THE MISTRESS OF CORTEZ

A Small Package of Hope
and Perseverance for the Future.

By Lael Hazan • Photos by Chad Spencer

The Spanish conquistadors came to our area seeking fortune, fame, and adventure. They were awed by the beauty of Florida’s Gulf Coast but were more interested in finding wealth than creating permanent settlement. If Hernando Cortez were to see his namesake fishing village nestled on a picturesque point in Manatee County across from Anna Maria Island, he might be astounded to discover that the wealth of the area was not in gold, but in fish.

The main road leading to the turnoff for Cortez fishing village is typical of many in Florida. It is filled with shopping centers, strip malls, and car lots, with an RV park thrown in for good measure. Once you take the turnoff and get into town, however, it is as if you’ve stepped into another, slower world. Small, colorful homes with bits of boat paraphernalia line the streets, and often a fishing boat will be parked in the front yard. This isn’t the area of gated communities and association rules; rather, this is a community of fierce individualists who share a common purpose: fishing.

Visitors can take boat tours out to a beautiful barrier reef with amazing sunsets, along the way enjoying views of the harbor, where working fishing boats compete for space with derelict and sunken ships. Pelicans now own the Capt. Pam, and a once proud clam farm overturned by hurricane force winds has become home to whatever lives in the water. Stacks of crab traps line the wharves and fishermen mingle with fish buyers and tourists.

Lying at the end of the road into town is the last working fish house on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Fishermen from North Carolina permanently settled Cortez in the 1880s. The last fish house still working is A.P. Bell, founded in 1940 by Aaron Bell, a noted area rogue who realized that he did better on his own than with partners. The house is still run by the Bell family. Aaron’s son, 86-year-old Walter Thomas Bell, still goes in every day to make sure the place is running smoothly. It is a huge warehouse with large refrigerated rooms surrounding an open space. It is there that almost everything the local fishermen catch is offloaded, cleaned, and packaged. With the shell parking lot crunching beneath my feet, I’m struck by the fact that the air smells of the sea, sweet and clean. There is no odor of fish, although five to ten thousand pounds of it pass through here each day.

There is a large map of the area painted on the side of the fish house that faces the sun-baked parking lot. It bears names of places that are known only to the fishermen and, like the mural itself, are fading from memory. Next door to the fish house is the Star Fish Company Market and Restaurant, one of the few places in the area to sell local fish. The men behind the counter are a collection of characters with cleavers and multiple tattoos, many of them fish-themed. They stand behind the fish case next to a work island bristling with knives, efficiently gutting and filleting recent catch for public purchase. Huge steel pots hang above the windows. They are for boiling the stone crab claws during the season and can easily weigh up to 75 pounds each when full. There is cheerful banter between the tiny restaurant kitchen and the island, but it quiets down when they see me. When asked for the proprietor they send runners, and talk about the “angel” of the place. The owner of Star Fish, and the day-today manager of the Bell Fish House, is none other than Karen Bell, a diminutive, soft-spoken lady with a quick and easy smile.

Karen couldn’t attend to me right away, as she was giving a tour to 60 kindergarteners. Teaching where food comes from and respect for the sea and fisher-people is her raison d’être. Although she left Cortez to go to college and because her father wanted her to have an easier life, she missed the area and felt a responsibility to the community. In 1986 she returned and eventually bought the Star Fish Market, turning it into a thriving waterfront restaurant. It is the place to go for fabulous local fish, but, as small, strategically placed signs say, “not a place to be in a hurry.” The wait can be long, but is definitely worth it.

Karen is very conscious that Cortez is a “working” village. She doesn’t want it to get too touristy, and she is striving to maintain a balance between the local and the outside world. She participates with FISH, the Florida Institute for Saltwater Heritage, an organization dedicated to preserving, maintaining, and promoting public awareness and protection for the traditional maritime culture and facilities in Cortez and elsewhere.

The center of Bell Fish House is an open room with a slanted cement floor. It is now off-season so only a half-dozen workers in rubber boots are around, waiting for either a boat to pull in or a fisherman to drive up to the back. In the winter season A.P. Bell employs 50 people and services at least 100 boats. Still, as Karen shows us into the 3-million-pound capacity refrigerated holding room, there are 500 pounds of yellowedge grouper waiting to be shipped, and many other treasures of the sea. She shows us star butterfish and permit, which many take for pompano. She says that they don’t throw anything away and that people use the grouper heads to make stock. Many of the fish buyers have been purchasing from Bell for generations. Bell sells a lot of Florida fish to a fish house in Georgia from whom they then buy fresh Atlantic fish to sell at the Star Fish Market. Despite the scare generated by the BP disaster, business is normal for now and even expanding globally, with the recent shipping of five containers of fish to Colombia.

Karen is confident in her fish: the marine research institute tests every day, and the commissioner of agriculture has stated that no tainted products will get to market. While we were touring, a day fisherman pulled up to the back in a pickup truck dragging his skiff. On board were containers of baitfish, and the employees of Bell proficiently labored to remove and pack it. A forklift offloaded the catch and brought it to the center of the factory. Workers scooped up the fish, rinsed them, weighed them, and put them into five-pound boxes ready to be shipped anywhere. These had already been sold to a bait house in Miami.

Many kinds of fish are processed at A.P. Bell; however, the draw of the area and the existence of the factory is mainly due to one fish, the once plentiful mullet. Overfishing, red tide, lack of American consumer interest, and (according to the locals) arbitrary regulation account for the precipitous decline in both the mullet population and the number of people who fish for it. Though in America the fish itself is often used as bait, it is considered a delicacy in many parts of the world, and A.P. Bell ships containers full of it. The fish roe is especially prized. Recently they shipped their first container to Taiwan.

To be a fisherman—and most of those who work in the area are men—one needs to be an individualist. Fishing isn’t the kind of job that has a set time schedule, and it can involve working alone for hours if not days at a time. Although they are their own bosses, when they work, it is labor-intensive, and can stretch on without rest for the duration of a run. The day fishermen, the ones that tend to have families and go out for eight hours or less, fish inshore for mullet, pompano, and sheepshead. The offshore fishermen go out for 10 days at a time in iceboats and catch the snapper, grouper, and shrimp. They keep the crabs alive and pack the other fish on ice, nose to tail with the gut side down. As a group they are quiet people, rightly prideful of their craft, quick to assist each other in need; and “ornery” when asked about the changes to their future.

Karen Bell is the unlikely mistress of this bustling venture. Although soft spoken, it is clear that she is in command. She lends a helping hand to clearing dishes or packing fish, but she is equally comfortable giving an order, and an army of fishermen and workers look to her for direction.

She is an ever-present fixture and can turn up anywhere; from the office, stacked floor to ceiling papers and looking as if it hadn’t been redecorated since the 1950s, to selling fish at the market if needed.

A wizened fishermen with colorful fish and sea grass tattoos running up his calves waited for her to be finished with us so he could ask her a question. When she left for an errand, he told us that Karen was the one who kept the place going. It is clear she loves the business, and that those involved love her. Karen Bell wants visitors to know that fishing is an avocation, not just a job. She feels it takes a special kind of personality. Many of the older generation of Bells, like 80-year-old Calvin, have retired from fishing but still appear daily at the fish house.

The docks and the fish house are their way of life, and, according to Karen, may be the key to their longevity. They have something to do that they love. Unfortunately, few of the younger Bells want to go into such a precarious profession. Although the village is worried about the effects of the BP spill, she does have hope and wouldn’t dissuade her young cousin Beau, already an accomplished sport fisherman, from going into the family business. She is resilient and firmly believes in the Cortez fishing village. She knows that the community’s perseverance and ability to work for a common goal will ensure its future.

RECIPE

Captain Brian’s Blue Crab Cakes