Calamari , Come Back
In this column from our archives , Ellen Liberman dives into the squid business in Rhode Island — one that , like so many local industries , has been threatened by the coronavirus pandemic . Here ’ s a look back on peak squid .
It ’ s high squid fishing season . Recreational anglers crowd the Calamari ( Goat Island ) Causeway at night , carrying floating water lights and special jigs to scoop them up in buckets . The commercial fleet is pumping squid into the Port of Galilee by the boatload . From the seabed to the boat to a saltwater flume that shoots them into the maw of a dockside processing facility , they are sorted , graded and flash frozen at minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit .
Ryan Clark , president and CEO of the Town Dock , takes advantage of a quiet pre-season moment to demonstrate how the Loligo pealei , or longfin squid , is hand-gutted and cleaned . He deftly slices the tentacles from the body just above the eye and pulls out the beak . The guts and the backbone — called the quill for its resemblance to a molted flight feather — are extracted from the long tube of its body .
GETTY IMAGES / SEAMARTINI
Clark works his thumb between the skin and flesh to peel off the skin , then strips off the back fins to produce a white tube .
A squid ’ s body is soft and offers little resistance to disassembly . At full throttle , workers at the Town Dock ’ s Johnston facility handprocess 500 squid an hour .
“ It ’ s not typical manufacturing ,” says Clark . “ The seafood world is very challenging with the unpredictable nature of fisheries . There are so many dynamics going on in the ocean . The science tries to keep up , but no one knows what ’ s underneath the waves . My team has to gear up . When squid season is upon us , it ’ s all hands on deck to keep the boats going to maximize the catch .”
The Rhode Island fleet has been so adept at maximizing this particular catch that Galilee is now the number one port for longfin
RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l APRIL 2021 23