PORT CLYDE—After 40-plus years in the fishing industry, you’d think you’d run out of things to say about it, but not commercial fisherman and owner of Port Clyde Fresh Catch, Glen Libby.

“The fishing industry has changed since the 1970s due to various technologies and from a personal standpoint, it was either change with it or keep complaining about it,” said Libby, “which was literally driving me crazy.”

He teamed up with Antonia Small, a fine art and documentary photographer, who had been photographing aspects of the fishing culture for several years. Together, they’ve produced a first person account called Caught, about life in the Port Clyde fishing communities; specifically what it’s like to go from being a fisherman struggling with a depleted fishery to starting a innovative fishing cooperative that allows local fishermen to sell directly to their community through CSA-like shares, farmer’s market and individual orders.

“I call it the World According to Glen,” he said.

Caught is an account of the beauty, fragility and profound change that characterizes fishing, fishing families, and the communities who depend on them in the 21st Century. Based in the tiny village of Port Clyde, but reaching globally, Caught chronicles the struggle to transform a way of life for all who depend on our planet’s bounty. Small’s black and white photographs convey not only the details of the fishing world, but also the emotional resonances when a way of life is being forced to change.

Caught is also about how Libby had to develop an entirely different set of business skills into order to keep up with the fisheries’ evolution. “

We had to learn how to figure out price fish and actually generate a profit,” said Libby. “We all had a fishing background, but nobody had any experience in marketing.”

In one of the book’s chapters, he discusses what it was like to start a business and try to advertise for “fish cutters” — not exactly a common skill in this day and age.

“We thought we would just advertise to hire fish cutters and said, ‘well, we’ll just put the ad in the paper: that’s solved, people will be calling.’ Nope. Nobody called and we realized because nobody knows how to do it. We had to teach ourselves how to do it.”

Libby purchased 1,500 pounds of small grey sole, “which is arguably the hardest fish to cut,” he admitted.

He took the fish to Port Clyde Fish Catch and taught himself how to cut through all of that fish.

“And of course, these things had a shelf life,” he said.

It took him the better part of five days.

As the company president, he knew he couldn’t be spending the bulk of his time doing this, yet the realities of the industry were there.

“Even today, I do most of the fish cutting,” he said.

Libby and Small recently had a reading a the Jackson Memorial Library in Port Clyde with more than 40 in attendance.

“Most of them were my neighbors and customers,” he said.

To learn more about the book and when to catch Libby and Small in their next public talk visit its publisher wracklinebooks.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com