The Senior Project program at Maynard High School started as a pilot in the 2008-2009 school year. The foundation of the program revolved around students choosing an area of inquiry in a field they had interest in pursuing after high school. They would research a current question in that field, complete a project related to it, and intern or job shadow in that concentration to better understand what they might like to do after graduating. In 2008, three students piloted the program. In the nearly two decades since, the MHS program has become a graduation requirement and a model that other districts in the state are looking at to design their own capstone programs. The heart of the program remains student voice and student choice of interest-based and project-based learning. We are excited to share some of those student voices with Maynard Voice readers.

Our first student writer is Caleb Langhoff, who spent this year investigating the sustainability of the fishing industry. An abbreviated version of his research follows. We hope to make this Student Corner a regular feature in the Maynard Voice.

Caleb Langhoff is a graduating senior at Maynard High School. He has a strong interest in the fishing industry and the sustainability of fish as a species and food source. He also is a history enthusiast and completed his senior project internship at the Heritage Museum in Hudson, MA.

“The Decline of the Codfish”

The Codfish has always been a staple of New England identity and heritage. Throughout the years, the Codfish have been under threat and populations of Codfish have been in terrible decline. Threatened by overfishing, destruction of historical habitats and climate-induced warming, this fish is on the verge of local extinction. But why care?

To lose the Codfish would be equivalent to losing our history, losing our identity, and for some like the men and women who brave the Atlantic to fish, their jobs and their livelihoods. The Codfish population is so heavily damaged that it will take decades to fully recover. The Codfish that these fishermen catch are on average smaller and younger than the Codfish caught thirty or forty years ago.

This fish is OUR heritage, OUR history, we are in the hometowns of The American Revolution, and these men were fed by that stoutly fish. To me, this fish is a sacred symbol of our identity and where we came from.

In fact there is a four-foot-eleven-inch wooden carving of this fish currently hanging in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Such a modest effigy was the topic of a legislative session back in 1895 as a debate was held to question whether the carved cod would stay or be removed entirely. However this argument was rebuked by one Richard Irwin, Massachusetts Representative: “Is this emblem said to be too common and plain to accord with the painted splendors of the State House? It is no more common, simple, and plain than the fathers who founded our State. It tells how the lowliest may rise and win and rule; how the fisherman may be the peer of the marshals of France and the admirals of England.” If that does not prove that this plain fish is a key to our heritage, I am not sure what will!

Should the Codfish be depleted, Cape Cod will lose her beloved namesake, fishermen and women will lose their jobs, and ecosystems will fracture like a stone through glass.

This “founding fish” is at an all-time low, important breeding grounds were targeted and critically overfished causing these fish to scatter, never to return. The Gulf of Maine is also crucial for Codfish breeding and reproduction, but it is warming quickly. This will have disastrous effects for the local species there.

This relatively unassuming fish is a keystone to the local food chains of the Nor’east. It provides food to seals and sharks, and eats the smaller fish keeping them in check and preventing them from overpopulating the seas. To rid the seas of this fish is to take an axe to a load-bearing beam whilst still inside the house.

With the proper legislation, petitioning, and most importantly, public awareness, we can help the Codfish recover. It will take decades for them to fully recover from our mistakes, but it is possible.

About five years ago I had no thought for this boring fish, I knew nothing about it, nor did I care. I first read about the Codfish in the book; “COD, A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World,” by Mark Kurlansky. It opened my eyes to this fish. I realized that this spotted and marbled fish was so important, not only to us New Englanders, but to people throughout the ages. The Vikings, The Basques, The Franks and Bretons, The English, all of these peoples used the Codfish one way or another,and in some cases, their society hinged upon it, built upon the Cod.

This barbled fish, the key to our society, is in grave danger of disappearing from our waters permanently.

It breaks my heart to see these fish go and never return to our Massachusetts shores, the Islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, the ports of New Bedford, Boston, and Gloucester.

Remember the men and women who stoked the fire, the founding of the Commonwealth, and remember the Codfish who fueled that smouldering tinder.

“. . . nowhere in all America will you find more patrician-like houses, parks and gardens more opulent, than in New Bedford. Whence came they?. . . Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea.” -Herman Melville, Moby Dick