Casting a Wider Net

In 2018, a small, unassuming dinghy accidentally scraped the hull of a $50 million yacht docked in a Boston marina. The dinghy belonged to a local nonprofit that provided sailing lessons for underprivileged youth, and the owners of the yacht wanted substantial compensation for the scratches.

“They were asking for an insane amount of money to haul the vessel out of the water and repaint the hull,” recalls Kirby Aarsheim, a maritime attorney who practices throughout New England and represented the sailing nonprofit. “For a couple of scratches? You’d rarely do a full haul-out for something like that.”

The opposing side was hoping for ignorance. Instead they got Aarsheim, who has an ocean-deep knowledge of everything from fishing regulations to the details of owning and operating a vessel. In this case, Aarsheim learned the yacht was already due for haul-outs to maintain the class—something that had been planned well before the dinghy incident.

“I just knew that it was going to have been hauled out anyway and that the paint job was done during the planned haul-out. Sure enough, it was,” says Aarsheim. Her insight likely saved her client hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Aarsheim grew up in Marion, the daughter of a Norwegian immigrant who arrived in the United States in his 20s and worked as a commercial fisherman before building a scallop fleet of his own in nearby New Bedford Harbor. She recalls being surrounded by conversations about boats, regulations, the weather and other minutiae of operating a family fishing business. 

And there were scallops. Lots and lots of scallops.

“There was a time when my brother and I were like, ‘We can’t eat another scallop,’” Aarsheim recalls with a laugh. “That scene in Forrest Gump when Bubba’s telling him all the ways you can make shrimp—that was us with scallops.”

Her brother, Keith, followed their father onto the boats, eventually becoming captain. Meanwhile, as an undergrad at Bentley University, Aarsheim studied prelaw and worked in restaurants, initially imagining she might open a seafood place of her own. But over time, it dawned on her that her real interest wasn’t serving seafood but serving the industry that produced it.

“I only became a lawyer to become a maritime lawyer,” she says. “I don’t know if I would be a lawyer if I wasn’t a maritime lawyer, honestly.”

Aarsheim enrolled at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island—one of the few schools in the country to offer a marine affairs concentration—and committed herself to what some would call an obscure vocation. She jokes that she could probably name off the top of her head most of the attorneys who practice fisheries law nationwide.

“This field is incredibly complicated,” she says. “Just thinking about the different fisheries my firm handles—scallops, squid, lobster, crab—and they’re all managed differently. There are sometimes even differences between state and federal regulations.”

In 2010, Aarsheim joined a boutique maritime firm, where she spent nearly a decade learning the intricacies of vessel owner defense, maritime litigation and the complex regulatory framework governing the country’s fisheries. In 2019, she and longtime colleague Olaf Aprans—also a fisherman’s child—decided to move to their current firm, Farrell Smith O’Connell Aarsheim Aprans. The change gave her the flexibility to deepen her involvement in her family’s scallop fleet; she handles insurance renewals, government contracts, fisheries policy, regulatory advocacy and maintaining its RINA class. 

“It’s easier for me to do this kind of work and to interact with vessel owners because I can understand where they’re coming from,” says Aarsheim. “I know what goes into operating a vessel, so I’m in a position to understand their mindset.”

In an ongoing matter, she represents the owner of a fishing vessel that ran aground on a “soft bottom.” While the vessel suffered no damage from the grounding, problems began after a salvage company was hired to pull it free. Within minutes of being refloated, the vessel sank, and Aarsheim’s client alleges the salvage operation was conducted negligently. The case is another aspect in the variety of maritime law.

“If you are not familiar with maritime law, get linked up with an attorney who is,” says Aarsheim. “It’s not an area where I would ever recommend someone try and learn it and go it alone.”

She’s also served on the New England Fishery Management Council’s Sea Scallop Advisory Panel, where she represented the interests of vessel owners as regulators weighed everything from catch limits to fishing access. More recently, she was appointed by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to serve on the New England Fishery Management Council. 

“Fishing vessel owners and operators have an important voice in fisheries management, and they’re not really heavily represented on the council as of now,” says Aarsheim. “They’re the ones who are impacted the most by the regulations that are implemented by the council, so it makes sense for them to have a seat at the table.”

As much as she enjoys her work, Aarsheim isn’t planning to get her own boat any time soon—although she tries to make sure her two young children get some experience on the water. Results so far are mixed.

“We went on a boat trip in the Bahamas last year, and on the way home there was a thunderstorm rolling in. So, the captain of this speedboat just hightailed it in. I thought it was fun, but the kids, not too much,” recalls Aarsheim with a laugh. “They were initially saying they were never going to go on another boat, which was heartbreaking. But we went on a much slower ride this year and they liked it—so I’m still hopeful.”