Joe Spicciani oral history transcript

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INTERVIEW WITH JOE SPICCIANI

BY ED GROSSMAN AUGUST 15, 2002

MR. GROSSMAN: This is August 15, 2002. We are at the Fish and Wildlife Service in

Juneau, Alaska. It is the Juneau Field Office. I have here today Joe Spicciani. He is the

current Skipper of the motor vessel Curlew, which is a sixty-five foot T-boat research

vessel stationed here in Juneau. My name is Ed Grossman. I am a staff biologist. We’ll

just go ahead and jump right into the interview. Joe I was hoping to ask you some

personal information first, to get a little background; and then talk about your job here

with the Service. First of all, can you tell me where you were born and when?

MR. SPICCIANI: Okay, I was born in New York City in 1946.

MR. GROSSMAN: And your parents, were they born here in the States also?

MR. SPICCIANI: My mother was born in New York City in 1910. She is still alive.

My father was born in Lucca, Italy in 1902. He passed away when I was a child.

MR. GROSSMAN: What was your mother’s maiden name?

MR. SPICCIANI: Puchi.

MR. GROSSMAN: What were your parent’s jobs and education when you were

growing up?

MR. SPICCIANI: My father died when I was four years old. At the time, he had a

business with a partner and he made plaster cast statues. After my father died, my

mother went to work as an Actuary at the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in New

York City.

MR. GROSSMAN: In your early years, how did you spend your time, growing up in

New York City?

MR. SPICCIANI: I lived near Yankee Stadium. I went to many Yankee games. We also

a summer house on Long Island and I spent much of my time on my neighbor’s boats or

out in boats that we owned.

MR. GROSSMAN: So in your grade school and high school years, were you working on

boats then?

MR. SPICCIANI: Not exactly working. I went out with friends and relatives. We fished

in the Long Island Sound.

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MR. GROSSMAN: What kind of things would you fish for out there?

MR. SPICCIANI: Our favorite was Blue fish. Blue fish are an aggressive feeder and they

come to the surface at night feeding off of small fish that were in the water. We’d just

throw a plug into the pack and they’d fight over it. We could load the boat up pretty

quickly.

MR. GROSSMAN: Was that for sport or for the table, or both? Did you sell things

commercially?

MR. SPICCIANI: No, we usually loaded up the boat in about twenty minutes and then

we went to the beach. There were usually lots of women on the beach waiting for us to

give them fish!

MR. GROSSMAN: Were there any hobbies, events or books that influenced you most

when you were at that age?

MR. SPICCIANI: I can’t really think of any.

MR. GROSSMAN: What were some of your earliest jobs?

MR. SPICCIANI: I delivered clothing for a Dry Cleaner in my neighborhood from the

time I was nine years old until well into high school. When I was in high school I worked

as a Saturday extra for a New York City department store. They went out of business.

It was B. Altman and Company. Then when I was in college, I worked during the

summer time for a machine shop that made parts for helicopters mostly. They were

contractors for Sikorski. It was sixty hours a week, six days a week summer time

vacation for me!

MR. GROSSMAN: I know you mentioned fishing, and going to the ball games; were

there other things? Were you hunting or traveling, into photography, or anything like

that?

MR. SPICCIANI: In New York City, there weren’t a lot of opportunities for that.

Across the street from my house there was a schoolyard. We played softball there all

summer, and touch football there all winter. I usually painted the markers on the field for

football season. I even named the stadium after myself. My middle name is Caesar. We

called it Caesar Stadium.

MR. GROSSMAN: Where did you go to high school?

MR. SPICCIANI: I went to a large Catholic boys high school in the Bronx. It was called

Cardinal Hayes High School. He was probably the Archbishop of New York formerly,

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before died. After that, I went to a Community College. I was drafted into the Marine

Corps. When I got out of the Marine Corps, I went back to school at Hunter College. It

was formerly a fancy girl’s school on Park Avenue. But by the time, I entered it; it had

become a co-ed institution. I didn’t graduate. I left about a year before I could have

graduated.

MR. GROSSMAN: What year did you graduate from high school then?

MR. SPICCIANI: In 1964.

MR. GROSSMAN: So, you left school because you were drafted?

MR. SPICCIANI: I went to a Community College and I was drafted.

MR. GROSSMAN: Out of the Community College?

MR. SPICCIANI: Well, I had dropped my courses to a level where I was no longer

considered eligible to be deferred because of school, so I was drafted on St. Patrick’s Day

of 1966. I was drafted into the Marine Corps, which had just started to draft for the first

time since the Korean War. So I spent two years in the Marine Corps. When I got out in

1968, I went back to Hunter College.

MR. GROSSMAN: What interests did you take up in college? Were you working on a

particular degree, or just dabbling in different subjects?

MR. SPICCIANI: I went back to school because there was nothing else to do! So I never

really took a great interest in things.

MR. GROSSMAN: Your time in the Marine Corps; I guess that was the Vietnam era, so

did you go to Vietnam?

MR. SPICCIANI: No, I fought the War in North Carolina.

MR. GROSSMAN: So your duty station was there for the entire time?

MR. SPICCIANI: No, I was an Intelligence Clerk, the Marines didn’t have enough time

really, to take a person who was only under their wing for two years and train them and

send them to Vietnam. So the Marines that get orders to go overseas right out of Boot

Camp really never had enough time left to be sent to California for pre-WESTPAC

training, I guess they called it. By virtue of the fact that I didn’t get orders right out of

Boot Camp kind of guaranteed that I probably would not go overseas.

MR. GROSSMAN: How many years were you in the Corps?

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MR. SPICCIANI: Two years.

MR. GROSSMAN: Did that military service relate in any way to working for the federal

government now?

MR. SPICCIANI: I never envisioned it. I was an Intelligence Clerk in am AMTRAC

battalion. Amphibious tractors were a post-World War II method of not having LST’s

winding up on the beach like at Normandy and being a trap for troops that were trying to

land on the beach. After World War II they built landing craft that could swim from the

ships to shore and become support vessels on the beach because they were not only

propelled on the water, but they had tracks where they could come up on the beach.

MR. GROSSMAN: Was there anyone in this time frame of growing up through school

and the military that you would consider as a mentor or who helped in leading you to a

life at sea?

MR. SPICCIANI: Not really, I never dreamed I’d have a life a sea!

MR. GROSSMAN: How about your family now Joe? How did you meet your wife?

MR. SPICCIANI: That’s a very long story. But anyway, I met my wife in New York.

She’s English. We were married in 1982, and we have four children, three boys and a girl.

My oldest is fifteen, and my youngest is nine.

MR. GROSSMAN: What do your children do now? I guess they are all in school?

MR. SPICCIANI: That’s true. My oldest is now old enough to be a volunteer for the

Fish and Wildlife Service, so he spent about forty days on the Curlew with me this

season.

MR. SPICCIANI: That’s a great experience. Why did you want to work for Fish and

Wildlife Service to begin with?

MR. SPICCIANI: I fished in Alaska for twenty years before I took a federal job. Back

in the 1980’s I ran a large trawler. And back then the only thing that was left for us to do

in the summer, since there was nobody buying bottom fish, was to be a tender for a

cannery. We used to call it ‘being a bus driver for dead salmon’. It wasn’t so exciting.

Not for a good boat. We discovered that the federal government chartered private vessels

to do their research in Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea, and also along the Aleutians. We

started to bid the NOAA charters. For a couple of years I did the Chukchi Sea/Bering Sea

crab survey. Another year I did the trawl survey along the Aleutians from Adak to Attu.

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MR. GROSSMAN: So you were able to get familiar with government boats and

operations?

MR. SPICCIANI: And government research.

MR. GROSSMAN: How did you hear about the position in Juneau for the job running

the Curlew?

MR. SPICCIANI: At the time, I had given up a boat that I had run for sixteen years

because the company wasn’t putting what it needed to be into the boat to make in

competitive. I ran a few factory trawlers that I was able to get a position on when the

Captains needed a break. At the time I was looking for a position on a factory trawler

where I’d have my own boat, where I’d be the premiere Captain on it. But at the time, I

was looking for jobs, and I saw the Curlew job come up on the Internet. So I called here

and I talked extensively to Evan Holmburg who was the Field Director at the time. And

then also Dwayne Peterson who was pretty much running the boat. He was a Biologist,

running the boat. I applied for the job. I guess the rest is history. They seemed to have

wanted me when I called. I interviewed them!

MR. GROSSMAN: What year was it that you did come down here?

MR. SPICCIANI: I think originally the job went on the Internet in maybe April on 1997.

I think that in July I was running a small factory trawler and they called me that boat to

tell me that I could have the job. It took a few weeks for me to come in and settle my

situation in Kodiak. Then I moved here, and I think I got on the boat one of the first days

in August of 1997.

MR. GROSSMAN: So you’ve just passed your anniversary here. It has been five

years?

MR. SPICCIANI: Right.

MR. GROSSMAN: Now, the Service didn’t provide you with any training, or anything?

You just took the job and melded right in from your past experience, right?

MR. SPICCIANI: That’s correct, right.

MR. GROSSMAN: What are your daily duties then, with the Curlew? What would you

point out about the daily duties of running and maintaining it?

MR. SPICCIANI: Basically, the Curlew is a one-man show. When folks come on my

boat they become my crew. It’s the smallest vessel I’ve ever run! People who are used

to smaller boats look up to it as a big boat, but it’s quite a manageable boat. It has a lot of

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equipment on it that’s been very well maintained. Just keeping up with that is not such a

big task. Basically I operate the boat and take care of all of the equipment onboard. I also

cook!

MR. GROSSMAN: And very well, I’ll attest to that. Was there anything new to you in

the way of Service equipment or sampling that you found interesting or different from all

the heavy equipment that you worked with on trawlers?

MR. SPICCIANI: Yeah, I think, we don’t do a lot of this type of work but basically we

support dive operations. I have experience as a diver, but not with the government. I

went through a dive course when I was building a boat in Mississippi. I think it was

called Mississippi Divers. I am familiar with diving operations. I never bought diving

equipment, and never dived beyond that. But it’s nice to know what’s going on under the

water when you are tendering divers. A lot of interesting things have come up from work

that we have done. We have supported the Army Corps of Engineers in assembling and

disassembling their weather stations in Glacier Bay. We have supported the EPA in

doing Banvene sampling; that’s a sediment sample of the bottom. People from the

Smithsonian Institute were here showing our folks how to set out traps for Green Crab,

looking for invaders like Green Crab.

MR. GROSSMAN: Those are invasive species. How about animals? Have you worked

with any animals since you have taken over?

MR. SPICCIANI: I can’t remember anything beyond frogs.

MR. GROSSMAN: The frog studies. How about Sea Lions?

MR. SPICCIANI: Oh, I’m sorry, I forget.

MR. GROSSMAN: You’ve done so many. They must be routine now.

MR. SPICCIANI: Yes, it’s a regular part of the last four years. We have been

supporting the Alaska Department of Fish and Game who is a contractor for the National

Marine Fisheries Service. And because NMFS doesn’t have the personnel to look at the

situation of Stellar Sea Lions, they contract with the ADFG to do southeast Alaska.

Some of their partners are the University of British Columbia folks that do a lot of work.

They are part of the North Pacific University Marine Mammals Consortium. They also

get federal money to do that. But what we do every year is to do a brand, re-sight trip.

We run from Juneau down the inside passage haul-out areas and we go to the outer coast

to the main rookeries which are; a new one is Graves Rocks just part of Glacier Bay. We

also go to a fairly large rookery called White Sisters, which is on the west side of

Chicagof. Then we run down to the next major rookery. At one time it was the second

largest in the world. It is off the Hazy Islands, which is twenty miles south of the

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southern tip of Barinof. After that we went another hundred miles south on the outer

coast to Lowry Island, which is part of the Alaska Maritime Refuge. Forrester is the

major island but there is a small island south of it called Petrel, and then Lowry is a group

of rocks and a small island north of Forrester, which is considered the largest Stellar Sea

Lion rookery in the world. And what the Alaska Depart of Fish and Game is looking at is

animals that they had branded in 1994 and 1995. They are looking for those animals to

see if they still exist and if they are pupping. Those animals became mature about three

years ago and started pupping. In the last couple of years, because there is more money

available for Stellar Sea Lion work, they have branded more animals. Last year I think

523 more animals were branded adding to the original 800 that they did in 1994 and 1995.

This year they wanted to brand another 600, but, and I didn’t do the branding; the ADFG

research vessel, the Meddea had the branding setup, so he would follow me. He would

come two days behind me and after we did our brandery sites. He’d collect pups and hot

brand them. I think they did about 350 animals this year. They had really bad weather

and they were disappointed with that.

MR. GROSSMAN: Most of these places that you are describing are outer coast, gulf

waters. It is probably like a little homecoming for you; getting a little ocean swell.

MR. SPICCIANI: And also, it’s in the summer so the weather is quite pleasant.

Although it can get pretty gnarly in the summer, and this year we’ve had unusually bad

weather. In other years, I have done the Queen Charlottes with them too, but this year,

the Meddea, which is a much bigger vessel; 110-foot boat, they did the Queen Charlotte

leg of the trip and I was happy with that! They had terrible weather.

MR. GROSSMAN: How do you feel that the Service is perceived by people outside of

the agency, related to your operation of the boat? Do you think the boat and the work it

does is a positive thing in the eyes of the public?

MR. SPICCIANI: Well because we are such a small agency, and we never really get

funding for anything unless a major incident occurs, we have very little “face” in the

environmental community. We don’t do a lot of public outreach out of the Juneau Field

Office, the way a Refuge would. I know on Kodiak Island they have a Salmon Camp for

the children and many things that they have funding for. For us, the face of the Service is

the fact that we have our two T boats, which are beautiful boats. When artists see them;

there’s a woman in Wrangell who does beautiful paintings over nautical charts.

MR. GROSSMAN: Brenda Schwartz.

MR. SPICCIANI: Brenda Schwartz. Any time we are in Wrangell with either one of the

boats we know for sure at Christmas time that there will be a Curlew or a Surfbird on a

nautical chart in Annie Kells which is the premier art studio in the downtown. It will be

selling for six or eight hundred dollars.

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MR. GROSSMAN: What would you say has been the major impediment to you doing

your job?

MR. SPICCIANI: I guess the fact that we are not well funded. We have a bigger boat in

Homer. The Tigelax. They call it the Techla now. I am trying to figure out the proper

Upick pronunciation. They are funded. They have Congressional funding and they get a

certain amount of money to take care of that boat every year. We have no such luxury.

So we’ve started taking our reimbursable money from other agencies, the ADFG Stellar

Sea Lion folks, the US Army Corps of Engineers, Colt Region Research Engineering Lab,

the Forest Service and National Park Service among others. We let them use our boat for

what we consider to be a reimbursable amount. With that money we are able to stow

maintenance money where we can actually take care of our boats and keep them up to

speed. Eventually, if they need re-powering we’ll have a stash of money to do that. So

funding for us is a major thing. We’ve been creative on that and hopefully if we have to

do a major rebuild on one of the boats that will work for us.

MR. GROSSMAN: So far, Joe, what would you say has been the high point of your job

on running the Curlew?

MR. SPICCIANI: Well, working with wildlife biologists who are generally quite

charming folks by comparison to running a factory trawler [is pleasant]. You have people

on board who are quasi homeless and halfway between the homeless shelter and the local

prison. These are the kinds of jobs that people who get out of jail go for. They have no

place to go if they have no family support. So managing a hundred people on a factory

trawler is not exactly a holiday. It’s quite a lucrative job, but you certainly deserve every

penny you get out of it! The Fish and Wildlife, by comparison, is my retirement. It’s

quite a pleasant group of people that I get to work with all of the time. And it’s different.

Every trip is different. When people look at my job they say, “People would pay to do

that!” And that’s probably true!

MR. GROSSMAN: With the highs, there is always some lows. What would you

consider the low point of your career here so far?

MR. SPICCIANI: I’ve only been here for five years, but we have such a turn over of

Field Supervisors, that we never know if they are going to try to reinvent the boat or

something that actually works with their bogus ideas. I was recently as Kodiak Island

Refuge and they have a new Manager, Leslie Kerr who is a marvelous person. I was

telling her, “Oh yes, friends of mine say that we in Refuges follow our Refuge Manager’s

bogus ideas and we fund VIP trips!” Leslie said, “Yeah, I’m on my way to Katmi with a

lot of VIPs to listen to their bogus ideas!” So, because of turnover we never know what’s

coming up for the boats. There is a lack of consistency with the management.

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MR. GROSSMAN: What would you consider to be your most dangerous or frightening

experience? Have you had any?

MR. SPICCIANI: I’m trying to think if I have any.

MR. GROSSMAN: Facing the paperwork?

MR. SPICCIANI: Coming back to town and finding out I’ve got a new Field Supervisor!

[Laughing]

MR. GROSSMAN: This leads into what was your most humorous experience since

you’ve been here.

MR. SPICCIANI: I think probably interviewing for this job. I remember when I was

called to be interviewed for the job, Dwayne Peterson who is probably one of the most

marvelous federal employees that the government ever had. I had gotten to know him

because I had nitpicked the office to death about the job to make sure there was

something there. So when he did call me up to interview me, he had a very funny

interview. He said, “Oh, biologists are a weird lot of people. How are you at taking care

of different kinds of people?” I said, “I can take care of anybody. I used to bid the

NOAA charters and I had quite a group of people.” One time I had a doctor’s wife on

board who showed up in Adak about a day late with her Patagonia baggage and Patagonia

everything and her own exercise machine. She didn’t like the other women on the boat. I

had them all in one four-person stateroom. She didn’t want to be in there. So I put her

on top of a chest freezer in the forepeak, and she was perfectly happy. Actually, I got to

like her so much that during the interview I said, “Maybe you know her, Ellen Verocy,

she lives in Juneau?” And he said, “Oh yeah, we know Ellen!” Then he said, “Here’s

the stickiest question, how do you feel about helping out with the cooking duties when

we’re out for a long period of time?” I said, “Oh, I’ll probably do all of the cooking.

Even when I ran a big trawler, I always put somebody on watch and I made the meal

myself because I am a rather good cook. I’d rather eat my own cooking than somebody

else’s”. Dwayne said, “Oh man, we need you!”

MR. GROSSMAN: What would you tell others about your career or the Service from

your five years exposure to it?

MR. SPICCIANI: Working with biologists, and working with the government has it’s

own problems with their hiring process and getting real quality people, but generally the

type of people that I have met in the Fish and Wildlife Service, and who do these jobs for

a lifetime are very dedicated people to their mission. It’s always a pleasure to work with

people who have such a high standard of excellence in what they are trying to accomplish.

We are working with people who have very high standards all of the time and that’s very

nice.

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MR. GROSSMAN: What are your thoughts on the future, Joe? Not just for the Service,

but for the boats? What do you foresee there?

MR. SPICCIANI: It’s seems like there is more money for environmental work. And

there are more problems with the environment, with the growth population on Earth and

growing wealth. More people want to come and experience. People who work in big

glass towers in New York City want to come and experience glaciers and the critters that

are out here. It seems that this whole trend is not so beneficial to the critters themselves.

This is the trust of the Fish and Wildlife Service, so this seems to be a growing need; to go

out and keep a handle on what’s going on between the action in the southeast mostly with

cruise ships and tourists and a growing population of sport fishing boats and sport craft.

There are a lot of yachts coming up from the lower forty-eight.

MR. GROSSMAN: It sounds to me like you feel that it’s just getting busier and busier

and there is more need for research to find the answers to that mix of people enjoying it

but not harming it.

MR. SPICCIANI: That’s certainly been true. In the last five years we have certainly

gotten more and more. The demand for the work is great. And a lot of the work we have

to turn down because we just don’t have the time and space for it.

MR. GROSSMAN: Is there anything else you’d like to add Joe about the boats or your

experiences on them?

MR. SPICCIAN: You know, the boats are, I know you describe them as a “T” boat.

Actually, they are 1953 Korean War, U.S. Army built, steel boats that were built as

support vessels for the troop ships mostly. They have really quality construction that

you don’t really get any more. I know the National Park Service T boat operator. He has

kept his boat Korean War mint [condition]. He whole attitude is that things which were

built at that time are quality. Everything after that, he wasn’t so happy with! A lot of

times when we look as these boats…I had the Regional Director down as a captive

audience on the boat for a couple of hours because we took him for a ride down the

Gastano Channel.

MR. GROSSMAN: Was that Dave Allen?

MR. SPICCIANI: Yes, Dave Allen. He looked at me and said, “These boats are getting

to be fifty years old, how long do you think they’ll last?” They are quality boats and

they have been well maintained. They will last as long as we take care of them and keep

up with them, unless they develop some more efficient means of propulsion on the water.

I know people are experimenting with Catamarans. The Alaska Department of Fish and

Game put in two million dollars into one for Kodiak, thinking that they could run around

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at 30 knots, which would certainly save a lot of time. I’ve noticed that they are running

that boat at 12 knots! The people they had told them that the “T” boat was paid for, and

that the two million dollars could be better spent.

MR. GROSSMAN: Maintaining the “T” boat!

MR. SPICCIANI: Probably better. The boats are wonderful boats. And there are “T”

boat aficionados around the world that when they see them, they want to come down and

take pictures of them. Many people come on board and ask for tours. We are a service.

We are happy to accommodate for the public.

MR. GROSSMAN: Well that’s great! Thank you, Joe!