Lobstering justice

A man walks out on a wharf in Friendship, Maine, Thursday. Two lobster boats were recently sunk by vandals in Friendship. The dispute among tightlipped lobstermen points to the unwritten laws of the sea: Fishermen mete out justice themselves, sometimes with violent results.(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

When we did an audience Q&A for our encore screening in Greensboro, NC, one of the questions I got around the nebulous ending of whatever happened to Neal Ames was: “are the stories about lobstermen taking matters into their own hands true?”

Short answer: yes. The majority of lobstermen are honest, hard-working, and follow the rules that their own great, great grandparents set up on the water hundreds of years ago. Marine Patrol does police the industry as well, but for the most part, lobstermen make and enforce their own rules.

Though some true stories were embroidered into The Ghost Trap, I made a pact with the tellers of those stories I would keep names, dates, and other identifying factors anonymous. So, what you get, is an amalgam of truth woven into fiction. 

That said, I’ll leave you with a public story that was recently posted on a Maine site. Keeping in mind it’s a story heard third hand, you can decide for yourself.

“ I remember a story when I was a kid, I think it was about Friendship. Some guy moved in and wanted to try lobstering. Didn't go over well with the locals, and apparently some army vet (also reportedly a lobsterman) ended up blowing up the guy’s dock.

This would have been mid ‘90s, no real idea if it was true either tbh, but the whole school loved to recite it. There have been a few documented occurrences of people sinking other people's boats there though, so I guess it's plausible.”

And if you’re curious about the lede photo and what happened here’s the news story.www.pottsmerc.com/2012/05/11/lobster-hostilities-lead-to-boat-sinkings-in-maine/

​So, yeah, lobster justice is real.