laugh. “I didn’t even have a driver’s license.
My mom would drop us off down at the
dock, and we would make $300 or $400,
me and a couple fourteen year olds. That
was super enticing. I would go buy brand
new surfboards all the time. That motivated
me to keep doing it.”
Russo is one of the youngest full-time
commercial quahoggers on the bay. He
wakes early each day (sometimes before
sunrise at 4:30 a.m. so he can get right to
work when sunrise regulations allow). He
takes Zombie Boat out of his home dock
on Apponaug; the boat was given the name
because of his nickname, Rob Zombie,
bestowed on him fifteen years ago by
fishermen for the way he used to stack
lobster traps like a zombie in those early
morning hours.
The job is physically demanding. Sometimes
he’s working with up to sixty feet
of aluminum pipe in fifteen to twenty feet
of water with a stainless steel rake at the
bottom. He uses a pot hauler to hoist
the rake back up to the surface, but it’s
a repetitive motion for the entire day. “You
have to work the rake as you’re drifting.
Picture, you go to the gym and you do the
same workout for six hours straight,” he
says. “Even if you are not maxing out, by
the end of the five hours, you’re going to
be straight-up wiped.”
Russo estimates that there are probably
only about 100 full-time quahoggers left
working on the bay year-round. “Most of
the guys out there are my dad’s age now,
like ages sixty and up, and it’s a super
tough job for any age, really,” he says.
“That’s why my dad got out of it. He’s like
I don’t want to be sixty-five years old,
busting my ass to make a hundred bucks.”
Russo loves being his own boss and
deciding when and how long he’s going to
work, but it’s certainly challenging. “To keep
a commercial boat reliably in service, you
need to make some money to make it work,”
he says. “I am making money doing it, but
you gotta go out and look for the stuff. The
product isn’t there like it used to be.” –J.C.
The Ultimate Quahog Guide:
Chowder Time
| | CONTINUED FROM PAGE 51
liquid, not thickeners like cream, roux or
cornstarch. They obscure the flavor of the
main ingredient: fresh quahogs. What
makes a good chowder is not the pork or
bacon, the cream, the butter and all the
106 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l AUGUST 2020