To Your Health: The Long Game for Older Fishermen

By Toni Small

You, who have made it this far in the fishery — I mean north of 65 — have beaten a lot of odds. Maybe you got lucky, inherited good genes, or cheated death a couple of times. But you’ve also spent decades learning how to adapt. And perhaps you’ve kept at it because something about fishing remains deeply satisfying.

Care for your body as carefully as you care for your boat. MLA photo.

I recently heard a philosopher discussing achievement versus striving in games. Consider a running marathon: you could cover 26.2 miles in a car, but just getting to the finish line isn’t really the point. Running is the point. The training, adaptation, difficulty, and uncertainty give the experience meaning. It made me think about fishing.

You may still be in it to pay the bills, honor a family tradition, or spend your days in an environment you love. But fishing also offers something many jobs don’t: a lifetime of problems worth solving. Weather, tides, gear, boats, the whereabouts of lobsters. Skill, strategy, chance, success, failure. The ocean never presents quite the same problem twice.

Perhaps that’s part of why some of you are reluctant to stop. Not because the work is easy, but because it remains engaging.

Throughout this series we’ve considered four pillars of a long working life: Strength, Mobility, Mindset and Recovery. If you’re still fishing late in life, chances are you’ve developed your own understanding of each. But the work—and your body — continue to change.

Strength: What’s still in reserve?

Years of fishing can make you remarkably efficient at familiar tasks. You know when to pull, when to wait, and when to let the boat do some of the work. But efficiency can disguise declining physical reserve.

Could you still get yourself into an immersion suit quickly? Climb into a life raft or reboard your boat from the water? These aren’t everyday demands, but they matter enormously when things go sideways. Strength and power can improve even late in life. A little physical training may help preserve the edge that routine work no longer maintains.

And a working life is never sustained by muscle alone. Your vision, balance, situational awareness, and the people who look out for you are all part of your safety system. Keeping equipment and emergency plans current is another kind of strength — recognizing that even the most experienced fisherman can’t control everything.

Mobility: How many ways can you solve the problem?

Mobility isn’t simply flexibility. It’s having movement options. Movement options can be gained through training your body, through assistive technology or workstation modifications.

You may have changed where you stand, how you reach, or how your gear is arranged. Maybe a handrail, hydraulic hauler, different deck layout, or another pair of hands allows you to continue working.

If you’re feeling stiff or all stove up, a few minutes of limbering up between hauls may help relieve discomfort and restore some freedom of movement. Paying attention to how you move can also help you notice tension, fatigue, or changes in balance before they become bigger problems.

Strength and mobility work together. The goal isn’t to become a contortionist. It’s to have enough options when the job asks you to move differently.

Mindset: Can you change without giving up who you are?

A fisherman who’s spent fifty years running their own boat may not welcome advice about doing things differently. But you’ve been adapting all along — to regulations, markets, changing lobster populations, equipment, and weather.

Why should adapting to your own changing body be any different?

A body winding down when the mind has so many more resources can feel like a cruel twist in the plotline. You’re not wrong to feel frustrated that just as you’ve learned so much, your body is less willing to cooperate.

Caring for your body as carefully as you care for your boat may go against the old code of Just. Keep. Going. But it may also be what lets you keep going. Changing how you work doesn’t have to mean surrendering who you are.

Recovery: What lets you come back tomorrow?

Recovery isn’t a retreat from work. It’s part of what allows the work to continue over the long haul. You may no longer haul as many traps, fish every day, or go out in weather you once wouldn’t have questioned. You know to fuel yourself better, sleep longer (anybody?), accept help (good help is hard to find), or simply recognize when you’ve had enough.

One of the great skills of aging well in a working community may be figuring out what you no longer have to do alone. Knowing when to accept help may be harder than knowing when to offer it.

Virginia Oliver, who lobstered out of Spruce Head well past her hundredth birthday and died this year at 105, offers a remarkable example of a life organized around continuing to participate. We shouldn’t assume everyone can—or should—follow her example. But her long game invites us to reconsider what growing old while doing meaningful work can look like.

“If I had my life to live over, I’d do just the same.” — Virginia Oliver, in an interview with Brie Weisman, Commercial Fisheries News, January 2022.

Toni Small, married to a lifelong Maine lobsterman, is a movement coach who works with the USDA AgrAbility/FishAbility project.