FOOD: Net Profits

In the chill hours before dawn, hundreds of steam and motor boats crept out over the star-sprinkled swells of the upper Great Lakes. They chugged past dim, pine-spiked shores until the sky greyed into day and the wheelmen could pick out the flag-topped buoys that marked their submerged nets. The craft drifted silently to a stop in the icy, crystal water.

Gnarled hands reached over the side, began to pull up the first of the "gang" nets, each "gang" made up of 24 gill nets 4 ft. wide and 300 ft. long, which may extend for a mile and a...

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