THOMASTON—On Thursday, Dec. 24, a crowd of 30-40 people gathered in a line at noon, plastic bags in hand, in an empty parking lot off New County Road.

Standing at the back of his pick up truck, Matinicus lobsterman Noah Ames played the proverbial role of Santa, giving away crates of live lobster for free that he and about six other Midcoast lobstermen caught, banded, and transported so that people in the area could have a good Christmas Eve dinner.

During an unprecedented Christmas season, with Americans across the nation suffering economically awaiting a long-delayed $900 billion coronavirus relief package that has still yet to be signed by President Trump and with unemployment benefits set to expire in a matter of days, many people have had to choose between buying food and paying bills.

Ames, with his friend, assisting, chatted with folks as they stepped up to the truck, bag in hand. Given how many people were standing in line, he announced he could only give away four lobsters to each family, with extra to veterans, in the form of a Hannaford gift card he additionally handed out.

Ames started this tradition in 2014. In former stories Pen Bay Pilot has written about Ames over the years, he said, “It’s about teaching my sons the spirit of Christmas. It’s important to learn how to give back.”

Many grateful people left with their bags of lobster, parting with sentiments of “Merry Christmas” and “You’re doing a wonderful thing.”
At a time when every bit of kindness and generosity is coming from Mainers helping Mainers, Ames and his lobstermen friends are an example to the leaders in this country.

This story originally appeared on www.penbaypilot.com

As a reporter for a local newspaper, I often cover lobstering stories in Maine and occasionally come across some very cool things that Maine crafters and artists are making around the lobster theme. I really strive to put a spotlight on the creatives. Here is my 2020 Shop Local Gift Guide for the person in your life who loves Maine lobster and our beautiful state.

Joe Hamilton is the artist behind these lobster trap creations and the first in the state to create the lobster trap caddy, perfect for six of Maine's best craft beers. You can find these on Etsy for $39.99 The pet stand, also made from the same galvanized wire that lobstermen use to construct traps are custom made. Made for small, medium and large dogs ($60/$85/$150). Contact [email protected] for orders.

Tenley is a self-taught jewlery designer who also once worked as a sternman on her boyfriend's lobster boat, (now husband!) Hating to see lobster shells thrown away after consumption, she got the idea to make beautiful ornaments and jewelry from discarded shells from lobsters, mussels and oysters--and tell the back story to each one as it related to area lobstermen. To find her creations ($25/ornaments and vibrant red jewelry visit her Etsy store, Lobster Designs.

Camden author Ali Farell's second book, showcases the strength of Maine’s female fishermen, titled Pretty Rugged: True Stories From Women of the Sea. “Fishing is a lifestyle, not a job,” Farrell commented in a Penobscot Bay Pilot article. “To be a successful fisherman, you must devote your life to working extremely hard in very dangerous conditions.”

The book is finally available for preorder on Amazon ($32.99) with shipments anticipated in time for Christmas. FMI: Facebook.

In 2012, Pat Havener and her husband, Friendship lobsterman Greg Havener, were trying to brainstorm ways to make up lost income from the plummeting price of lobster. They came up with two ideas: lobster crackers for dogs and lobster crackers for people. The crackers, which are the only type of its kind in the U.S., were named “Best New Product—Specialty Food” in spring of 2015 at the New England Made Giftware Specialty Food Show. See my story on at Penobscot Bay Pilot

You can buy a box ($10) on their website

Note: this story was originally published on Maine Lobster Festival's blog

This Thanksgiving will look different for many people around the country, but one thing is constant: hard shell Maine lobster is plentiful in November and prices are very reasonable leading up to Christmas. Plus, lobster is one of the most historically traditional food sources other than turkey in New England. So choose one of the four following lobster dishes to bring as a guest, or serve them all for your own Thanksgiving meal.

Soup
Pumpkin Soup With Creole Lobster
This recipe by Food and Wine Magazine promises a balance of deep, earthy flavor using produce in season (sugar pumpkins or butternut squash) as the base. A 1-pound lobster is all you need, along with dry white wine and 1/2-cup crème fraîche, complete with herbs and spices such as cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cumin and cayenne to give this dish its spicy Creole tang. This is a hearty, comfort-food opener to the rest of the meal. Get the Pumpkin Soup With Creole Lobster recipe.

Appetizer
Mini Brioche Lobster Rolls
This easy hors d’oeuvre is simply an open-faced slider crossed with Maine’s most iconic lobster roll, so make plenty, because they will be scooped off the tray as soon as you put it down.  Using 3/4-pound of chopped, cooked lobster meat, with a bit of mayonnaise, tarragon and lemon zest, this recipe needs nothing more than 12 mini brioche or Parker House rolls with the tops cut off to make a stunning presentation. Get the Mini Brioche Lobster Rolls recipe 

Entrée
Stuffed Lobster Tails
Native Americans and Pilgrims were most certainly dining on Maine lobster for the first Thanksgiving, namely because it was so easy to catch by wading into the shore. But you can gussy it up with this Cooking Light recipe by serving lobster tails stuffed with herbed breadcrumbs and a white wine reduction. This entrée is perfectly portioned for each person at the table. And even though it’s drizzled with a delicious wine, thyme and shallot sauce right at the end, this dish only tops out at 234 calories per tail.  Get the Stuff Lobster Tails recipe.

Side Dish
Buttery Lobster and Bacon Stuffing 
For die-hard turkey lovers this November, you can still slip in the taste of Maine lobster with this stuffing recipe. With Jones Dairy Farm dry-aged cherrywood smoked bacon providing the salt, pan-seared onion and garlic giving off the savory, and 7 ounces of sweet, tender Maine lobster rounding it out, all you need is a piping hot baking dish of semolina bread cubes smothered in butter and the above ingredients to take center stage over that turkey at the table. Guaranteed. Get the Buttery Lobster and Bacon Stuffing recipe. 

STONINGTON—My neighbor, a long-time lobsterman, told me the other day: “There’s this guy you gotta check out, named Leroy. Friend told me about him. On YouTube, old guy like me whose been in the business all his life. He’s answering people’s questions and I hear he’s pretty funny.”
He was talking about Leroy Weed, 79, a Deer Isle lobsterman who is getting some statewide and national attention as a spokesman for the lobstering life in an online video series by the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, where he answers any and all questions about fishing and commercial fisheries in Maine.

Last summer, the Center hired Leroy to be an educator in their interpretive center in Stonington Harbor called “Discovery Wharf.” Leroy greeted visitors, answered questions, and told stories to more than 7,000 visitors. You could say Leroy was one of the Center’s biggest attractions. He loved his role and told Executive Director Paul Anderson it was the “best job he ever had.”

But with COVID-19 changing the Center’s summer plans, they decided, instead, to ask their visitors to call in questions for Leroy and sit him down in front of a camera with a microphone to answer them. The results have been a viral hit on the Internet called “Ask Leroy.”

The big part of Leroy’s appeal is his dry and cheeky humor. In Episode 5, the video starts with Leroy pressing the wrong button on an Amazon Echo speaker, when Alexa pipes up with a complaint that she can’t connect to the WiFi network, to which Leroy answers: “Is that a question or what? You send Alexa down there and I’ll straighten her out. She’ll be connected to sumpin–I don’t know what.”

Weed grew up in a family of 10 children on Deer Isle, which he explains in Episode 10.

“Growing up was very rural, a lot of big families on the island, six to 10 kids per family was common,” he explained. “Everybody worked for the group. You worked for the good of everybody and working the water was our mainstay. Scalloping was a winter project and most of the lobster fishermen stopped in November and then went scalloping. Lobster wasn't worth a whole lot back then, maybe 30 cents a pound. We worked year-round—daylight at 3:30 a.m. until it got dark. It was hard work, but we learned how to be self-sufficient. We knew how to dig clams, catch scallops, mussels. Important staples. And we built our own traps, half rounds. We learned and how to work on the house, how to butcher animals, pigs, chicken, ducks, geese, and goats. We could hunt...could pick blueberries, blackberries, apples. There was never a shortage of something to do. You never forgot the lessons because they were hard lessons, and you stayed at it until you learned it.”
We decided to ask Leroy a couple of questions of our own.

Q: Some lobstermen are annoyed by tourist questions—after a lifetime of them, what made you want to jump right in and answer them?
A: Well, I don’t tell them how much money I make, and that’s the only one I won’t answer. Some people will get upset if you ask how much money they earn, and then they’ll just stop answering questions. They’ll say ‘Yup, I gotta go, can’t be bothered, and that’s the end of that.’ So, if you want to know what’s involved in how lobstering works, we can answer that. I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but I’ve been doing it for 58 years, so it’s a learned profession—learn by doing. We’ve had questions on how boats are designed, how a trap works, how to cook up a lobster and get the meat out. Well, wouldn’t you know, we had all kinds of calls from restaurants too! Some chefs don’t know how to get all the meat out of a lobster. They just rip the claws off and throw the rest of it away. We’re gonna do a video to show them how to use the whole lobster. You grow up the way I did, you eat everything but the eyeballs.

Q: Speaking of, I was most interested in learning how you grew up on Deer Isle...
A: Well, I haven’t growed up yet—I’m still a kid! If you grow up, you get serious, you see? And then you won’t have any fun...

Q: I was going to say, with the pandemic and even before then, there’s been this resurgence in learning self-sufficient outdoor and homesteading skills—what do you think of that?
I think that it’s a good thing—if it drives them, go for it. My son goes fishing and tonight, he brought in a big cusk. That’s what we’ll have for supper tomorrow night. I got seven grandkids. And my grandson went lobstering with me. He wanted money for college, so he got on the boat and earned it.

Q: What’s the craziest questions you’ve ever gotten from the public?
A: Well, some of ‘em have asked me, ‘How do you know there’s lobsters in the traps?’ so, I tell ‘em, ‘We got this fiberoptic line; we look down the line and see if he’s in there.’ The other question we get a lot is ‘Why are the boats all parked in the same direction?’ And I just say, ‘So, they can all get out and not run into each other.’ But, then, I follow up with them and explain it and say ‘It’s the way the wind and the tide turn them.’

According to the Anderson, the Center just completed Episode 11 right now and plan on continuing through October. They have the videos posted on their website, on their YouTube channel, and on Facebook. The series has been very popular with some episodes racking up nearly 20,000 views and their YouTube channel gaining more than 500 subscribers.
To see the individual episodes visit: https://coastalfisheries.org/media/videos/

This story first appeared on www.penbaypilot.com on 9/16/2020 by Kay Stephens

By Lynda Clancy, Editor for Penobscot Bay Pilot

Los Angeles-based Khanlarian Entertainment has optioned Kay Stephens’ 2009 novel, The Ghost Trap, for an independent film.

​Stephens’s debut novel tells the story of Jamie Eugley, a young lobsterman struggling with the grinding responsibilities of a head-injured fiancée and a mounting trap war. The book earned several honors including 2009 Finalist, Literary Fiction, National Best Books 2009 Awards, sponsored by USA Book News.

"After 10 years of the book being out, you don't have any big expectations it will go anywhere, and just work on the next one,” said Stephens, who also is a writer at PenBayPilot.com. “But, as fate would have it, one of the producers has family in Maine and happened to pick up the book at Beyond The Sea bookshop in Lincolnville, two weeks before it closed permanently. He read it on the ferry out to Islesboro and told me later, when they contacted me, that he saw the film in his mind.

”Having lived in Midcoast Maine since the early 1990s, I found myself in a quaint little harbor town eager to scratch the surface of what the Chamber of Commerce brochures were marketing,” she said. “I had just begun to get to know some lobstermen, whose livelihoods took them far beyond the pretty postcard Maine, the romantic Maine that people from away dream of retiring to. So as I always say, ‘after a beer or three,’ I got a few of them to tell me some true stories about illegal and underground wars they personally witnessed or experienced on the condition that I wouldn't use real names, dates or identifiable situations. It took me about eight years to fully research and flesh out the novel and even then, I had several lobstermen read the book before it was published to make sure I got it right.”

Author James M. Acheson, who wrote the Lobster Gangs of Maine even gave Stephens his notes on it once it was slated to be published. Stephens uses her initial on this novel to distinguish it from her nonfiction books.
After a month of working toward a deal in November, Kahnlarian Entertainment acquired the right to adapt the book into a screenplay and pitch it to film studios, said Stephens.

“I'll be helping with the screenplay,” she said. “It's pretty exciting, but we've got some work cut out for us. After that, we'll see."

Published by Leapfrog Press, The Ghost Trap is a piercingly accurate depiction of life in a small Maine lobstering community. Its publication happened to coincide with a real-life Maine trap war in 2009 that made national headlines.
Stephens will be an executive producer on the project, along with James Khanlarian and Peter A. Couture for Khanlarian Entertainment. The Ghost Trap will be produced by Khanlarian Entertainment, an independent film company lead by Khanlarian and Couture. Kaili Thorne has signed on to adapt the novel.
​
Stay tuned for details about developments in the project by visiting: www.theghosttrap.com

Note, I wrote this story for Penobscot Bay Pilot.

APPLETON— In most paintings of Maine islands, conspicuously absent is the debris and junk that regularly washes up onto its shorelines. A lot of it tends to be ghost gear— lobster traps that have been smashed apart by the weather and have drifted to shore in mangled pieces.
Appleton artist Abbie Read, whose family owns property on Matinicus Island, noticed the junk along the shoreline and decided to haul piece by piece back to the mainland. No, not to the dump, to her studio.
“I spend a lot of time on Matinicus and for years, I’ve been collecting these little pieces of broken, rusted traps and all of the parts,” she said.
Read said she’d haul back the unsightly debris  from the island to the mainland and store them in her studio, unsure of what would become of it. 
“I always had it in the back of my mind I’d make something with the pieces,” she said. “Then, last spring when Waterfall Arts held a call for artists on the theme of Intertidal Zones, I began to assemble all of the pieces into an installation. For me, all of the junk that gets washed up on Matinicus was perfect for that theme.”
After the Waterfall Arts show concluded, the community arts center allowed Read to hang the installation on the second floor wall by the stairway, where it now resides indefinitely. Only those familiar with the lobster industry will notice some of the details in the rigging. Woven throughout the pieced-together grids of the wire traps are discarded bait bags, nylon netting, a plastic escape hatch, old frayed warp. Broken and lost gear is an economic hardship lobster fishermen know only too well. These unglamorous workaday pieces of fishing gear have now transformed into a tribute to the many unknown generations of lobstermen.
But, there is one more layer to this installation; and one has to know Abbie Read’s particular style of work to catch it. Within the rigging, which is patched up like a crazy quilt from various broken traps, are subtle grids made from linen thread that Read has constructed, which mimic the gridwork of the broken traps and blends right into the exhibit. These handmade nets also lace across her multimedia collages, which often incorporate altered books, maps, found objects and natural materials such as stone.
Read isn’t done with the piece.
“I stopped working on it because I ran out of materials,” she said. “But, I still plan of adding to it, it’s just a matter of being able to haul this stuff back from the island. I call it an ongoing project because it will get bigger. It no longer fits in my studio.”
For now the piece can be seen at Waterfall Arts.
For more information visit: Abbie Read and Waterfall Arts

Anytime lobster is on the menu, people perk up and take notice, so what better way to impress your guests this Thanksgiving with recipes for a four-course lobster meal they’ll be remembering long past November?
Soup
Lobster Corn Chowder
Corn, the quintessential fall harvest, pairs beautifully with succulent Maine lobster in this hot and tasty warm-up. Get farm-fresh corn if you can, and let the cobs and lobster shells do double-duty in a flavorful stock. With bacon, Yukon gold potatoes and cream sherry, this dish sets the stage for what’s to come, leaving your guests excited for more.
Appetizer
Lobster and Bacon-Stuffed Jalapeno Bites
Talk about hot — this appetizer is one of the hottest (in a savory way) you can present this Thanksgiving — and so very easy to prepare. Lobster From Maine’s recipe calls for only eight ounces of lobster, which amounts to about two 1 ½ pound lobsters. With cream cheese, sizzling bacon and sour cream and chives rounding out the flavors, the hollowed-out jalapeno pepper serves as a vibrant and spicy bite.
Entrée
Lobster Newburg
This delectable pocket of freshly-baked, buttery puff-pastry with creamy lobster inside will make guests think you spent hours on this dish, but it’s relatively simple. Crank up the slivered garlic in clarified butter with sautéed chopped onions and sliced mushrooms, then top off the rich flavors with the sherry, egg yolks, cream, nutmeg and cayenne and you’ve got an unforgettable dish that people will try to copy next year.
Side Dish
Lobster Risotto
After steaming a couple of 1 ½ pound lobsters, you’ll be able to turn out a rich and creamy side dish for an elegant Thanksgiving dinner. Add the lobster tail shells to the broth for additional flavor and cut back on the cayenne and cream in this recipe to let the natural risotto texture shine through.
Use any one of these star dishes (or all four!) for a memorable Thanksgiving. For more seasonal lobster dish recipes, visit our blog on the Maine Lobster Festival website.

Blog and photo republished courtesy of Maine Lobster Festival

Do you ever wonder why some lobster boat names sound so pretty such as Shannon Lee and others get comical names such as Money Pit?
According to Christine LeMieux Oragano, the author of How To Catch a Lobster in Downeast Maine, who comes from a lobstering family in Cutler, Maine, “roughly 60 percent of Downeast lobster boats have a female name.  Further research, via surveys, showed that most often a lobsterman names his boat after his wife.”
That’s no surprise given that feminine names have applied to vessels for centuries. By and large, the female names almost always have a personal connection to the lobsterman and his family. In the comment section to Oragano’s original article, one poster named Beth wrote “My husband's boat is (named) Beth Said Yes - because I finally agreed it was time for a new boat!”
While the tradition of naming boats after a wife or a daughter seems to linger, one Down East magazine article claims that the trend is starting to turn.
Linguist Michael Erard consulted both the National Marine Fisheries Service and the organizer of the Maine Lobster Boat Races who is also a maritime historian and found in his unique research that of the 1,300 boats that had registered for the race since 1999, female names made up fewer than half. He discovered quite a few categories including nautical (Isle of Sky), sardonically financial (Desperate Measure), tough-guy names (Hooligan), variations on a theme (Sea Bass, Sea Dancer), native-wit (Keepah), self-deprecating jokey names (Clam Killer) and clever puns (What The Haul), among many others.
Q106.5 decided to come up with their own list of the best lobster boat names in 2018 this past summer. Here they are, in order of popularity:

1. The Other Woman
2. Dominatrix
3. Lobstar
4. Family Tradition
5. Two-O-Seven
6. Buffalo Soldier

Let’s see, that’s two “questionable” names, one native-wit, one traditional, one ode to Maine’s area code and one aficionado of Bob Marley (referencing either the Maine comedian or the famous Jamaican singer’s hit song).
What are some lobster boats names you’ve seen that will always stick with you?
For more fun facts and lobster lore from the Maine Lobster Festival, visit www.mainelobsterfestival.com.

Blog and photo republished courtesy of Maine Lobster Festival

“Why isn’t that lobster bright red?’ So many visitors who come to Maine have asked that question when viewing live lobsters in a tank thanks to a century of postcards, children’s books and illustrations that depict Maine’s famous crustacean as bright crimson.
The fact is the natural colors of most live lobsters are a mottled greenish brown to blackish brown, which helps conceal them on the ocean floor from predators. They get their shell color from a class of red and yellow pigments called astaxanthin. Without getting too scientific, when lobsters are cooked, the proteins that astaxanthin bind to are destroyed, changing the shell colors to a red pigment. That’s why so many people think Maine lobster is naturally red.
That said, imagine how surprised a visitor to Maine might be to see a lobster that is electric blue? According to oceanographers, only an estimated one in 2 million lobsters is blue. In 2016, a Massachusetts lobsterman found one in his traps, which caught the attention of ABC News. In this case, a genetic abnormality caused the lobster to produce an excessive amount of a particular protein. Most of these rare lobsters are spared the boiling pot and sent to aquariums, but even if a blue lobster is cooked, its shell changes to red.
Rarer than that, if you can believe it, is a naturally brilliant red colored lobster -again, a genetic abnormality - which occurs in one in 10 million cases.
But hang on, the blue and red showstoppers have nothing on the yellow and calico lobsters (with mottled orange and black shells), which oceanographers estimate are one in 30 million.
Want to up the odds even more? Try finding a “split” colored lobster, that is, a lobster whose coloring is split evenly down its entire body and claws with one half orange and one half brown. The last time one of those was discovered, it was caught by a Maine lobsterman in 2006, who gave it to an oceanarium. The oceanarium said in 35 years, they’ve only seen three split lobsters. The chances of catching one is one in 50 million!
So, that’s got to be it, right? Nope, there’s one more lobster that is rarest of them all – one with no color at all. An albino lobster, of which there are one in 100 million, was just caught by another Maine lobsterman last summer. Albino lobsters are the only ones without pigment, so if it had been cooked, it would have still been white when done.
But true to the conservation methods of Maine lobstermen, this “ghost” albino lobster which was female and had a V notch in her flipper (a previous marking to signal that she’d been already caught once and was carrying eggs) had to be tossed back into the ocean. Let’s hope, because she stands out like a sore thumb to predators, that she still roams free today!

Blog and photo courtesy Maine Lobster Festival