Hilda Merchant was just a “snip” away from winning the title of the fastest sardine packer in the World Championship Sardine Packing Contest held in Rockland. She fell eight cans short to the winner, Rita Willey of Rockland. Rita filled 67 cans of sardines to Hilda's 59 in eight hectic minutes of packing. Rita's 67 cans equated to 536 sardines, better than one fish per second. Contests sponsored by the Maine Sardine Council were held in the 1970s as an event of the Maine Seafood Festival in Rockland. The fastest sardine packers were identified in the coastal factories and were asked to participate in the event.
The women were set up at packing tables with a pile of fresh herring and empty tin cans. With their fingers taped up in various patterns to protect them from cuts with their sharp scissors, they were given eight minutes to show their stuff. With lightening speed, their hands moved faster than the human eye could keep in focus.
They took on thousands of slippery sardines, sliced off their heads and laid them body to tail, tail to body, eight to a can. The women had to judge the can length, snip the sardine body and tail to the proper length and put them in the can neatly. Each woman has a different style. Some are flamboyant, arms making great circles as the fish are picked up, and fish heads flying in every direction. Others work intensely with hands always close to the action. All cans judged by industry representatives to be below commercial quality would have been disqualified, but there weren't any.
The year Rita Willey won the title; she appeared on a number of national television programs, including the Johnny Carson Tonight Show, What's My Line, To Tell the Truth and the NBC Hotdog Show. As a result, the State of Maine and its sardine industry got its message across to an estimated 76 million viewers from coast to coast.