's going to happen?

It's disappearing.

It has disappeared.

It's going to disappear.

What can be done?

Just let the people who are doing it keep doing it, and if their children don't want to do it, it'll be over.

But the Bonackers are never going to go away.

They don't always have to be here to talk about them or to study them or to revere them.

That's enough of preaching.

Will Lester Bennett: I wish I was born 60 years ago.

I wish I wasn't born in this day and age.

I wish I got to see the heyday back in the day when you can go to work and go make a living and not have to be the bad guy to go put some food on someone's plate at the end of the day.

You're just trying to feed America at the end of the day, is what I look at it as I'm trying to put fresh fish on someone's plate.

I'll fish till the day I die because I have no retirement.

I have no nothing.

The day I stop making a paycheck is probably the day I'll be in the ground.

Nancy Atlas: Well, my father, he is a fisherman.

And my momma she beats her own drum.

And they raised me up out in Lazy Point, with sand and the sea and the sun.

There was an old dirt road with no telephones, and at night it would get kind of still.

And I can still recall the sound of it all.

Right down to the lone whipperwill.

These times are changing fast.

Oh, but I know what is true.

So let this world turn mad, because that's when I turn to you.

The tides are calling my name.

The red buoy bells being rung.

I'm leaving it all behind.

I'm making an East End Run.

I'm leaving it all behind.

I'm making an East End Run.