Monica Lemieux
Personally, I think there will always be an oyster industry here because we have very productive beds, and there have been tremendous efforts made to preserve and protect the bay. The State has done a great job of buying lands and protecting wetlands and that type of thing, so I think we'll always have an industry. – Monica Lemieux
Monica Lemieux comes from a family of fishermen. Her grandfather, her father, and her brothers all earned their living on the bay. Her father, Bill Martina, is believed to have commissioned one of the first shrimp boats in the area. He named it the Irish Town after a neighborhood in Apalachicola. The boat still hauls shrimp today. Monica’s brother, Kevin, is its captain. Monica did not work in the seafood industry until she was an adult. She went to college and got a job outside of the industry. But when the company she worked for closed, she, too, looked to the bay for work. She and her husband, Leslie Lemieux, oystered together for a few years. In the 1980s Monica was an officer with the Franklin County Seafood Workers Association. She participated in a seafood workers strike, which resulted in self-imposed licensing and a per-bag surcharge on oysters. To this day, the resulting funds enable the replanting of the bay’s oyster beds each season. And yet, the unpredictability of the industry led the Lemieuxs to find stable jobs on land. Today, Leslie works at the post office, and Monica is vice president of the Apalachicola State Bank.
Listen to this 4-minute audio clip of Monica Lemieux talking about the role of the Franklin County Seafood Workers’ Association. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.] What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.
SUBJECT: Monica Lemieux
DATE: January 11, 2006
LOCATION: Monica Lemieux’s office, Apalachicola State Bank – Apalachicola, FL
INTERVIEWER: Amy Evans
Amy Evans: This is Amy Evans on Wednesday, January 11th, 2006 in Apalachicola, Florida at the Apalachicola State Bank with Monica Lemieux [pronounced Lem-ucks]. And Monica, would you mind saying your name and your birth date, if you don't, mind for the record?
Monica Lemieux: Sure, it's Monica Lemieux, and it's November 18, 1954.
Can I ask you where your [last] name comes from and the pronunciation of it?
Well, actually my husband's family was from Eastpoint, and it should be French. Their ancestry, of course, is French. But when the two great-grandfathers came over, one went north and one went south. And the south in Eastpoint, Florida, southernized it to pronounce it Lemucks, instead of Lemeau.
And so you grew up in Apalachicola or Eastpoint or—?
I grew up in Apalachicola. My husband's family is all from Eastpoint.
What it was like growing up here.
I'm the oldest of children in a family of five. My dad [Bill Martina] was a fisherman, and his dad before him was a fisherman. My dad actually primarily shrimped, and he built one of the very first shrimp boats that was built locally. It was built in Eastpoint and put overboard there, and it's still in our family. My brother [Kevin Martina] operates it as the Captain today. It's called the Irish Town. It was named after the downtown area of Apalachicola where he grew up. And growing up, we ate a lot of fish, of course. We enjoyed the beaches and the water and the beautiful environment that we have here in the estuary.
When did you start work[ing] in the [seafood] industry?
Working, I never actually worked myself personally in the seafood industry until I was grown. My parents discouraged us from [it]. They wanted us to get an education, which is something that my parents and the parents before them really—it wasn't that—you know, they didn't put a lot of value on education, but my parents wanted all of us to be educated. So actually, I never really worked in it until I was grown. I actually went to college, came back, had a career here with a local company that ended up closing, and then after that, I had to get into the seafood industry because there wasn't a lot of opportunity.
My husband, however, was out of high school. He joined the Navy to see the world and, of course, he didn't see a whole lot of the world but we came back. We got married while he was in the Navy, and then we came back home, and he began oystering immediately. So he was probably twenty-two [years old], and he oystered for probably fifteen or twenty years. And things just got really hard for us to make a living, you know—the closures of the bay, weather issues, permitting, licensing—I mean, a lot of issues. So he sought other employment at probably about age thirty-five, which is a little unusual but we loved the seafood industry, and most of my family still is employed in one way or another in the industry.
My brother, [Kevin Martina] like I said is the Captain of my dad's shrimp boat, and he does do other things in addition to supplement it because it's a difficult living to make year-round. And then my other brother [Kenneth Martina] is a guide fisherman. So whereas he's not really a commercial fisherman, he takes people out for pleasure in the guide industry. So he fishes for a living, which is a lot of fun for him, and he likes and enjoys being on the water and he knows every creek and bay and lagoon that's here. So they grew up, you know, in the river. My dad was really big for my brothers to be in the river and to learn the river and learn all the tributaries and be real environmentally conscious and, you know, that type of thing.
As your father's daughter, were you also brought up in that?
Oh absolutely, you know, you take care of the environment, and you don't pollute, you know—you don't litter. And my dad was always very outspoken about making sure the river was kept clean and protected and—so that everybody can enjoy it because it's a natural resource for—not just the people that live here but the visitors and everybody. It's Florida's resource, so to speak, so yeah, we were real, real conscious of the environment.
[My parents, Bill and Burnell Martina] raised five children. [My father] is completely deaf; he can't hear. He got spinal meningitis when he was about sixteen years old. But like I said, his dad before him was a fisherman, and he was of a family of nine and he grew up working in the industry because back then they all had to work when they got big enough to really learn how. But he loved the independence of being a fisherman, and he loved the outdoors and being able to be his own boss, you know, and make his own hours. And he provided a great living for all of us kids, you know. He educated five kids. And he and my mom are still married and all five kids are still married to the same person they married. He was a great role model for us. He still loves the fishing, and he still fishes. He's seventy-seven years old. He crabs—he has probably one hundred, one hundred fifty crab traps that he does in the spring and summer of the year when the season is in. And I think he does it—naturally, he likes the money, but he just still loves being out on the water, and he's just got it, you know, kind of like sand in your shoes. I guess he's got water in his blood. [Laughs]
How many generations does your family go back in this area?
Actually you know before my grandfather, I really don't know because I don't know a lot about my great-grandparents. I know that my great-grandmother was Indian and they were settlers here, so you know I'm sure they probably did fish because that's pretty much all the—the history in Franklin County is commercial fishing and the cotton industry, primarily. And now we're getting more into tourism. But, you know, of course, it was always—the fishing was the backbone.
What did you go to college for and where?
Okay, I went actually to Jones Business College in Jacksonville, Florida, which was certainly a culture shock going from small town Apalachicola to the big city. And I studied Business Administration. And then, like I said, I got married and my husband was in the Navy, and we moved away and, of course, we came back home, and I've been in banking ever since then. But I love it here. I 
mean, I don't want to live anywhere else, and my husband and his family don't. And we have two girls—we have two daughters, and they both live here. They teach school, and neither of their husbands are in the seafood industry because it really—unfortunately, it's a dying industry. It's very difficult to make a year-round living at it anymore, and it's not anyone's fault. It's just everything you know that—the elements, the licensing, you know, the pollution that has been caused from years of development upriver, and there's just a whole lot of things. But for the people that are still in it, like my youngest brother, you know, they are going—that's what they're going to do. I mean, they enjoy it, and they want to stay there.
When you came back to Apalachicola and you lost your job and were forced to enter the [seafood] industry, what did you get into?
Actually we oystered. My husband had already oystered, so I went on the boat with him and, you know, culled the oysters and worked for probably three years doing that. And unfortunately, in the [nineteen] eighties, there were a couple of really bad hurricanes here, and they closed the entire oyster industry for about nine months. So we were forced to find something else to do. So that's when I got into banking full-time again. And, of course, we had the children at that time. So he stayed oystering, though, even though the bay was closed. He left here and went to Cedar Key and oystered down there until the bay reopened here and came back here and oystered for another, you know, seven or eight years. But it just got to the point where it was difficult to make your bills—even though he was a very hard worker and went every day that he could, you know. With the bay being closed or weather, you know, there were a lot of days that you just couldn't go at all. So he went and got a regular job—paper mill at Port St. Joe, and then it closed down a few years after—ten years—he worked there ten years, and then it closed, and now he's working at the Post Office. [Laughs] So it's been a roller coaster for us. But if he could make a living, he would still be in the bay.
Well it sounds like with people I've met across the board that anymore now people are doing like five or eight different things. Because they want to be on the water but they have to do something else.
And that's like Kevin, my youngest brother. He's got the shrimp boat. He keeps his oyster license, you know. He's a really avid fisherman, but he lays tile as a sideline job, so when things are slow or the bay is closed, he has another trade. And I think that's probably true—especially the younger people, you know. Most of them are trying to get some sort of fallback trade. But when they can, they're going to be on the bay. I mean, that's their first choice, and they'll do that as long as they can make a living. But if the bay is closed like it has been this summer for red tide, for months on end, you know, they have to—they're forced to have a fallback and a follow-up plan.
Well what do you envision the future of the oyster industry being?
Personally, I think there will always be an oyster industry here because we have very productive beds, and there have been tremendous efforts made to preserve and protect the bay. The State has done a great job of buying lands and protecting wetlands and that type of thing, so I think we'll always have an industry. However, you know it won't be of the magnitude that it was in the [nineteen] sixties and seventies just because there aren't a number of people, and there aren't as many outlets. We used to have thirty or forty oyster houses; now we're down to probably five to seven that truly operate. So I think that, you know, we'll always have it but it's not going to be of the grander state that it has been in the past.
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Can you tell me what it was like being out on the boat with your husband?
Oh, it was great. You know it's kind of work, as a husband and wife, at anything, but he tonged and I culled, and I guess what the good part was is that we had so much autonomy as to hours that we wanted to work. And we worked together, and then when we were home we were together. At the time, our children were small and so we would—basically, I would take them to the sitters while he was readying the boat, you know, and meet him at the dock. And then when we came in, I would just leave—go home, you know, go get the kids and he would have to unload. So actually, a lot more of the work fell on him than it did on me. But it was great to be out there on the water. And at that time, there were lots of women out there. There aren't as many women out there now as there were then. But we limited our hours. I mean, we didn't work all day. You know we would work a few hours and then as a wife and a mother, I could always say you know, “I need to do housework today or something else” and not have to go. So in that respect it worked out really good for us. But it's not something that I would want my children to do because the work is very hard and it's back-breaking and the weather and the elements—I mean, your skin just is like leather because you can only wear so much sunscreen and so many—so much hats, so you know, I wouldn't want—I'm glad both of my girls teach school. But I wouldn't want them on the water.
I know the process is relatively straightforward, but would you mind kind of going through what it was like culling and how many oysters your husband could bring in at a time and—?
Sure. Basically, we would get to the bar and anchor down. He would start tonging. [And then I would] cull through [what he would bring up] and rake over what is not kept. So basically you have a little cull iron that is probably six or eight inches long, and it's made out of metal, and you use it to break apart the oysters from the—just the shells. And basically, you just separate the good oysters and put them in the bucket and throw the trash away. And he just keeps replenishing by tonging up whatever is down there. And then, of course, he would always get a lot more than I could cull through, so he would have to sit down and help cull as well. But on a good day, we could probably—some days we could get—we averaged probably twenty to thirty bags a day, which would be—we only got paid six dollars a bag back then, but now they’re ten or twelve dollars, so you could probably get two or three hundred dollars a day now—a husband and wife. Back then it was probably more like one hundred and sixty dollars, which was still really good for the days that you went. And what we had to do is we had to go every day that the weather let us—even Sundays when the bay was open because in the summertime it's only open four days a week, but in the winter it was open seven. So you had to go on Saturdays and Sundays, you know, or whatever day because you never knew—there may three days of the week that it would rain or be really rough because the bay is very dangerous if it gets really rough. I've been caught out there in bad weather, and it's not a pleasant experience at all. It's really kind of frightening. But, you know, it's a hard laborious job, but there's nothing like the sunsets and the sunrises and, you know, the glistening on the water and just the—it's quiet and it's serene and you can hear the seagulls and—so it's an easy way to relax. I mean, you don't have the pressure that I have here [at the bank]. You don't have the stress, you know. You just, basically—it's just hard labor.
Did y’all take lunch out there?
We did, we took lunch and I always—I didn't eat a lot out there to be honest with you because there's no bathrooms, and so I didn't want to have to go to the bathroom because you have to use a bucket, and so I didn't do that very much. I didn't—I usually didn't take much lunch, but we usually only stayed four or five hours. So don't drink very much coffee before you go and don't drink anything while you're there and you might can make it 'til you get back in. But that's—you know, that's the real downside. But you have little what we called dog houses on the boats. I mean, you have a little bit of privacy but, 
you know, for a guy, it was a lot easier. But for the ladies it's a little difficult out there.
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Has it always been that some women would choose to go with their husbands or is that something—
Oh yeah, the women—yeah, absolutely. In years past, when my mom and dad were actually in the oyster industry, most of the women did not actually go out in the bay in the [nineteen] fifties and sixties. They shucked oysters. Most of the women shucked what the men caught. Later, when we oystered, it was mostly bag stock which people—they were sold in the bag, so they weren't—I mean, there were still lots of oysters shucked, but there was always a market, if you didn't have a shucker and you just wanted to market bagged product. Because people really—the half-shell markets really got going more in the [nineteen] seventies and eighties. So probably in the—you know, the early days when my mom and dad were in the industry, my mom shucked for my dad, and so basically, whatever he caught, she shucked out. And they didn't sell in the bag or very—very little in the bag. So for the most part, the women were in the oyster houses doing the opening of the oysters, which also evolved from hammer—from the hammer and knife, to the electric machines that they use now.
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Tell me about the Franklin County Seafood Workers Association.
The Seafood Workers Association was probably organized back in the [nineteen] sixties, and it was mainly just to try to be—have everything fair and then have some representation [for the seafood workers].
And it covers people who de-head shrimp and pick crabs—?
Absolutely any seafood product. And the dues was like five dollars to join, so it was a very limited, very small amount. And the Association is still going today. Mr. Leroy Hall is the President, and the primary thing that they do now is they oversee the oyster planting program for the State. The State—the workers got together back in the [nineteen] eighties and decided they needed a way to fund replanting of the bay that would not be reliant on general revenue tax dollars. And so they imposed upon themselves one hundred dollars license fee per year, and they also imposed a fifty-cent per bag surtax—surcharge, and those funds go into a trust fund at the State, and they're used annually to replant the [oyster] beds. And the way they replant them—there's two ways: they put shell product down and they also transplant oysters from closed areas that will never be opened to harvesting to the bars. Like in the summer you transplant to the winter bars because they have to have a cleansing period and then vice versa. So they transplant from inland areas that are considered polluted areas, to areas where they can actually harvest that product once they're—you know, gone through the—I don't remember the days. I think it's thirty days that they have to—because they're filter feeders, and they have to cleanse themselves.
So who actually does that, the County or the State?
The State oversees it through the Department of Natural Resources—Department of Environmental Protection—and the Seafood Workers Association administers it. They actually set up the days and the times and decide where they're going to plant from, and they do all the paperwork, and they do the payroll and pay the people, you know, the workers for that—that service. And generally, they do it on the off days. Like in the summer it's only open four days a week, so they plant on the fifth day. They plant on the Fridays for the most part.
Did you hold a position with the Franklin County Seafood Workers Association?
I did. I was an officer for years back in the [nineteen] eighties, and I was very instrumental in [a] strike. [Laughs] So I'm well known locally for being one of the instigators. But you know, the people needed a voice, and not everybody is willing to get up and speak, and not everybody is willing to go to the Legislature and approach, you know, elected officials and try to make things better. But we're real proud of, you know, the licensing because we can perpetuate the bay forever, you know. We have the funding, and we don't have to rely on the State, which we shouldn't rely on the State for our own industry. So that—I was part of that—I was part of that licensing. And then I worked for a state senator for a four-year period, so I was always looking out for the safety of workers. So my heart is still with them, even though I'm not an officer. I still help them with the planting program, and I still prepare letters to the Legislature from time to time for them. So my heart will always be in the bay, but I have to make a living. [Laughs]
What's your position here at the bank?
I'm a Vice President. I'm a loan—I'm a lender. I'm a Loan Officer, actually, so—and, you know, I like it here, and it's a great place to live and raise your family and enjoy the great outdoors.
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Now I want to ask you about your mother, too.
Her shucking, uh-huh.
What is her name?
Her name is Bernell Martina. And yeah, she shucked for years, and she actually is retired now from the school system. But when all of us kids were little, she shucked oysters until we were probably in high school, and then she sold insurance for a short while, and then she went to work at the high 
school. She was the Principal’s secretary for years, but she still—she can shuck a mean oyster, and she can pick crabs really good. But she grew up doing it; she actually grew up picking crabs because that’s what they did to make extra money, and things were hard. I mean, they were poor and had a hard time, so all the kids had to work and that’s what she learned how to do. But then she shucked oysters for a long time, and like I say, she and my dad were real involved with the seafood industry when we were growing up.
How has that mechanical shucking changed the industry as far as people being employed or quantity—?
It's made it much easier; it's a lot harder with a hammer. I mean, you're—I think, you know, as far as being tired, when you have to manually beat every oyster, versus just, you know, sticking the bill in a machine. So I think as far as hard labor, I think it has helped tremendously for the women. But as far as danger—it's very dangerous, and there have been lots of injuries. People get their fingers and hands caught in those machines a lot, so there have been a lot of injuries. So a lot of people just still won't use them because they're afraid of them, but for the people that do, I think what they'll tell you is [that] if you keep it maintained and you keep the teeth sharp and, you know—because once it gets dull, that's when you have to really stick it in and force the oyster. So as long as it's sharp and well-maintained, it's not nearly as dangerous.
Is it something that just offers a little bit of ease in the shucking, or does it actually make it faster?
It makes it faster, and it's a lot easier. But it's a lot faster to do because you can do the oysters and then open them.
I wonder, too, being part of the Seafood Workers Association, if this is something that you'll deal with. I would imagine. But physically, the toll that shucking takes on one's body from all that standing? And then I know those mechanical shuckers are so loud, I would imagine someone's hearing has been affected by that. Is that something that the Association deals with?
No. Nope, never—never have dealt with how to make it easier or less stressed. I mean, well, it's not stress. I guess it's just physical and how it might affect your hearing or your back.
Are those [things big] problems? I mean do people accumulate some [severe health problems from shucking]?
Yeah. I mean, it's hard work, but it evidently is not too bad because, I mean, I know a lot of really elderly women that shucked for their whole lives, and, I mean, even in their fifities and sixities, they're still doing it. So I don't guess it's any harder than farming or a lot of other things that people do that's manual.
Has the industry incorporated any kind of health insurance?
No, it's still totally self-employed. People are considered totally self-employed and—however, what the—the Association did—get the women that shuck the shipped in oysters, they are now considered employees and the houses do have to match Social Security and carry workmen's compensation and things like that for them. So the Association did help to have them classified as a true employee because they were not just casual laborers. I mean, they were told when to come to work and the house supplied everything, you know. I mean, it didn't supply the shucking machine or maybe their boots and their apron or whatever, but I mean, it supplied the facility and the product, so now they're classified as employees. So at least they have matching Social Security now, which for years they never had.
When did that change?
That was probably in the early [nineteen] nineties.
And the people who are employed in the houses now, are they still a lot of local folks who have jobs shucking and want to shuck because—?
There are. There are a lot of local people. But as far as shuckers, there are not any new people getting into it, and they have brought in some Mexican immigrants to work in that industry. So I would say, no. I mean, people are not—I mean, I did not encourage my daughters to get into it, and I don't think any local parents are because it's so hard, and it's so unreliable. But—so, no. I mean, they're bringing in Mexicans to actually work in the oyster houses.
And what about the waterfront here? You were talking about there used to be dozens of oyster houses and seafood houses, and now there are just a handful. That dynamic is changing where the seafood houses—I know they've always been on the water, but do they need to be? And is there going to be a time you think when that will be kind of a compromise?
Well they need access to the water for unloading facilities. They will always need that; however, they don't physically have to be located on the water, and that's what has happened as far as pressure. The real estate has become much more valuable for other uses than for commercial fishing, and so there's a lot of issues out there with the comprehensive plan and what's allowed and the land uses and things like that. So there's a lot of controversy about that because a lot of people are afraid that if it goes away, it will go away 100-percent. You know, they just won't relocate inland or somewhere. And there won't be an unloading facility. So right now, I mean there's—in the City of Apalachicola and in the Franklin County comprehensive plan, they have dedicated working waterfront areas that that's all they can ever be is commercial seafood. But there's a huge push to change that. And I have mixed feelings about that. You know, I don't want to see it go away, but at the same time, if I was a property owner, I feel like I should have my rights, too. So it's a Catch-22.
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I wonder being a lender here at the bank, if you have an idea of maybe what—more of the history of this bank has been with those in the seafood industry.
The bank has always supported the seafood industry and made loans to boat owners for equipment, you know—everything. Probably they did a lot more lending for the seafood processors because they had land and they had equipment. There aren't many boat financings anymore. I mean, people just—if they want to buy a boat, you know, they use their house or some other collateral. They don't really use the boats anymore. The oyster boats, generally, people just buy outright because they're pretty inexpensive. And not many new people are getting into shrimping.
Now [my brother] Kevin actually, in trying to adapt even more and keep the boat operating because it's important to actually use it—the engines and everything need to be working and the wenches and stuff—so what he does is he also does tours. It's called Irish Town Tours and he takes people out shrimping and he lets them, of course, keep the catch. And so he does tours, and he takes people out in the bay and, you know, they see the sights, and they actually experience a working shrimp boat. So we're trying to keep the culture alive. And it's profitable for him, and it also keeps the boat, you know, operational because they can't just sit idle. They have to be worked.
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Well is there something that I haven't asked you or may not have known to ask?
The only thing probably would be, you know, how does something not here [in Apalachicola] affect the bay. And, you know, it's a huge issue, but Atlanta and the water supply from the Flint and Chattahoochee River system flowing into the Apalachicola—it's a huge issue. Because if we don't have enough water, the bay will not survive. And Atlanta tends to continue to draw more and more water out of the system. So at some point, there's not going to be enough water to go around and if we get to that point, we're at the end of the—the you know—we're at the end of the line, and we're going to be the ones—the bay has to have a certain amount of flow of fresh water and, you know, nature made it and now we came in as man, and we dammed it all up so that we could build cities and whatever. And I would—personally, I would love to see those dams just blown up so that it could just go back to the natural flow. But that's not realistic. But I think there's got to be some compromise between Florida and Alabama and Georgia as to the water sharing on the river, and I hope that they can come to some kind of agreement. I know that there's been negotiations for years and there are all kinds of agencies and people—I'm just a lay person, but, you know, I think that we have a right to have a clean and productive bay, and we need the water more so than maybe they need to build another city around Atlanta. So that's my two cents worth of that. [Laughs].
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