Fishing in Stonington Borough, CT: The Last CT Fleet

Connecticut's Last Working Commercial Fishing Fleet

Stonington Harbor, on the inner side of the Borough's small peninsula, is described across multiple independent sources -- National Fisherman, Patch, the Town of Stonington's own government news page, and a video produced by U.S. Representative Joe Courtney -- as home to Connecticut's last commercial fishing fleet. That is a specific, verifiable claim, not marketing language: it means no other Connecticut harbor still supports a comparable working commercial fishing operation, and it is why a page about fishing here needs to be treated as a page about a genuinely rare, still-functioning industry rather than generic waterfront color.

It is worth being precise about scale. This is a 0.7-square-mile borough of fewer than 1,000 people carrying, on its own, the entire remaining commercial fishing identity of a state with a long Atlantic coastline. That mismatch between size and significance is the single most distinctive fact about Stonington Borough, and it runs through everything below -- the 1750s origins, the Portuguese immigrant history, the 1999 disaster that nearly ended it, and the handful of boats and families still working the water today.

Roots to the 1750s: Portuguese Immigrants and a Modern Fishery

Stoningtonscallops.com, the website of Empire Fisheries -- a real, named local fishing company owned by Joe and Nancy Gilbert -- dates "a modern fishery in the European tradition" at Stonington back to the 1750s. That is a company's own account of its industry's roots, not a secondhand estimate, and it places Stonington's fishing identity well over two and a half centuries deep.

The modern shape of that fishery owes a great deal to Portuguese immigrants, who arrived originally as maritime workers and had built a "flourishing Portuguese community" in Stonington documented by the 1850s. Over time, that community transitioned from whaling into fishing mackerel, flounder, bluefish, and swordfish, and by the mid-20th century had moved further into lobster, scallops, and flatfish -- the species mix that still defines the fleet's work today. That evolution was formalized in 1931, when the Southern New England Fishermen and Lobstermen's Association was established, giving the working fleet its own organized voice.

From Roughly 60 Draggers to a Fleet You Can Count on Two Hands: Two Honest Snapshots

At its mid-century peak, in the late 1940s and 1950s, the Stonington fleet numbered roughly 60 draggers, plus numerous lobster boats -- a genuinely large working fleet for a harbor this size. It does not look anything like that today, and this page keeps the two most recent counts separate and dated rather than collapsing them into a single "current" figure, because they were taken years apart and measure slightly different things.

A 2021 investigation by The Day, republished via Yahoo News, put the active Stonington fleet at about 10 fishing and scallop boats and 8 lobster boats. A more recent, October 2025 Connecticut Mirror retrospective narrows the focus specifically to lobstering, putting Stonington's lobster fleet at 7 active lobster boats, plus one more boat based out of New London -- and describes it as the only remaining commercial lobster fleet left in Connecticut. That October 2025 piece also names 29-year-old Roddy Grimshaw as the fleet's youngest active captain, a detail worth sitting with: an entire state's commercial lobster fishery now runs through a handful of boats out of one small harbor, carried in part by fishermen still in their twenties.

Within that small fleet, Empire Fisheries -- Joe and Nancy Gilbert's company -- is the named example of scale that still exists: per 2021 reporting, Joe Gilbert owns four large scallop and fishing boats docked at Stonington, making Empire Fisheries one of the more substantial operations left in a fleet that, overall, has shrunk dramatically from its mid-century size.

The 1999 Lobster Die-Off: The Actual Reason the Fleet Is Small

The gap between roughly 60 mid-century draggers and today's small handful of boats is not a vague story of gradual decline -- it traces to a specific, well-documented regional disaster. In fall 1999, Long Island Sound's lobster population collapsed, triggered or accelerated by Tropical Storm Floyd, which struck on September 16, 1999, on top of already-warming water, a paramoebiasis parasite outbreak, and a disputed pesticide-spraying causation theory. A class-action settlement of $12.5 million plus $3.75 million was ultimately paid out -- a settlement that lobstermen, though not scientists, widely view as vindicating the pesticide theory, even though that causal link remains disputed rather than scientifically settled.

The scale of the collapse, Connecticut-wide, was severe: total landings fell from roughly 3.8 million pounds at their 1998 peak to just 181,000 pounds by 2024, and the number of full-time commercial lobstermen working Long Island Sound dropped from about 1,200 to essentially zero outside of Stonington. The western Sound saw a 99% landings drop in 1999 alone; the eastern Sound, where Stonington sits, saw a 64-91% drop. Put plainly: Stonington's surviving lobster fleet -- those 7 boats identified in October 2025, plus the one out of New London -- is not generic small-town fishing-industry decline. It is what is left, statewide, after essentially every other Long Island Sound lobstering operation was wiped out by a single documented disaster a quarter-century ago. That makes Stonington's small fleet a genuine survival story rather than a symptom of simple decline.

Current Pressures on the Fleet (2021-Era Reporting)

Reporting from around 2021 -- not independently reconfirmed as current for 2026, and presented here as dated rather than as today's situation -- described several real pressures facing what remains of the fleet. Recruiting young crew was described as difficult, a common thread in commercial fishing communities nationally but a particular risk for a fleet already this small. Fluke pricing was reported as highly volatile, falling from roughly $5 per pound to as little as $0.50 per pound during COVID before rebounding afterward -- the kind of swing that can make or break a small operation's season.

That same reporting described a Connecticut fluke quota increase from 260,000 to 579,000 pounds, though the specific year of that change was unspecified in the source and should be treated as 2021-era context rather than a current quota figure. It also flagged offshore wind lease areas as a live conflict for the fleet's future fishing grounds, describing turbines up to nearly 900 feet tall with blade diameters over 700 feet, across roughly 900 planned turbines -- again, figures tied to 2021-era reporting and not reconfirmed as current 2026 counts. Anyone evaluating the fleet's outlook today should treat all of these as a snapshot of the pressures the fleet was facing several years ago, not as an up-to-date status report.

41 Lost at Sea: A Memorial, Not Just a Statistic

Per a 2021 Day/Yahoo figure, 41 members of the Stonington fleet have been lost at sea over the fishery's history. That number is a reminder that everything above -- the boat counts, the price swings, the quota figures -- describes real people doing genuinely dangerous work, generation after generation, out of one small Connecticut harbor. It belongs in any honest account of what this fleet represents to the community that has kept it going.

Blessing of the Fleet: A Tradition Rooted in Stonington's Portuguese Parish

Stonington's Blessing of the Fleet dates to 1954 and is organized around St. Mary Church, established in 1851 to serve the Borough's Portuguese Catholic families -- the same community whose transition from whaling into fishing shaped the modern fleet in the first place. The tradition includes a Fishermen's Mass, a procession of decorated boats through the harbor, and a family dinner at the Portuguese Holy Ghost Society. Local reporting from the 2023-2024 era referenced its 70th observance, which lines up consistently with a 1954 start.

That continuity -- a single-parish tradition running roughly seven decades, tied directly to the same Portuguese immigrant community documented in Stonington since the 1850s -- is part of what separates Stonington's fishing identity from a purely commercial or purely recreational one. This is a working fleet with its own religious and cultural observance, still practiced.

Where the Fleet Ties Up -- and Where Recreational Anglers Fit In

The commercial fleet and recreational boaters share real, named dock and mooring infrastructure in and around Stonington Harbor: Don's Dock, with roughly 200 slips; Dodson Boatyard, with roughly 110 moorings; and Coveside Marina. That shared infrastructure is part of what keeps the working harbor feeling like a working harbor rather than a purely recreational marina -- commercial boats and pleasure craft are docked in close proximity, not segregated into separate zones.

This page does not report current Connecticut recreational fishing regulations, license fees, or seasons, because none of that was confirmed in the research behind it and it changes over time. For all of that -- what you need to fish recreationally in Connecticut waters, current seasons, and any size or catch limits -- go directly to Connecticut's Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) rather than relying on any static page.

What This Means If Stonington's Fishing Heritage Is Why You're Here

The honest version of Stonington Borough's fishing story is layered, not simple. It starts with a fishery dating to the 1750s, shaped into its modern form by Portuguese immigrants who arrived as maritime workers and built a flourishing community here by the 1850s, formalized by an organized fishermen's association in 1931. It grew to roughly 60 draggers at its mid-century peak, then was gutted -- not by generic decline, but by a specific, documented 1999 regional disaster that wiped out nearly every other Long Island Sound commercial lobstering operation, leaving Stonington's small surviving fleet as the last one standing in the state. Two separate, dated counts -- about 10 fishing and scallop boats and 8 lobster boats in 2021, and specifically 7 active lobster boats plus one more out of New London as of October 2025 -- describe what is left, still carried in part by a named company, Empire Fisheries, and by young captains like 29-year-old Roddy Grimshaw.

What is deliberately left open here rather than invented: any single precisely current 2026 fleet boat count, current Connecticut recreational fishing regulations, license fees or seasons (use CT DEEP directly), and any current offshore-wind turbine count (the 2021-era figures above are dated, not current). What is confirmed and durable is the fleet's identity: Connecticut's last commercial fishing operation, still working out of one small historic harbor, still marking its work every year with a 70-year-old Blessing of the Fleet, and still remembering the 41 of its own lost at sea along the way.