Island Life

A day on the water . . .

The day starts with baiting up. The bait is salted herring stored in 55 gallon drums in the bait shed. Usually 2 barrels of bait are lowered aboard for the day, dumped down onto the deck, and shoveled into the bait box onboard.

Then we steam to the gear.

When we get to the first trap, the buoy is gaffed, and the line is pulled in. The line is then put in the snatch-block and then the hauler. The line is pulled up until the top comes near and then slowed down manually by the captain so the trap doesn’t smack him upside the head.

The captain and sternman (crewmember) reach out and grab the trap and pull it aboard the boat. The door of the trap is opened and the captain removes the lobsters that appear legal size and begins to measure them with a tool called a lobster measure. It is a straight piece of metal with prongs on it to measure the length of the lobster. All lobsters larger than the measure are thrown back in the ocean as well as those lobsters that are undersized as well.

The captain also looks for a notch in one of the tail flippers (the second one in from the right). If it has a notch, and is a female, that means it has been caught before with eggs on it and considered a breeder. They are re-punched if needed and thrown back as well. While the captain is tending to this, the sternman is removing the pocket/baitbag and replacing it with a refilled one that he has done earlier.

When this is done, the captain looks for a spot on the surface that is clear of other buoys, and looks at his electronic equipment to see the bottom of the ocean to find a place in which to set the trap. When he finds the spot he is looking for (depending on time of year/bottom terrain/weather/tides) he will shove the trap overboard and steam to the next buoy. This is the most dangerous process of lobstering. As the trap is sinking to bottom, the line from that trap is quickly going over the side as well. The boat is quickly moving forward giving the line going over even more speed adding to the dangerous situation. Most lobstermen who have died on the job have gotten snagged by this line and hauled overboard by it and drowned. Knowing this, lobstermen try to be extremely respectful of the dangerous situation that is present and try not to go any faster about their work than they can handle.

This process is repeated over and over for 6-10 hours a day. The lobsters caught by the captain for rent-a-trap customers are tallied and kept separate from the lobsters caught in his own personal traps. The rent-a-trap lobsters are logged after each trap (approximate size and amount) and are then stored in the chilly harbor waters until you the customer decide you want them.

The lobsters can be kept for different lengths of times at different times of the season.
The softer shelled lobsters can’t be held much longer than a few days because of their fragile nature. The harder shelled ones can be kept longer because of their hardiness. Due to the ability to store your lobsters or replace them with fresh-caughts (depending on when you want them), the lobster that you receive will be ocean-fresh and “wicked good”.

About the Island . . .

Swan’s Island is connected to Mount Desert Island via a 45 minute ferry boat ride. Mount Desert Island is connected to the mainland by the Trenton Bridge in Trenton, Maine.

Faith, family, and fishing run strong and deep on Swan’s Island. A dry island, there are 4 churches supported by a community of roughly 350 year-round residents. The community is a tightly-knit group of mostly multiple-generational fisherman who fish the waters around Swan’s Island and many miles offshore.

Swan’s Island is a small community that once upon a time was home to a thriving granite quarry. For a time, it supplied pulpwood to the pulpwood industry, but it has always maintained a strong fishing heritage. Whether mackerel, herring, groundfish, or shellfish such as the highly coveted Maine lobster, fishermen from Swan’s Island have prided themselves for generations for delivering the highest quality product to their buyers that money can buy.

There is one small store on the island which is open year-round and a bake shoppe and restaurant which are only open seasonally.

Learning to deal with the inconveniences of island life can be difficult for those not raised here, but the benefits of being disconnected from the mainland are just as rewarding.

There is a K-8 public school on the island, but children seeking secondary education have to either ride the ferry each day to and from the mainland high schools or board off-island.

Some families choose to rent on the mainland for the school year, but either way, it makes for some creative and sometimes expensive decisions as children grow and need to further their education.