Lobsters

I received an email from Al Larson, a friend from my working days at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, asking about lobsters. I wrote a detailed response, which the few other blog readers out there might like to read. Or not, your choice.

Lobsters, ayuh... they are wicked good.

A typical Maine lobster boat

Lobsters are ingrained in my background, so I guess I just figured they were in everybody's. Bad figuring. I'll write this to you, and then perhaps excerpt it for the blog. You may be getting more than you asked for.

According to NOAA, lobsters is the most valuable fishery in the Eastern United States. The 2006 lobster catch was 92.5 million pounds, and valued at just under $400 million. They are low in saturated fat, a good source of protien, and high in selenium. (http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/species/amer_lobster.htm)

Growing up in western Massachusetts, our family had an affinity for the ocean, but we were not right next to it, as we are now. My Dad worked for Westinghouse in Springfield, and the only place I can remember going for summer vacations was to Misquamicut Beach in Westerly, Rhode Island. They camped in their own tent before I was born, but later on they would rent a cabin there for a week. Mostly the days were spent on the beach, but sometimes we'd go to dig our own clams.

Lobster buoys onshore

We also made many one day trips down there to enjoy the beach. It was about 2-3 hours each way, and we would usually stop for dinner on the way home from the beach. I always had lobster at those dinners. They were relatively cheap then, as there were more than enough available for the market, which had not discovered them much. They were kind of a novelty to me. You had to work so hard to eat one... cracking the hard shell, digging out the clear, soft meat from the claws, sucking the legs to get the flavor. Then getting the tail open and getting the fibrous, chewy chunk of meat. Then drenching it in melted butter. Often served with a bunch of steamed clams and corn on the cob.

Sometimes we would have lobster at home, but shipping them around in the 50s was not that practical. A traditional New England event was the "clam bake", where all of the above mentioned food was thrown into a pit fire and baked for a few hours, usually for a party. My Mom loved to throw parties, and one time did a clambake in Monson. But the usual way to cook them is to drop them, live, into a big pot of boiling water, and cook them for about 10 minutes, and she would do that sometimes. Once boiled, they come out bright red.

As I grew older, I still had a longing for the ocean. When I was in college in Lowell, Mass, on the first warm, sunny spring day my roommates and I would drive a hour to Salisbury or Hampton Beach on the Mass-New Hampshire border, just to frolic on the deserted beach. When I got married, and had my own kids, my first wife was a Girl Scout staffer, and we tended to work in the mountains of Western Mass, even spending one summer at a camp there, me driving 1-1/2 hours to work in the Connecticut River Valley. After that, we camped in our pop-up, occasionally going to the beach, but just as likely to go to the mountains and lakes. One year we went to Cape Cod in September, because the crowds were gone.

Eventually I got a little sailboat and a divorce, not necessarily in that order. My kids and I would use it on the lakes and at the ocean. My girlfriends of the time loved to sail, and I would go to the Connecticut shore, where I knew about a launch ramp that provided access to a long, private sandy beach about a mile offshore. On the way home, we'd often stop at a shoreside restaurant which sported picnic tables with checkered plastic tabecloths and served piles of clams, steamed or fried, lobsters, and corn on the cob. Very memorable to me.

Lobster traps stored on a dock

I finally met Consuelo, and I moved to Minnesota. That was practical, the jobs were there for both of us. Consuelo grew up in Cuba with the ocean nearby, and has fond memories of spending summers with her grandmother at the shore, going to the beach every day. So we both had ocean desires, and partially fulfilled them when we bought our timeshare in Key West, right on the ocean.

But for more than 20 years, there were no lobsters... they don't grow in Florida (they have different, lesser ones there) and though we could see them at Barlow's grocery in Minnesota, the price was enormous. The only time we got to the New England coast was when my son Paul got married and moved to Ipswich, Mass, on the North Shore. We got lobsters once there, because I had a craving. It cost us close to $100 for 3 lobsters, which we took home and boiled.

Nowadays, lobster is an expensive delicacy. Most restaurants which serve it charge "market price", meaning, you have to ask for the price, and if you have to ask, you can't afford it. And while I love it, I won't go out of my way for it when there might be a fillet mignon or New York strip for half the price. So it's been pretty rare for me, until we moved to Midcoast Maine.

Lobsters have been food for folks here since the first Europeans sailed in to fish in the 16th century, long before the Pilgrims arrived. Then, you could walk along the rocky shore and pick up 3-5 pound lobsters in the water. They were a staple in the diet, and until the 1980s, families here had lobster like we had hamburger. When canning was developed, they tried canned lobster, but it was difficult to pick, and the rest of the country could care less about it. Only when air transport became practical (and that may go away here soon, too) did the rest of the country discover the sweet, buttery lobster meat. And they even started a nationwide restaurant chain, Red Lobster. Now there's a demand, and that demand drives the lobster fisheries in Maine.

Lobster is the ONLY ocean aquaculture that has not seen dwindling stocks in the past few years. Part of that is due to the nature of the lobster, but more is likely due to the limits that the lobster fishermen and fisherwomen have placed on themselves. Lobsters are caught in traps, lobsterpersons can place up to 800 traps, costing about $30-40 each. The traps are baited with cut up fish, and "soaked" for 2-4 days, when they're pulled up and checked, and rebaited. The lobsters in the trap are checked for size, and sometimes tagged. Lobsters too small or large are thrown back. The small ones grow, and the big females are far more productive than the smaller ones. The keepers are usually 1 to 1/2 pounds, though there are some up to 3 pounds.

Lobster boats have "typical lines", meaning the shape is designed to fit the funtion. Most have a power winch right next to the wheelhouse, operated by the lobsterman to pull up the traps, which are set on the wide coaming, opened, and emptied through a door in the top. Lobsters in the keeper range are thrown on a table. He then slides the trap to the "sternman", who re-baits it, closes it and pushes it off the stern. While the sternman rebaits, the lobsterman uses a gauge to check size on the marginal ones, and puts the keepers in the tank. The whole process takes 1-2 minutes, depending on the depth of where the traps are placed.

Traps are often placed in strings of 2 - 6 traps, usually with a colored buoy on a rope on one end, and a "toggle" on a rope on the other end. Toggles are doughnut shaped floats which provide a measure of safety if the buoy should disconnect, as well as floating the rope to keep it off the bottom. The buoys are numbered and painted a specific color to distinguish them from all of the other lobstermen. In a locality, like Friendship, the colors are registered in the town hall, and marked on a board for all to see who has what color. Lobstermen, like all successful fishermen, are very territorial, and while they don't "own" any part of the ocean, they carefully place their traps in known good locations, securing their spot only by getting there first. There have been occasional shooting wars between lobstermen over territory. Lobster fisheries operate year round, though most lobstermen work other jobs in the winter and avoid going out in the ocean when it's snowing. The main season is late June through November. Off season, traps, buoys, lines and lobster boats are stacked wherever they'll fit, all over town.

The catch is brought to the working wharves along the shore. The wharf operators transfer the lobsters into floating crates, strung together along the docks. They also sell bait to the lobstermen, trucked to the wharf from other fisheries, and kept in icehouses on the dock. And, they negotiate the prices and sell to the buyers, and arrange shipping, usually to the local airports. Lobsters from here fly out of Portland and Bangor to the world.

As it turns out, Friendship, Maine is in the geocenter oif the lobster industry. This small town has one of the largest lobster industries in the state. The long thin islands and jagged coast provides enormous shoreline length for its actual width, and the muddy bottoms are good habitat. There are several wharves in town, and yes, we can go to the docks and buy them. Last summer we were getting 1 pound lobsters for $5 each.

Until the development of the cheap, reliable diesel boat engine, Maine lobstermen used sailboats to go fishing. One distinctive design is the "Friendship Sloop", designed for work, and some were built in the barn on our property in the late 1800's. A few still exist, all converted for recreational cruising, and they gather here in July for a regatta. They were around 30' long, and designed to be "single-handed", sailed by one person. Later, the classic wooden lobster boat came along, now being replaced by fiberglass. And they do stop for fun, now and then. One event during "Friendship Days" in late July is the Lobster Boat Races in our harbor.

Like many midwest farmers, lobstering is a family business, often handed on from father to son (or daughter). Like family farms, the economy challenges the family to invest wisely and maintain their equipment.