CNS STORY: Former construction worker sees God's hand in decision to work on water

By Gary Morton
Catholic News Service

SAXIS, Va. (CNS) -- The rising sun shimmers across the sound, tinting the water with shades of red, as Mike Clair begins his daily commute.

A few minutes off shore from his home, Clair grabs a long hook, snags a buoy and pulls the first of more than 200 crab pots out of the water onto his 18-inch-high flatboat. He dumps the pot's catch, including a fish and some sea nettle, into a sorting box where he culls the blue crabs inside.

Hard-shell crabs that meet size requirements go into a bushel basket; "peelers" that will shed their outer layer and become soft-shell crabs go into a bucket of seawater; and fish that he can sell go into a box. He dumps the remainder back into the sound, part of the Chesapeake Bay, before he guides his boat some 200 feet to the next buoy, where he repeats the procedure.

Clair, 57, is a waterman, making his living from the crabs, clams, oysters and other seafood he harvests. With 25 years of experience, he's a relative newcomer to a traditional bay vocation. He shares the same career as the apostles Peter and Andrew, who fished the Sea of Galilee until Jesus called them to become fishers of men.

His Catholic faith helped him as he became a waterman and learned the unpredictable ebb and flow of his catch, he said.

"Something has always come along to keep your livelihood going, whether it was when the oysters died off and you thought you were going to starve to death (until) the clams came on, or a fish would come on and you'd still make a living," Clair said. "It's definitely divine intervention."

His wife, Nancy, also finds God in the family's work. "You're definitely close to God out there," she said. "You feel, OK, this is all coming from him."

On shore, Clair and his wife also follow Jesus' call to Peter and Andrew by being "fishers" of youth. They volunteer with the youth group at Holy Name of Jesus in Pocomoke City, Md., where Nancy is parish secretary. Mike cooks for parish dinners and helps Nancy with other parish activities.

While Mike Clair can identify with the apostles who fished, he draws one sharp distinction: "They dropped their nets" and went with Jesus. "I don't think I can do that. I don't think I can pay the bills like that."

Clair worked in home construction in the Baltimore area until the housing industry went bust in the early 1980s. He became a waterman when crab house operators near his father's Virginia Eastern Shore home in Saxis told him he could make a living by catching crabs.

"I love the place, so we came down here and started working," he said. "I didn't make that (much) money, but I made enough to live."

In the early years, "we had to muddle through it pretty much by ourselves. We didn't have any guidance as far as where to go and how to do it. I didn't even know what a peeler was," he told The Dialog, newspaper of the Diocese of Wilmington, Del., which includes some Maryland counties.

Local watermen were slow to warm to the Clairs, Nancy said. "They thought we were just going to come in the summer, crab and go back to Baltimore and do something else. They didn't like that."

They began to accept Clair as he persevered and learned the ups and downs of living off the water.

During the height of crab season, Clair works 15- to 20-hour days. By early August the pace slows, but his day still begins about 5:30 a.m. to sort crab.

One day in July, Clair worked four floats -- wooden boxes with screened bottoms and a flow of water. That took between 15 and 30 minutes; early in the season, he worked 20 to 30 floats, each filled with 400 to 600 crabs. Each "fish-up" -- moving crabs from one float to another depending on their progress in shedding -- then took about two hours.

The process is repeated throughout the day, so crabs that have shed their shells can be harvested before a new one forms.

"It's a job," Clair said.

After the day's first fish-up, Clair loads his boat and runs his lines of crab pots. Virginia regulations require him to stop working the pots by 1 p.m., when he returns home to sort his catch.

The rest of the day he maintains his equipment and house; fishes up four or five more times; buys other watermen's catches that he prepares for sale or stores in his refrigerator and freezer; and does his bookkeeping. On Fridays, he delivers his seafood to about 15 restaurants in the Baltimore area.

While Clair handles about $750,000 a year, he said he nets between $20,000 and $30,000 -- not including about $26,000 the Clairs spent last year for health insurance and medical care.

"You shoot for $100 a day after expenses," he said. "You can't do it all the time, but sometimes you can make more."

"You're not going to get rich, but you make a living. That's all I'm after."

END

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