The Best of Jobs

by Jim T., Scituate, MA



In a youth's life, there comes a time when he learns to fend for himself. This practice usually starts with an activity as seemingly trivial as getting a job and earning money. I have personal experience with this, as I took up my first job over the summer. My job was sea mossing.

When I first heard about sea mossing, I wasn't too enthusiastic. It seemed extremely boring, since all you do is rake sea moss off rocks and put it in your boat. The rakes are 11 feet long and the process of throwing it into the water and rapidly pulling it and the moss back has a tendency to leave more than one painful blister. However, with the right pair of gloves, the threat of these annoyances becomes almost obsolete. Although I didn't exactly want to be a mosser, I felt obliged, as it was customary for members of my family to be mossers. My father, uncle, grandfather and great-grandfather were all mossers, so it was my duty to continue this tradition.

The owner of the mossing company provides mossers with 14-foot boats with motors. The owner will buy the moss for ten cents a pound, which he weighs on a boom truck. Ten cents a pound sounds like very little money, but it really adds up. Toward the end of the summer I consistently raked between six to eight hundred pounds, which earned me 60 to 80 dollars. This is a great sum of money, especially considering that the moss can only be reached at low tide, so you can only work four hours each day. Since you are basically self-employed, it is not necessary to call in sick, and you can take off as many days as you want. Of course, the more time you take off, the less money you make.

Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of being a mosser is that you get to keep the boat for the summer, which means you can use it for recreational purposes, such as fishing, lobstering and diving. The actual mossing wasn't nearly as boring as I had imagined. Many times interesting fish, eels and even lobsters get caught in the rakes, and the ocean is one of the best places to be in the scorching heat of summer. One time, believe it or not, I caught a three-foot sand shark. On that very same day curious seals swam a few feet from my boat, and feasted upon whatever animals I raked up and threw to them.

I would suggest to any dedicated, hard-working people looking for a summer job to consider sea mossing, as it is great for physical strength, you can work on days which suit you, the pay is excellent and you take part in many memorable experiences.