Fear, Not Oil, Taints Catch : Oil spill: At Newport’s unique Fresh Fish Lane, dory livelihoods are threatened. But the fish, caught 20 miles from the disaster area, are said to be uncontaminated.

Teresa and Timothy Meek don’t know how they will survive the oil spill.

Each day they shove off from the Newport Pier about 4 a.m. and return later the same day to sell their fish to the public in a ramshackle, makeshift market the fleet has dubbed Fresh Fish Lane.

On most weekends, the market is crowded and the fish is usually sold out by about 1 p.m. But not many people were buying Sunday.

As part of a unique group of dory fisher folk--a vanishing breed who go to sea in tiny flat-bottomed boats called dories--the Meeks’ are threatened by the goo blackening the Orange County coastline.

“We basically had looky-loos today,” said Teresa Meek as she looked out over her table, still filled with glistening fish. “Everybody wants to see if there’s oil on the fish and ask if it’s contaminated. They’ll say, ‘Is your fish oily?’ and I say, ‘Yeah, you don’t need any Crisco. Just fry it in the pan.’ I just sort of roll with the punches.”

The fish caught by the dory fishermen and sold at the base of the Newport Pier are, for the most part, deep-water fish caught 20 or more miles from the oil slick that now hugs the coastline.

The dory fishermen have nevertheless been hurt badly by the oil spill.

“People are scared, I guess, but our fish are fine,” said Carrie Beck, whose catch included rock cod and red lobster. “We usually sell out by one o’clock. We’ll be here until three or four and we’ll still have fish left over.”

Old-timers like Beck say they will survive. The Meeks, who bought their own boat and earned their own space at the dory fleet’s crowded market two years ago, aren’t so sure.

Timothy Meek, 25, worked for 11 years with the fleet, starting as a teen-ager with the tedious job of putting the bait on lines for other, more experienced fishermen. For the first several years they were married, Teresa apprenticed with him.

Then they bought their own boat and earned their own space at the market, a prized position that the Meeks said usually takes years to obtain. They are now part of a tradition that began one day in 1891 when a Portuguese fisherman began selling fish at the beach out of his dory, rather than having them hauled to the market.

“We’re just starting out in our own business and we don’t want to lose it that fast. We paid our dues. We baited for everybody on this line,” Teresa Meek said, pointing down the row of fishermen selling their catches. “One day we just said, ‘Hey, we want to do this ourselves.’ ”

Now they get up each morning in their Costa Mesa duplex a couple of hours before dawn. By 4 a.m. he is rolling their flat-bottomed boat down the beach and into the ocean. Their day, which includes cleaning and selling the fish and then seven hours of baiting their lines for the next day, ends about 10 p.m., sometimes later, Teresa Meek said.

On Sunday at the pier, the Meeks were dressed alike in jeans and plaid work shirts. Their 7-year-old son, Timmy Jr., tugged at his mother’s sleeve and asked when they were going to have lunch. Looking tired and a little warm under the bright sun, his father puffed on a cigarette.

Teresa Meek said she understood that their problems were small compared to the magnitude of the oil spill. Still, she said, she wished someone in authority would speak out for her. She wasn’t sure what she wanted them to say.

She simply does not want to lose their way of life, she said.

“We love it. We love the public, the sun, the fresh air and the birds. It’s beautiful,” she said.

Across the lane from the Meeks, 19-year-old Marco Voyatzis hooked bait on a fishing line with thick, strong fingers that moved with the grace of someone who had done it thousands of times. He can bait 800 hooks in about two hours, he said.

Voyatzis, who lives in Fountain Valley, said he has been helping his father fish since boyhood. Now his two younger brothers also help. Usually, on Sundays, Voyatzis said, the bright red snappers they haul in are snatched up by customers and gone by 1 p.m. On Sunday their table of snappers was still full at 2 p.m.

“It’s just going to be slow for--I don’t know how long,” Voyatzis said. “But we have a lot of customers. . . . I just grew up into it. I just like the ocean. I wouldn’t like doing anything else.”