THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 8, 1994 TAG: 9408080027
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B01 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Around the Bay
In 50 Days
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines
Encamped at Smith Point on Friday morning, I noticed a strong pungent odor wafting over the dunes around me - something burning, or rotting or both. After a few minutes it passed.
I broke camp and paddled the kayak around the point, bucking a strong headwind and 2-foot waves and after an hour headed for shore to take a break. Once on the beach, however, I found that I was stranded: The rough water created such strong surf and northerly currents that I couldn't relaunch the boat. Three times I pushed off the sand. Three times the water whipped the kayak sideways. Each time my cockpit filled with water. And I had to drag the now-heavy kayak back on shore to pump it dry.
Exhausted, I decided to wait until the wind died before trying again. Two hours later, a small airplane appeared, flying in low circles over the Chesapeake. Soon another joined it, and another, and behind them came a fleet of blue-hulled ships, chugging heavily in the wind, their decks topped with tall crow's-nests.
I realized then what that rather unpleasant smell had been: ``Brevoortia tyranus,'' otherwise known as menhaden - bony, oil-packed cousins of herring that travel in dense schools along the Atlantic seaboard and are harvested by the millions by a fleet based in Reedville, a few miles south on Virginia's Northern Neck.
For more than a century, the rank air of menhaden-processing plants at Reedville has been tolerated by the locals, who depend on the little fish for hundreds of jobs. Menhaden made Reedville the richest city in America in the years before World War I, and has kept it among the country's largest fishing centers, in terms of tonnage caught.
It might be foul, that smell, but that's the smell of money.
What I was witnessing was a fleet clustered around a menhaden school, drawn by planes whose pilots spot the densely grouped fish from the air and radio their location to the fishermen. The ships, most of which are surplus military tenders and minesweepers, swoop in and snare the menhaden, then pump them from the nets into refrigerated holes. Back in Reedville, the menhaden are steam-cooked, pressed for their oil, and ground into meal.
Even the most adventuresome palate finds the fish inedible, but the oil is used in paints, soaps and lubricants, and the meal in animal feed.
Eventually the wind dropped and I followed as the fleet backed toward port. A lightning storm forced me to shore on the outskirts of town, but a family there offered to look after the kayak and drove me into Reedville.
The town, like so many others around the Bay, is not the thriving commercial center it was at the turn of the century. Modern Reedville lacks a restaurant, has only a single general store, and the 18 plants that once lined Cockrell Creek have dwindled to two.
But the plants are big ones, and Reedville has managed to retain monuments to its past affluence. Grand homes, built by ship captains turned millionaires, straddle the main road. Some are now spectacular bed-and-breakfast inns. Lawns are 40 yards deep. Lush shade trees abound. Townsfolk saunter past the homes in the evenings, waving to friends and strangers alike, only rarely passed by cars. In some respects, Reedville seems trapped in a time warp, a throwback to simpler, slower days.
I spent the weekend there, nursing a sore shoulder. By the time I prepared to leave, I didn't mind the smell at all. MEMO: Swift's next report will appear Wednesday. His 50-day journey around
the Chesapeake Bay began July 1.
ILLUSTRATION: Staff color map
Days 36 - 38
Around the Bay in 50 Days
For copy of map, see microfilm
by CNB