Fifty-pound striped bass, caught within sight of the downtown Boston skyline. That is the scene now playing out on a body of water that a generation ago was one of the most polluted harbors in the United States.
Boston Harbor was, for most of the twentieth century, a dumping ground for untreated sewage and industrial sludge. A court-ordered cleanup and the construction of the Deer Island treatment plant transformed it. The fish followed the clean water back in, and the anglers followed the fish.
"Boston Harbor is one of if not the premier fishing spot in the Northeast," said Chris Megan, publisher of On the Water magazine.
Pete Santini, who owns the Fishing Fanatics bait shop, has watched the change across his lifetime.
"When I was a kid, we'd catch a flounder that was brown on both sides, that's how dirty the water was," Santini said. "But the last 10 years, there's been a huge influx of big fish, particularly striped bass, who are coming in to chase the smaller bait fish like pogies, which are everywhere. And it's all because the water is so clean."
The numbers anglers describe are the kind usually reserved for remote destinations. Mike Delzingo, who has fished the harbor for 34 years and runs Fishbucket Sportfishing, said clients struggle to believe where they are.
"People think about Block Island and Cape Cod and Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, but the fishing in the harbor is phenomenal," Delzingo said. "There are days where we'll catch 50 or 60 fish on a four-hour charter, right in the city."
"The fishing here is as good as it is anywhere, right out of downtown Boston. You used to have to make a pilgrimage to fish. Now people are pulling 50-pound stripers with the city skyline in the background," Shaw said.
The turnaround has a human payoff beyond trophy photos. John Hoffman, who founded the youth nonprofit The Fishing Academy, uses the harbor to introduce city kids to angling.
"It's so good now we catch over 1,000 striped bass a year," Hoffman said. "The harbor cleanup is a national success story, and when a kid catches their first striper, they have a huge smile on their face."
Officials who ran the cleanup are still slightly stunned by the result. Stephen Estes-Smargiassi, interim executive director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, remembers the starting point.
"I'm not sure anybody thought that was plausible when we started this. The bottom of the harbor was an oily black mayonnaise of sewage," he said. "Now we have some of the cleanest beaches in the nation, and people can see concrete benefits from this enormous undertaking."
Loretta Fernandez, an associate professor at Northeastern University, said even modest gains in water quality reshaped what could live there.
"That's the reason the fish have been able to return," Fernandez said. "A small change like that is enough to have a large impact on what types of fish are able to be in the harbor."
