Salt of the Earth: The Original Screenplay

by Michael Wilson

Overview

In 1970, as a young marine biologist, Clarence Hickey won a position on the staff of the New York State Ocean Sciences Laboratory, Montauk, NY. For the next five years he was involved in landmark studies of Long Island's then-thriving fisheries. He developed deep bonds with the Baymen and ocean fishers who called the East End of Long Island home, and worked closely with them as he and the Ocean Sciences Lab studied the habits and prospects of more than one hundred species of fish and shellfish that call Long Island waters home.

This is his loving, anguished memoir of those years, replete with vivid portraits of the traditional fishers and scientists he worked with, their habits and discoveries, and their history-suffused community. Like their brethren to the north and south on the East Coast, Long Island's Bonacker fishing community represents a long and colorful tradition celebrated most famously in Peter Mattheissen's classic Men's Lives. Hickey's memoir is an elegiac complement to that book.

Perhaps more important, Hickey calls for our deep attention to the destruction - in less than a generation - of a crucial natural resource. The contrast between Clarence's years on the East End and today is stark and disturbing. Over the last forty years he has revisited his beloved East End regularly, and watched with alarm as our ecosystem has declined. On the East End is Clarence Hickey's clarion call for us to preserve and revive the natural community he fell in love with when he was young.

This is the first book in a series sponsored by Long Island Nature Organization
(longislandnature.org) 186 pp, 54 illustrations, paperback: $20

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780974020129
Publisher:	Harbor Electronic Publishing
Publication date:	07/17/2015
Pages:	188
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Clarence Hickey holds a Master of Science degree in marine biology from Long Island University. His master's thesis research studied the blood physiology of fish from Long Island's estuarine waters, and was published in part in the New Your Fish and Game Journal in 1976, and in the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society in 1983. Clarence lived in Amagansett during 1970-1975 when he worked as a marine biologist on the staff of the New Your Ocean Science Laboratory on Montauk. While at the Laboratory, Clarence worked with several local Baymen to study the marine fishes of the East End and, together, they authored several papers on the natural history of the fishes in the Fish and Game Journal.
In 1983, Clarence and Bayman Jimmy Lester published a paper in the Fish and Game Journal that annotated the presence and seasonal abundance of 102 fish species caught in Jimmy's trap nets in Fort Pond Bay during 1970-1978. In 1998, they updated that list of fishes to 108 species through 1981. In the early and mid-1970s, Clarence spent much time at sea aboard many vessels, including the NOAA Research Vessel Albatross IV, stationed in Woods Hole, MA. During his time on the East End, Clarence was a member of the East Hampton Town Baymen's Association and a shareholder in the East Hampton Town Seafood Producers Cooperative.
Clarence is a member of several scientific societies and associations, includ-ing the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sigma Xi The Scien-tific Research Society, the American Fisheries Society, and the American Institute of Fishery Research Biologists. He has more than 150 publications in scientific and conservation journals, magazines, newsletters, technical and government reports, and newspapers. Clarence was a contributing author to The East Hampton Star for many years in the 1980s and 1990s. He served in the U.S. Army Medical Service as a hospital medical laboratory specialist during the Vietnam era.
Clarence was a member, elder, and head usher at the Amagansett Presbyterian Church. He now lives in Rockville, MD, with wife Mary, also a marine biologist and teacher. They have two daughters living in Virginia and Arizona.