{"id":318911,"date":"2025-10-20T15:53:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T15:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/318911\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T15:53:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T15:53:19","slug":"a-ct-way-of-life-disappeared-overnight-it-was-done-ended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/318911\/","title":{"rendered":"A CT way of life disappeared. ‘Overnight, it was done…ended"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bart Mansi used to haul a thousand pounds of lobster<\/a> a day. Now he sets out just a couple dozen traps, out of curiosity \u2014 or force of habit \u2014 and he\u2019s lucky to catch 10 lobsters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been doing it all my life. I gotta see for myself,\u201d he said. \u201cBut as far as trying to make a living, you can\u2019t do it, not any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mansi converted his lobster wholesale facility on the dock in Guilford into a restaurant in the early 2000s. In the upstairs office on a sunny September morning, there are a few reminders of the life he used to lead: a \u201cCaptain\u2019s Quarters\u201d sign, framed photos from his lobstering heyday, the mast of his son\u2019s fishing boat swaying gently out the window.<\/p>\n

His eyes lit up as he recalled the good days. \u201cWe saw a lot of lobsters, a real lot of lobsters,\u201d Mansi said.<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer lobsterman Bart Mansi sits in his office on the second story of the Guilford Lobster Pound on Sept. 3, 2025. (Dana Edwards \/ CT Mirror)<\/p>\n

In the 1980s and \u201990s, Mansi<\/a> was making a killing, along with the roughly 1,200 commercial lobstermen on Long Island Sound. The Sound was the\u00a0third most-productive lobster fishery in the country, with\u00a010 million pounds of lobster landings at its peak in 1998, including 3.8 million pounds in Connecticut.<\/p>\n

But in the fall of 1999, lobstermen pulled up traps filled with limp, sickly lobsters, and soon after, hardly any lobsters at all. It was an unprecedented mortality event, and the lobster population never recovered.\u00a0Connecticut saw only 181,000 pounds of lobster landings in 2024, less than 5% of the 1998 peak.\u00a0Now most seafood restaurants in the state \u2014 including Mansi\u2019s \u2014 import lobster from Maine or Canada.<\/p>\n

The catastrophic die-off is still an emotional subject for Mansi and so many former lobstermen. In addition to the painful memory of losing their livelihoods practically overnight, resentment lingers about how it happened.\u00a0The scientific consensus\u00a0is that warming waters,<\/a> and an epidemic of a crustacean disease called paramoebiasis, were the primary culprits \u2014 and that pesticides used to combat West Nile virus may have had an additional effect.<\/p>\n

But the catastrophe was complex and unprecedented<\/a>, and not all scientists agree on which factors were the most significant. The lobstermen almost unanimously blame the pesticides, and they feel betrayed by the chemical manufacturers, the marine scientists, and the government \u2014 whose tightening regulations they resented and whose financial assistance they found inadequate.<\/p>\n

In the early 2000s, as they fought for accountability and answers, the lobstermen had no choice but to adapt to the new reality. Some switched to fishing, clamming or catching conch, but most sold their boats and left the fishing docks behind entirely.<\/p>\n

Now there are no full-time commercial lobstermen left in Connecticut.<\/p>\n

But there are still a few part-timers. In the southeasternmost corner of the state, the Stonington port is home to seven active lobster boats. Other than one boat in New London, Stonington is the last bastion of commercial lobstering in Connecticut. Roddy Grimshaw is one of the few in Stonington still at it, a man of 29 who goes lobstering with his dad and a small crew a few days a week.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just lobstering that\u2019s in decline \u2014 all forms of commercial fishing are under threat as luxury development supplants the docks once home to a vibrant blue-collar fishing culture.<\/p>\n

Grimshaw put it this way: \u201cThe way I see it, if we don\u2019t stay active \u2026 this will become just another yacht club.\u201d<\/p>\n

The heyday<\/p>\n

Mansi has fond memories of fishing with his family as a kid growing up in East Haven in the late 1960s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just loved being out on the water, the freedom,\u201d he said. At that time,\u00a0the Connecticut lobster industry was picking up steam after a decades-long lull around the turn of the century.\u00a0His dad wasn\u2019t a lobsterman, more of a recreational fisherman, but, eyeing the hauls of lobstermen down at the docks, he decided to give it a shot. He started working on a friend\u2019s father\u2019s lobster boat while he was in high school in the 1970s. Then, in 1983, he bought his own boat, the\u00a0Jani M.\u2014 named after his wife \u2014 and went into business for himself. And business was good.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you left the dock, you knew you were gonna catch lobsters. It was exciting. You\u2019re dying to pull that first trap to see what was in it. And, you know, they were almost always full,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"LobstermanLobsterman Bart Mansi III and his son, Bart Mansi IV, at left, load about 120 lobster pots onto his boat, the Erica Paige, at the Guilford Lobster Pound on June 25, 2008. Mansi was preparing to set the pots for the summer season early the next morning. (Bob MacDonnell\/Hartford Courant file)<\/p>\n

In the \u201980s and \u201990s, Mansi was landing up to 100,000 pounds per year on just his boat, over 50% of the state\u2019s entire 2024 haul. At a market price of $3 per pound, he was making a killing. He also started the Guilford Lobster Pound, a wholesaler that bought lobster from other fishermen and sold it to Connecticut retailers and restaurants.<\/p>\n

Mansi described a vibrant waterfront community at the Guilford Marina and at fishing docks across the state. He pointed to a newspaper article framed on his wall, which told the story of a fellow Guilford lobsterman who suffered a heart attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got six lobstermen all together, and we ended up going out and pulling all his gear. We brought all his lobsters to the pound here, we sold his lobsters, and we gave him a check. We all stuck together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mansi wasn\u2019t the only one to turn a high school lobstering job into a lucrative career in those years. Some 30 miles down the Sound in Norwalk, Gary Whetmore grew up lobstering with his dad.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father lobstered on a very small scale, and then I got into it on a much bigger scale,\u201d Whetmore said.\u00a0\u201cI remember swapping lobsters with a gym teacher to get out of classes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gary Whetmore stands for a portrait on his boat in Norwalk on Aug. 19, 2025.\u00a0Credit:\u00a0Dana Edwards \/ CT Mirror
\u201cIt was fun. It wasn\u2019t work. The money was great, but it was the freedom of it. You could make as much or as little as you wanted to make. And if you worked hard enough, you could have anything you want in the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One might think that the accelerating lobster hauls in those days \u2014 a roughly six-fold increase in Connecticut from the 1970s to the 1990s \u2014 risked depleting the lobster population. Counterintuitively, the reverse was true.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a lot of lobsters,\u201d Whetmore continued, \u201cbut it wasn\u2019t natural.\u201d<\/p>\n

Connecticut lobstermen from that era describe their work not as catching lobsters but, rather, \u201cfarming\u201d\u00a0 them.<\/p>\n

\"Gary<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were feeding them and letting them go,\u201d Whetmore said. Indeed, in the \u201980s and \u201990s, lobstermen were stuffing millions of pounds of bait fish \u2014 pogy, mackerel, and others \u2014 into tens of thousands of traps in Long Island Sound.<\/p>\n

The influx of bait represented a huge supplement to the lobsters\u2019 natural food sources, artificially increasing the population to levels never before seen in the Sound. It was great for business, but scientists say the crowded crustacean conditions on the seafloor, combined with the unnaturally young population \u2014 lobstermen harvested them as soon as they reached the minimum size required by regulation \u2014 likely left them more vulnerable to the disease that decimated the population in the late \u201990s. It was the boom before the bust.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was not sustainable. Something was going to give,\u201d Whetmore said. \u201cThere were no big lobsters here. As soon as they were legal, we harvested them. We\u2019re feeding them, we\u2019re growing them, and we\u2019re harvesting, and whoever worked the hardest harvested the most. And that\u2019s as simple as it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really, really good, and when it ended, it ended,\u201d Whetmore said.<\/p>\n

Mansi spoke of the sudden die-off with a similar sense of finality. \u201cYou go out there one day, and that\u2019s it. Overnight, it was done. It was ended,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The die-off<\/p>\n

In the years leading up to the widespread die-off in the fall of 1999, there were early signs of trouble.\u00a0Two localized lobster mortality events occurred in the western Sound, f<\/a>rom Norwalk to Greenwich, in 1997 and 1998.<\/p>\n

Whetmore, just a few miles further east, took heed of those early warnings. \u201cI heard about the die-off getting as far up as Greenwich in \u201998. And I told my guys that were working for me: If it happens next year, and it comes this way, we\u2019re done. And sure enough, it got here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In August 1999, dead lobsters started washing up on beaches along the Sound. On Sept. 16, Tropical Storm Floyd hit the region,\u00a0dumping up to 12 inches of rain into the Sound in just two days.<\/p>\n

By the following week, Long Island Sound\u2019s lobster industry practically collapsed.<\/p>\n

\u201cA week after the storm, when I went out, the lobsters in the pots were nothing but goo. It smelled. It was nothing but lobster parts,\u201d said Tony Carlo, a Darien lobsterman.<\/p>\n

The Western Sound was hit the hardest,<\/a> that fall experiencing a\u00a099% reduction in lobster landings\u00a0compared to the previous year. Ports in the east of the Sound saw reductions of 64% to 91%.<\/p>\n

At first, neither the lobstermen nor marine scientists had a clear understanding of the cause. A New York Times headline on Oct. 18, 1999, read, \u201cScientists Are Mystified by Deaths Of Lobsters in Long Island.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there was a suspicious coincidence. In August, just a month before the storm, the government began applying pesticides, including resmethrin and methoprene, across Connecticut and New York to curb the spread of West Nile Virus. Because lobsters are related to insects, which the pesticides were designed to kill, many suspected that the runoff from the storm poisoned the lobsters.<\/p>\n

In January 2000, a \u201ccommercial fishery failure\u201d was declared in the Sound, and the federal government authorized $13.9 million to provide economic relief for the lobstermen and to fund research into the causes of the disaster. Over 20 research projects across a slew of institutions and agencies were approved.<\/p>\n

When the studies concluded by 2004, a clearer picture emerged. A parasitic amoeba, Neoparamoeba pemaquidensis,<\/a> had infected and killed the lobsters. But it wasn\u2019t just the disease. Researchers referred to a \u201cperfect storm\u201d of contributing factors.<\/a> Years of above-average water temperatures weakened the immune systems of the lobsters, which are extremely sensitive to temperature increases. The storm may have accelerated the die-off by churning up the waters, bringing warmer temperatures to the already sick lobsters. Furthermore, the unnaturally high and primarily juvenile population was particularly vulnerable to infection.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a bunch of young animals all together, just like a cold in a classroom at school, the disease spreads through them pretty quickly,\u201d said biologist Nancy Balcom, associate director of Connecticut Sea Grant, who was involved in research after the die-off and published several articles summarizing the findings.<\/p>\n

In the decades since 1999, the lobster population would appear to rebound in some years with a new crop of juvenile lobsters.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then a few years later, you didn\u2019t see the adults,\u201d Balcom said. This is consistent with the finding that the water is just getting too warm for the lobsters to tolerate, even though the paramoebiosis epidemic has passed. Long Island Sound has historically been the southernmost tip of the inshore range of the American lobster. With global warming, that map is being redrawn, and their range may soon terminate in Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

The pesticides<\/p>\n

The role of the pesticides loomed large immediately after the die-off. Toxicology testing and several modeling exercises were conducted,\u00a0but even the \u201cworst case scenario\u201d model indicated that the concentration of the chemicals never reached lethal levels for the lobsters. The scientific consensus is that the pesticides were not the primary cause of the die-off.<\/p>\n

That consensus, however, is not ironclad, and most of the lobstermen don\u2019t buy it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pesticides are what killed them,\u201d Mansi said. \u201cWe actually see what\u2019s going on. We were there, and we\u2019re telling you what we saw. They [the scientists] have never been on the water, they just sit in a lab and they make up these models that we have to adhere to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The timing of the pesticide application and the storm runoff was uncanny, and the lobstermen observed strange, hyperactive behavior in some living lobsters they caught after the die-off, as well as in certain species of crabs. Mansi helped recruit a biologist the lobstermen considered one of their own, Dr. Robert Bayer of Maine\u2019s Lobster Institute. Bayer came down to Connecticut, performed his own tests, and concluded that the lobsters hauled alive during the 1999 event\u00a0\u201cshowed the behaviors, classic behaviors, of pesticide poisoning \u2014 which is hyperactivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the months and years that followed, while the government-funded studies were still underway, the lobstermen initiated a class action lawsuit against Cheminova and other pesticide makers, eventually receiving two settlements, for\u00a0$12.5 million\u00a0and\u00a0$3.75 million. The lobstermen see the settlement as a vindication of their hypothesis, while Balcom says the pesticide makers never admitted to causing the die-off and merely settled to make the lawsuit go away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the pesticides were the primary cause of death, they would have received probably lots more money,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Tarsila Seara, a social scientist who studies fishing communities, views the science as less settled, and she understands the animosity Mansi and many other lobstermen still feel towards the biologists, the pesticide companies and the government. In 2019, while a professor at the University of New Haven, she interviewed 20 former lobstermen and published two papers about the social impacts of the die-off.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a dismissal of their experience and the knowledge that the fishermen were trying to bring to the table,\u201d Seara said. \u201cIt should have been dealt with differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is that it was a very complex combination of factors, and the lobstermen really wanted to find the one thing that they could blame, and they were naturally upset because there was no backing of that one culprit,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Tony Carlo and Roger Frate, cousins who started lobstering in the 1970s in central Connecticut, were active in the fight against the pesticide companies in the early 2000s. Frate now runs the Darien Seafood Market<\/a> with Carlo\u2019s help. Alongside tanks with live lobsters (now imported from Maine or Canada), the store has multiple display cases with newspaper articles documenting the die-off and ensuing legal battles.<\/p>\n

The two cousins are still angry at the chemical makers, politicians and marine scientists they see as responsible for causing \u2014 or failing to address \u2014 the destruction of their livelihood.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe lost everything within a three-week period,\u201d Carlo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe fought in Washington, Hartford, Boston \u2026 we fought against some big people at the chemical companies. We kept going for years and years,\u201d Frate said.<\/p>\n

Frate and Carlo see the government\u2019s regulatory response in the 2000s \u2014 mandating an increase in \u201cgauge\u201d size (a device used to measure the minimum-sized lobsters legal to catch), as well as a 90-day moratorium imposed on lobstering from early September to early December \u2014 as harmful and misguided.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom beginning to end, it seemed like they were always against us, to slow us down one way or another,\u201d Carlo said.<\/p>\n

They argued for years that the real culprit was toxicity from the pesticides, as well as an accumulation of other pollutants from decades of runoff into the Sound. They asked for money to \u201cclean up\u201d the Sound and more financial support for the struggling lobstermen. But their pleas fell on deaf ears.<\/p>\n

Frate and Carlo hold a litany of grudges against the Connecticut and New York politicians of that era.<\/p>\n

\u201cSchumer would never call us back \u2026 Blumenthal\u2019s telling lies \u2026 Chris Shays, that piece of shit. You got your money. The state got their money. Now the fisheries\u2019 money\u2019s not there,\u201d Frate said.<\/p>\n

Frate and Carlo did eventually collect checks from the pesticide maker settlements. \u201cBut it wasn\u2019t about the money,\u201d Carlo said. \u201cWe\u2019d give it all back to them if they could give us back Long Island Sound. We want our lobster back.\u201d<\/p>\n

A difficult adjustment<\/p>\n

Seara, the social scientist, understands the animosity towards the government in the years following the die-off.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were not being supported when they were going through something that was very impactful, very traumatic,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cSome of the programs the government put in place were not well received. They didn\u2019t seem to make sense to a lot of the fishermen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years, there were some experiments with lobster trap buyback programs, which paid lobstermen to recover the thousands of abandoned pots littering the seafloor. In September, these programs received\u00a0a $1.8 million boost of federal funding.<\/p>\n

Other programs included various job retraining efforts, which lobstermen like Mansi scoff at to this day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey said, \u2018We\u2019ll train you.\u2019 Well, there\u2019s no retraining. You don\u2019t take a guy that\u2019s been fishing on the water all his life and retrain him to go work in an office. It\u2019s something that you can\u2019t do,\u201d Mansi said.<\/p>\n

What made the prospect of retraining particularly unappealing is that, for so many lobstermen, lobstering is not just a job but a deeply held identity and beloved lifestyle. Seara, along with her mentor, Professor Richard Pollnac, have studied fishing communities across the world, and they\u2019ve found that self-employed fishermen experience some of the highest levels of job satisfaction of any workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the freedom, being out in the water, being close to nature, and some aspects that are thrilling. It\u2019s a gamble, right? You\u2019re out there, you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re going to get. Every day is different. You have encounters with nature, whales, and beautiful sunsets, and, on top of it, this adventure and this challenge, and this camaraderie,\u201d Seara said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA fisherman once put it to me like this: \u2018What other profession in the world do you know that people pay to do over the weekend?\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Each lobsterman took their own path after the die-off. Some turned to clamming or catching conch, but most couldn\u2019t find a way to support themselves on the water. Many struggled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a lot of guys who became alcoholics or drug addicts,\u201d Mansi said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to move on,\u201d Mansi said. \u201cI am still bitter about what happened, because not only did they wipe out an industry, they wiped out a way of life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mansi turned his lobster pound on the docks in Guilford into a seasonal restaurant. He considers himself lucky, as he\u2019s still able to work down by the water, and his son runs a fishing boat out of the same port.<\/p>\n

Carlo initially got a job doing manual labor down at the docks in Norwalk for $10 an hour, \u201cjust to do something and stay near the water,\u201d but it didn\u2019t pay the bills. He was forced to find a new career, so he started a landscaping business, which he still runs.<\/p>\n

\u201cLandscaping, being on land \u2026 I hated it. Hated it. I hate it to this day,\u201d Carlo said.<\/p>\n

One of the few who seemed to transition smoothly was Whetmore. Immediately after the die-off, he got into marine construction, and he now runs a successful business out of Norwalk, G&C Marine, which primarily builds residential docks.<\/p>\n

Whetmore was included in Seara\u2019s 2019 study; notably, he was the sole lobsterman out of the 20 interviewed who said they believe that warming waters and the disease were to blame for the die-off. Even his own son insists it was the pesticides.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t argue the numbers. You know, the bottom temperature, it\u2019s there,\u201d Whetmore said.<\/p>\n

He attributes his ability to adapt \u2014 and his acceptance of immovable forces like global warming \u2014 to a feeling that he is lucky to be alive. In the last two decades, he\u2019s had two kidney transplants, cancer and multiple heart attacks.<\/p>\n

Stonington\u2019s working docks smell like diesel and bait.<\/p>\n

On a sunny September afternoon, a flock of gulls circled the docks as the Lady Lynn cruised into the harbor \u2014 42 feet of scuffed fiberglass, stacked with crusty lobster traps. The Lady Lynn is one of seven lobster boats still operating out of Stonington, the last commercial lobster fleet in Connecticut.<\/p>\n

Roddy Grimshaw was on deck with his crew, Ian Crimm and Bubba Dolith, his 10-month-old puppy, Bailey, who ran back and forth excitedly, and his dad, Mike, who bought the Lady Lynn back in the \u201970s.\u00a0They were in a rush to haul out all their traps before Sept. 7, when the season closed for 90 days.<\/p>\n

After unloading all the traps into massive stacks on the dock, Grimshaw took a breather.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I\u2019m on the boat, I\u2019m always active, doing something like hauling lobsters, driving the boat, hauling the gear, seeing interesting things. I just, I love it, and I love to tan,\u201d he said, laughing. Grimshaw showed off a new tattoo of a lobster on his very tan forearm.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a good year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Grimshaw was averaging 160 lobsters (totaling about 200 pounds) each time he pulled traps. Though it\u2019s a far cry from the quadruple digits his dad used to haul back in the \u201990s, it\u2019s an improvement from last year.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a coincidence that the last remnants of the state\u2019s lobster industry are located in Stonington. Just outside of Long Island Sound, only a few miles from the Rhode Island border, the area has somewhat cooler water, and its fishery wasn\u2019t hit as hard by the die-off in the \u201990s.<\/p>\n

These days, Grimshaw lobsters two to three days per week and the rest of the week goes out \u201cdragging\u201d for fish \u2014 flounder, whiting, sea bass and others. But lobstering is his true love, and he\u2019d like to dedicate himself to it full-time, though he says the catch is just too variable to rely on. His eyes lit up when he considered the possibility. \u201cIt\u2019s a big, big idea, and it would be so great,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One of his other struggles is fetching a reasonable price for the lobsters he lands. Lobster imported from Maine and Canada for roughly $3 per pound dominate the market, which just isn\u2019t enough to cover his costs. So he sells directly to the public on the docks in addition to selling to wholesalers who are willing to pay about $7 per pound, this year\u2019s going rate for Connecticut lobsters.<\/p>\n

His crew members, Crimm, 18 and Dolith, 19, kidded around as they fixed up the engine and organized tools. They\u2019re new to working with Grimshaw, who recently had to replace his entire crew after he discovered that one was drinking on the job, and the other was a registered sex offender.<\/p>\n

Crimm and Dolith love the work, even though Grimshaw can give them a hard time. Neither of them has had what they\u2019d consider a \u201cnormal\u201d job \u2014 they\u2019ve bounced between farming and other forms of manual labor \u2014 and they want to keep working on the Lady Lynn as long as there are lobster to be caught.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a normal 9-to-5, which I hate. I can\u2019t do them,\u201d Dolith said while pulling up lobster pots hanging off the side of the Lady Lynn in the harbor.<\/p>\n

Their boss, Grimshaw, plans to take over his dad\u2019s lobstering license in January. At 29, as the youngest active commercial lobster captain in the state, he\u2019ll represent both the next generation and the last of the line.<\/p>\n

Grimshaw understands the weight of his position.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s not many other people here that does it, that wants to do it,\u201d Grimshaw said.<\/p>\n

He pointed to a seafood restaurant and yacht club visible in the distance. \u201cIf this harbor wasn\u2019t here, it wouldn\u2019t make a difference to the tourists and out-of-town people. And I just don\u2019t want to see that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to continue,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t see myself doing something different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whetmore expressed a similar unease with the luxury development and tourism taking over the waterfront that used to be home to so many fishing and working docks. While walking around his construction yard in Norwalk one August afternoon, he pointed to the neighboring lots.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were oil tankers on this river. There were fishermen going down the river. Now it\u2019s condos and rowing clubs. It\u2019s definitely changing. It\u2019s been very gentrified.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Norwalk Planning & Zoning Commission just approved\u00a0a 59-unit mixed-use complex, with luxury apartments and a boardwalk, on the property adjacent to Whetmore\u2019s construction yard. He said the town government has applied enormous pressure on him to move his business.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0town\u00a0after\u00a0town\u00a0along the Sound, the working waterfront is giving way to luxury housing and recreation. A 2022 mid-Atlantic\u00a0fisheries briefing\u00a0flagged \u201cpersistent trends toward gentrification of working waterfronts,\u201d noting that the loss of maritime space can upend the cultural identity of fishing communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t want equipment like this. They need us when we build their docks, their yacht clubs, their rowing clubs, and they love us when we\u2019re building them, but they don\u2019t want to see us,\u201d Whetmore said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a community, a waterfront community, and that\u2019s gone,\u201d he said. \u201cThat way of life is gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dana Edwards of Columbia University is a Photojournalism Fellow \u00a0for The Connecticut Mirror (https:\/\/ctmirror.org\/\u00a0). Copyright 2025 \u00a9 The Connecticut Mirror..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bart Mansi used to haul a thousand pounds of lobster a day. Now he sets out just a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":318912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[160095,32258,285,17963,7000,160091,160087,160088,746,9251,160092,19302,990,160094,210,421,420,82535,107363,160093,42134,134864,160090,1759,16563,160085,112018,160096,64483,85560,988,118477,68936,160086,11215,5331,67,132,68,527,160089,38979],"class_list":{"0":"post-318911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-best-news","9":"tag-boats","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-connecticut-news","12":"tag-ct-news","13":"tag-dead-lobsters","14":"tag-die-off","15":"tag-east-haven","16":"tag-environment","17":"tag-fish","18":"tag-fishermen","19":"tag-fishing","20":"tag-food","21":"tag-guilford","22":"tag-health","23":"tag-homes","24":"tag-jobs","25":"tag-lobster","26":"tag-long-island-sound","27":"tag-lost-jobs","28":"tag-luxury-development","29":"tag-luxury-homes","30":"tag-marine-construction","31":"tag-nature","32":"tag-new-haven","33":"tag-new-london","34":"tag-norwalk","35":"tag-norwalk-planning-zoning-commission","36":"tag-pesticide","37":"tag-pesticides","38":"tag-restaurants","39":"tag-rich-people","40":"tag-shoreline","41":"tag-stonington","42":"tag-top-news","43":"tag-tourism","44":"tag-united-states","45":"tag-unitedstates","46":"tag-us","47":"tag-water","48":"tag-way-of-life","49":"tag-zoning"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}