(gentle pleasant guitar music) - You know, it's a daily grind.

You put your feet on the floor every morning, hit the ground running, and you go out and you try to go fishing.

- [Sarah] Daniel Dunbar figures he's been catching fish since he was five years old.

He's the latest in the long line of Gloucester fishermen who've harvested the ocean's bounty for centuries.

Daniel loves his work but admits it's an unpredictable profession.

- You never know when the fish will show up.

Every day is different.

Every year is different.

Every month is different.

You know, certain months are better than other months, but not necessarily.

I pay my daughter's tuitions with this stuff, you know what I mean?

College isn't cheap.

Mortgages aren't cheap.

This boat pays for certain things, and if this boat disappears, now I gotta figure out how to replace those payments.

- [Sarah] Dating back to the early 1600s, Gloucester is one of the oldest towns in New England.

Fishing has been its lifeblood since the 18th century.

It was once the largest fishing port in America, but for countless generations of fishermen, the sea has been both generous and unforgiving.

This statue and wall of remembrance honors more than 5,000 souls lost to the restless North Atlantic.

(people speak indistinctly) (engine rumbles) Fishermen here face stiff competition from overseas suppliers.

Marine educator Nancy Sullivan says that's caused a steady decline in the number of Gloucester fishermen.

- We had some 6,000 fishermen, I think, in the 1800s here in Gloucester, and now there's just a few hundred.

(cart rattles) - [Sarah] But now there's an effort underway to keep fishermen in business and preserve this way of life.

The Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance was created to help small fishing communities from Maine to North Carolina.

Executive director Niaz Dorry says they help each town create a community supported fishery with local residents signing up to receive fresh fish weekly directly from the source at a fair and stable price.

- Our work really involves empowering the community-based fishermen.

So in this political arena where they're forced to either scale up or sell out, they can choose a third option, which is to actually fit within the right scale and operate at a small scale and feed their local communities and make a living that they can actually exist on.

- [Sarah] Each day, the fresh catch is brought to markets like Turner Seafoods.

That's where community supported fishery members, like JoeAnn Hart, stop by to pick up their order.

- The quality's better because it's so very, very fresh, and it's just coming right off the water here in Gloucester and not Asia or South America.

- I think that the more people that participate, the more money the fishermen get.

- Morning, Brenda.

- Hi.

- How are ya?

Good.

- [Sarah] Turner Seafood's owner, Jim Turner, says the program actually keeps money circulating within the town and helps keep his retail business healthy.

- The captains, they're getting paid top dollar for their fish, and we're busy 'cause we're able to keep, you know, our guys working and fileting, and so it is.

It's a win-win for everybody.

- [Sarah] The community supported fishery concept is modeled after the community supported agriculture programs that began in the US in the 1980s.

Like the model for farmers, it provides a steady, reliable price, income, and customer base for the fishermen's catch.

- We get together, and the organization pools the money and pays the fishermen to catch our fish for the table.

You know, instead of being told what they're going to get for their fish, they know what they're going to get.

So it's good for stability for everybody.

(gentle pleasant guitar music) - [Sarah] Stability for the fishermen, for the community, and say these folks for the marine environment.

A steady market means fishermen can concentrate on a quality catch, not quantity.

- You're doing better.

Yeah, you're doing better.

You're not catching fish in such great numbers.

- So if you care about the health of the ocean, you should care about who catches the fish that you wanna eat.