Portland , ME – On this breezy fall morning, a Carnival cruise ship is anchored on the east end of the downtown waterfront, its camera-toting passengers strolling through the Old Port district, buying moose and lobster and lighthouse souvenirs. On the opposite end of the waterfront, towards the Casco Bay Bridge, behind a plain beige building, the F/V Elizabeth has pulled up to the Portland Fish Pier to unload 40 pounds of pollock, 2,774 pounds of hake, 50 pounds of cod, 2,400 pounds of flounder, 733 pounds of grey sole, 1,296 pounds of monkfish, 152 pounds of redfish, 14 pounds of catfish, and one 75-pound halibut.

Portland Fish exchange employees unload the catch from the F/V Elizabeth.

The crew, sunburned and smiling, lifts their catch to the docks in bright blue barrels. The barrels are dumped onto a conveyor which brings the fish inside the building where six employees wearing orange Grundens sort the fish according to size and layer them with ice in plastic crates. The fish speed along, music blares, ice flies, and fish scales stick to the workers' sleeves as they get on with a day that started somewhere between 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.

The Elizabeth is the last boat to arrive before Monday's auction; on other days, up to four boats might be unloading at one time; 150 different vessels sell their catch through the Exchange, which every day moves 10,000 pounds of fish and 10 tons of ice.

The plastic crates, tagged so everyone would know that these are the fish from the Elizabeth , are forklifted into the cavernous refrigerated storeroom of the Exchange. The crates are placed in neat rows according to species and size. As the clock ticks toward noon, fleece-clad buyers from the various fish dealers in town peruse the aisles, clipboard in one hand and a blue glove on the other, now and then picking up a fish for inspection, or digging down through the ice to make sure that the fish on the bottom of the pile look just as good as the fish on the top. Of course, boats get reputations and the Exchange has a "buyer beware" policy, so no refunds if a dealer gets a bad bunch of fish.

Redfish await a bidder on the floor of the exchange.

The fish themselves, eyes fogged over and mouths open as if frozen mid-breath, are flopped across the ice. Some have been gutted and some are whole. Some get beheaded and packed into cardboard boxes and shipped to New York 's Fulton Fish Market. Others are destined for further processing and packaging.

Just before noon, the buyers file into a small room with large windows that overlook the floor. They sit at the same desks every week, facing a screen and two women who represent the sellers. The caller begins the auction, and the buyers bid on the fish they want and what they are willing to pay, and the sellers accept or refuse the bids—and minute by minute each crate of fish is claimed.

The auction, which began 20 years ago, has given fishermen who previously mistrusted those who paid them for their fish control of their own destiny (at least in terms of fair pricing. Government regulations and global market trends are another story). According to Hank Soule, director of the Exchange, "Portland Fish Exchange was born out of a sense of dissatisfaction on the part of the sellers, who went out to find a better way to do business." Today, Portland Fish Exchange controls over 90 percent of Maine's groundfish market. New Bedford and Gloucester have copied it. Says Soule, "If you want to be a player in the groundfish industry, you've got to be at this auction."

The Portland Fish Exchange

The idea for the Portland Fish Exchange grew out of a fishermen's trip to Europe in the late 1970s to view similar auctions, and the efforts of Jim Wilson, then a Sea Grant-funded researcher who was consulting with the City of Portland during development of the Portland Fish Pier. Wilson promoted the display auction as a way to "introduce a price differential for higher quality fish and insure a predictable supply." Wilson worked with the city and the fishing industry to develop the Portland Fish Exchange, the first display auction in North America, which opened in May 1986. Rather than buyers purchasing an entire boatload of fish sight unseen, the display auction allows dealers to look at the fish and buy based on quality, thus garnering a higher price for better quality fish. Wilson's contribution to the successful development of the Portland Fish Exchange earned him a President's Public Service Achievement Award at the University of Maine in 1987.

With groundfish stocks on a seemingly neverending decline, these days the Portland Fish Exchange is handling record-low volumes of fish. So far this year, only seven million pounds have moved through the exchange, compared to over 27 million pounds during the Exchange's peak in the early 1990s. Still, this represents nearly 20 percent of New England's total annual catch of groundfish.

While the future of the Exchange is as unclear as the future of the groundfish industry in Maine , it remains another shining example of how Maine 's fishermen have worked together for the common benefit of the fishing community. They get paid fairly for their fish, and the rest of us are assured that the fish on our plates is of only the highest quality.