Icemaker adapts to changing fishing industry
By Jenni Glenn
Staff writer, Gloucester Daily Times

From his office at Cape Pond Ice, plant manager Steve Scatterday can look out over the harbor and see a Harbor Loop wharf where three herring boats dock.

Once herring boats were among Cape Pond Ice's best customers, Scatterday said. The boats needed 20 to 35 tons of ice per fishing trip to keep their catch cool and fresh for seafood buyers. Using a computerized ice delivery system, Scatterday can make 80 tons of ice at a time -- more if another employee is helping him -- and send it pouring through a system of tubes into a boat's hold.

But herring boats rarely steam up to Cape Pond Ice's wharf in the Fort anymore, Scatterday said. The boats use new technology to chill seawater and use that to refrigerate fish.

"They've gone from being one of our biggest customers to not needing ice anymore," Scatterday said.

Cape Pond Ice has weathered several major changes in its customer base since Scatterday, a Rockport resident, was hired as the company's plant manager 10 years ago. Fishing regulations have cut into the number of boats left in the harbor, leaving less business for Cape Pond Ice.

Few of the boats Scatterday served when he started at Cape Pond Ice remain in the fishing fleet, he said. The federal government bought and destroyed dozens of fishing boats in the 1990s in an effort to pare down the size of the industry and rebuild fish stocks.

At the time, Scatterday said he worried the buyback boded ill for Cape Pond Ice. But the opening of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction in 1997 drew fishing boats from as far as Maine and New Jersey to the harbor, he said. That helped Cape Pond Ice, the port's lone ice company, replace some of its lost business, Scatterday said.

Scatterday said the company has learned to adapt to the fishing industry's changing fortunes and diversify into other fields. Although fishing boats remain a staple of the business -- and Scatterday's primary task -- he said he also helps employees load ice into trucks for use on construction projects such as the Big Dig.

Cape Pond Ice also expanded its ice sculpture business, selling "super clear" blocks of ice without the imperfection of air bubbles, Scatterday said. And the company sells bags of ice in grocery stores and offers souvenirs like the T-shirt featured in the Hollywood film "The Perfect Storm," about the loss of the swordfishing boat the Andrea Gail.

Scatterday said Cape Pond Ice will continue to survive by adjusting to its economic environment.

"Things change," he said. "We have to be here and be ready when the opportunity arises to take advantage of that change."