![]() ![]() Modeled after Farm Aid, a nonprofit that offers financial support and mental health resources to agricultural workers and their families, Coombs’s project has two aims: to combat the stigma and accessibility obstacles that prevent fishermen from seeking help, and to shed light on the psychological fallout that comes when a constant onslaught of destabilizing factors pushes an industry, and its workers, to the brink.Įven while doing a job he loves-one that leaves him feeling tired, but happy, at the end of a good day-Tom Santaguida battles forces that leave him mentally exhausted. She hopes to create a broader mental health support program for fishermen-the first initiative of its kind in the United States-that will be replicable throughout the country. Coombs also advocates for better mental health supports for fishermen. Monique Coombs is the director of community programs for the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association (MCFA), a nonprofit trade group dedicated to restoring commercial fishing in the Gulf of Maine. The grant, awarded by the Fisher Charitable Foundation, is small-only $5,000, all of which goes to producing informational materials on managing anxiety and depression. ![]() Just over one year ago, her team won a grant to launch a pilot program aimed at addressing mental health in commercial fishing communities. These problems have gotten worse, she says, ever since COVID-19 disrupted the state’s US $674-million seafood industry, shoving already unstable families even closer to financial collapse. She’s seen fishermen just like Cushman endure the pain of lost loved ones, life-changing injuries, economic hardships, and the barrage of stresses endemic to the commercial fishing industry without seeking help, and she’s seen the legacy of depression and substance abuse that often follows. ![]() Coombs is the director of community programs for the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association (MCFA), a nonprofit trade group dedicated to restoring commercial fishing in the Gulf of Maine. In Brunswick, Maine, 90 minutes west of Port Clyde, Monique Coombs has watched this silent stoicism play out over and over again in fishing communities. The most recent event has pushed Cushman to consider seeking counseling, but for years, he quietly shouldered the trauma and grief on his own, as many other fishermen do. Cushman still carries the weight of his death, and the years since have made that weight heavier as two more of Cushman’s close friends have lost their lives at sea, one in 2006 and one in January 2020. Photo by George and Monserrate Schwartz/Alamy Stock Photo Although the town once had several canneries and fish processors, none of these operations remain. Port Clyde is one of the many fishing communities on the Maine coast. I stayed like four to six hours longer and I called him back and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore. “The coast guard gave up and then the other boats. “His father called me, told me to stay,” Cushman says. The search began, hours lapsing into days as teams traversed the waters, looking for a body that might offer the Thorbjornson family a scrap of closure. By the time Cushman arrived, the crew, including Thorbjornson’s own son, were alive and safely aboard a rescue boat, but their fishing vessel was at the bottom of the ocean and Thorbjornson had vanished. “We have to get the fuck off this boat,” Thorbjornson yelled. While fishing on a foggy day in mid-July, the distress call came through: Thorbjornson’s boat was flooding, and the crew were panicking. The men had grown up together, fishing the gulf’s waters since they were kids, and the intervening decades had sculpted their lives into similar shapes: careers in commercial fishing, marriages at about the same time, children of about the same age, and a tight-knit fishing community around Port Clyde, Maine. Thorbjornson was family-not by blood, but in all the ways that really count. In 2005, Randy Cushman spent two days trolling through the Gulf of Maine, searching for Gary Thorbjornson’s body. Watch the recording of our webinar “ Mental Health in the Fishing Community” for more on this topic. ![]()
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