A fisherman, he tracks declining stocks
Correction: Because of a reporting error, a profile of biochemist Ted Ames in the Oct. 3 Health/Science section inaccurately described his military service. He was in the Navy in 1957.
Ted Ames, whose simple ambition used to be finding a nice fishing port and buying a boat, was awarded a MacArthur Foundation ''genius" grant two weeks ago, for his efforts to manage fish stocks.
Ames grew up on a Maine island. So it was only natural that as a boy, he took to fishing like just about every other boy in his family since they'd settled Vinalhaven in 1754. Ames went to sea as a stern man with his grandfather until his grandfather grew tired of watching him throw up over the side of the boat and refused to take him.
At 12 years old (long after outgrowing his bouts of seasickness), he scavenged among the docks until he came up with 10 derelict traps. Then he scrimped and saved until he had $15 for a 15-foot peapod with ''2-ash-power" -- otherwise known as oars. He worked the harbor on his own.
The sea sustained Ames. It carried him around the globe during World War II during three years in the Navy. It gave him a job when he came home. Fishing even put Ames through college at the University of Maine, where he earned a master's of science degree in biochemistry.
Ames was leery of schooling, but his grandfather had insisted: ''If you stay here much longer, you'll be just like a barnacle on a rock, and you'll never go anywhere."
He stayed in touch with the sea enough to notice that it was changing.
The summer before finishing college, his nets started coming up empty. Massive 250-foot Russian catcher boats had swept along Maine's coast, fishing in teams. What one boat missed, the other caught from behind. Ames sold his gear and went to work at the Jackson Laboratory before teaching chemistry to high school students on Mount Desert Island.
Then, a car accident nearly killed him.
Doctors said Ames would never walk again. Three years later, he was back on a boat. It's what fish do when they lay their eggs, return to the spawning grounds from which they hatched. Ames was no different.
Only, the sea was emptier than ever. First the ground fish vanished. Then the scallops and herring and cod, until lobster was the only readily abundant catch along the narrow coastal shelf.
''The runs were disappearing," Ames said. ''We were clearing the fish out."
This set Ames on a course, not just to protect disappearing stocks but to preserve a disappearing way of life.
''No fish, no fishermen," Ames, now 66, explained last week in the living room of his white clapboard house, just a bend up the road from the wharves of Stonington.
Ames was determined to discover why stocks weren't rebounding as they had in the past. He interviewed dozens of old fishermen, skippers in their 70s and 80s. He wanted to know where they'd found the most ''ripe" fish, those carrying eggs; where juveniles were at what time of year; how the fish moved month to month.
Ames charted this information on his computer using navigation software and his own knowledge of the sea, and he was able to pinpoint lost spawning grounds. This was significant because the state wanted to restock them -- if it could find them. Ames located 90 hatcheries from Nova Scotia to Ipswich Bay.
But has been disappointed with the government's efforts to restore the fish stocks.
Between launching a lobster hatchery, advocating for local fishermen, raising a daughter, attending hearings and hauling pots, he has labored to continue his research and lobby for fishermen.
Folks around the harbor figure that the half-million dollar prize money from the MacArthur Foundation works out to about 50 cents for each meeting Ames has attended over the years.
He's glad for the money, but as for being a genius, Ames scoffs.
''I'm just another old, clunky fisherman who is doing his thing," he said.
Home: Lives in Stonington, Maine, not far from his boyhood home on Vinalhaven.
Family: Wife, Robin Alden, former commissioner Maine Department of Marine Resources; son, Ned, 36; daughter, Anne, 12.
Education: Bachelor's in biochemistry, 1968, University of Maine, Orono; master's of science in biochemistry, 1971, University of Maine, Orono.
Current occupation: Lobsterman and independent researcher.
Involvements: Founding member of the Stonington Fisheries Alliance; chairman of the Penobscot East Resource Center, which provides marine management and fisheries stewardship; member of the Down East Groundfish steering committee; past adviser to the New England Fisheries Management Council.
View of science: ''Many people are afraid of science because it is too technical and too involved. I've always liked science and living things and studying the processes of how they lived."
Research interest: To trace spawning patterns of depleted fish populations along the coastal shelf in the Gulf of Maine, and to protect these areas so the fish populations will rebound.
Ames' reaction when the MacArthur Foundation called to say he was a winner: ''I thought they were calling about someone else."
