Tyler Miranda: A Tale of Family and Fish

NEW BEDFORD, Massachusetts — One might say that the fishing industry got its hooks in Tyler Miranda at a young age. Born into a family of fishermen, Miranda grew up on the water, going out on trips in his father’s lobster boat—a wooden vessel about 14 feet long and half-covered in ocean-worn lobster traps—since he was six.   

It was out in the open water that he learned of his most important life lesson: a fisherman’s work ethic.  

“I remember, ever since I was really young, my dad being upfront about work,” Miranda, a scruffy man with worn jeans and a lopsided smile, said. “He said, ‘There are two kinds of people in this world you want to work, or you don’t want to work because you want to work.’”  

When Miranda said he wanted to work, his father told them they’d get along just fine.  

And work he did, carrying on the family tradition of fishing.  

“I guess the initial attraction of scalloping was, you know, the money,” Miranda said. “But once you do it, it’s just it’s a lifestyle, you know? 

He saved up enough money from working on the boat to buy himself a bike when he was 12 years old.  

By the age of 16, Miranda stopped attending school to fish full-time. He could learn more and make a better life for himself by scalloping than by remaining in a classroom.  

“We have people with a college education that could be doing something else,” Miranda said. “But they come back to New Bedford because fishing is so financially lucrative, they choose to do this. You make good money. Well, up until this year, this year is going to be tough.” 

Miranda grew up in New Bedford, an industrious town about an hour south of Boston that has the distinction of being the nation’s largest fishing port. With a population of nearly 101,000 people, according to 2020 census data, New Bedford is a mix of historical colonial and abolitionist houses converted into dentists’ offices, upscale seafood restaurants dotted along the waterfront and boxy brick buildings, reminders of the town’s industrial past.  

And many, many piers—an out-of-towner should never agree to meet a fisherman at the pier without specifying which one first. There are four municipal ports in town, according to the Port of New Bedford. Piers are veins of gravel that stretch from parking lots out into the ocean, and boats dock on either side of them, sometimes stacking up so a person must climb across one boat to get to another.  

Like many people in the New England seafood industry, Miranda is a generational fisherman. His paternal great-grandfather, father and maternal uncles all earned their living out at sea—most of them by scalloping. The family ties threaded through the fishing industry created a tight-knit community, magnified by the small-town closeness of New Bedford. Give a scalloper the name of some in town, and they could play a game of six degrees of separation, connected by which boats they’ve worked on.  

Miranda can’t walk around a pier without at least one person stopping to talk or at least nod at him as they drive by in their truck, the gravel of the pier crunching beneath their tires.  

Now, at 38, he captains two scallop boats—Miss Leslie and Mirage—and goes out on about eight trips a year, depending on what regulations allow. Trips are usually 10-days long, and Miranda makes enough to support his wife and four kids. Other people he knows do the same thing—some fisherman use the money they make scalloping to fund their hobbies and other businesses, according to Miranda.   

However, scalloping comes at a cost: time with his family.  

“It’s something it’s like a love-hate thing once you get older and you have kids because you’re away a lot,” Miranda said. “You miss a lot of things. And my youngest son—I missed him being born because I was trying to push it to finish the trip. My wife went into labor, and I missed it. It affects your whole life.” 

He plans to continue scalloping, though, because it is the best way to provide for his family, and he wants his children to have a better life.  

Looking ahead, Miranda would be okay passing the family tradition onto his children. 

“I wouldn’t mind my kids becoming fishermen,” Miranda said. “I don’t know if I push them to be fishermen. My youngest son is only to, so it’ll be a while. But if that’s what he wanted to do, that’s okay, but I don’t know if it’s gonna be worth it at that point.”