As promised, I will continue to feature the more fascinating Maine lobstermen that keep this industry alive and well. Meet Ginny Oliver. She'll give your grammy a run for her money. Story courtesy of The Free Press.
 Waterman's Community Center, North Haven, Maine K. Stephens
First of all, you have to be ready to depart on a 9:30 am ferry out of Rockland, for a scheduled 1 pm presentation and book signing. And you can't leave until the 3:30 pm boat departs. So here we are on one spectacularly blue sunny Saturday, for basically an 8-hour stretch. So, this is a commitment. We're in this for the long haul today.
Capt. Ryan Post is with me, along with his 13-year-old nephew Drew Philip, who offered to be our book and DVD pack horse and schlep everything onto the ferry. Drew's psyched because we put him in our press release picture and now he's our official groupie. All of Ryan's buddies are currently heading out to OxFest, a day-long festival of bands. He'd been hanging out with Geno, his sternman the night before and I'm probably guessing that he'd rather be on his way to Wiscasset with his friends at the moment than on our way to North Haven to work all day.
"Kind of a bus man's holiday for you," I said, as we stared over the white metal rail of the ferry into the churning deep blue water below. "Here it is your day off and you're back on the water."
"Nah," he scoffed. "There's no place I'd rather be than on the water."
An hour later, coming into the Fox Island Thoroughfare between Vinalhaven and North Haven, it strikes me how many grand houses and mansions are thisclose to the water's edge. Imagine. Spending your summer on this island, the channel right outside your bedroom window. It all seems like out of a sensitive woman's novel, this splendor and gentle living. But, Ryan grew up on an island. You'd better know how to be alone with yourself for long stretches or time without going stir crazy.
Waterman's Community Center welcomes us and we set down all of our gear. After some technical fiddling around with our presentation (great thanks go to Lana and Rachael for their help), we head out for a quick lunch. Soon, it was time for our presentation. The only problem? It's a sunny Saturday on the island. Would you rather be on the beach or in a darkened theater?
Instead of 40-50 people like we expected, about 15 showed up. (Sigh. Welcome to the typical book signing experience. Even Linda Greenlaw, whom I'd seen a week earlier at her book signing had about 20 or so people show up on a sunny day.) Still, as you can see from the quick clip below (Drew needs to be a little more steady on the camera :), we threw out an entertaining presentation about how the fictional subculture in my novel so closely resembles the one in which Ryan works and lives daily, as evidenced in Maine Buggin, his day-in-the-life DVD.
The thing is, it's all about the experience, not how many books/DVDs you sell. That's why writers and lobstermen are so similar--you ain't in this for the money, honey, you do it because it's your life. And honestly, with a couple of ferry cocktails on the way back home with the sun bouncing off the water, the comfortable hum of the ferry engines rumbling, and knowing you put in a good day--could there be anything better?
 Not a bad place for lunch, eh?  Home bound on the ferry
 photo: K. Stephens A Day in the Life of Maine Lobster Boat Racing
K. StephensMoments before the annual Rockland lobster races start, people are lined up on the Rockland breakwater waiting for some kind of signal designating the kickoff. All kinds of spectators—parents with babies strapped to their backs, dogs, locals and tourists—wait patiently. This is the first year in several that it has been a bright hot day with perfect visibility. For the moment, their only distraction is several hundred feet away. Parallel to the breakwater, dozens of lobster boats are rafted up together. From the breakwater you can hear the cheers and laughter across the water. This is a flotilla of locals, the tight-knit lobstering community known for working hard and partying harder.
“Wow, how much fun would it be to be hanging out on one of those boats?” a spectator says thoughtfully.
Aboard the Total Eclipse out of Owls Head, ME, this is how much fun it is. It's finally summer here in Maine. It's finally hot out. No one lobsters on a Sunday, that's just the rules—so everyone is making the most out of the day off, chatting and laughing or climbing over the rails to socialize on neighboring boats nestled alongside one another. These are people who have grown up together. Everyone here is someone who lobsters in the area, who has married into it, who works in the community or who has some kind of connection to lobstering. The vibe is Key West friendly. Coolers of every size line the stern. A picnic table and a grill has been set up. Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” blasts out of the speakers as girls in bikinis and shorts dance and air guitar. A variety of drinks are in people’s hands: wine, Jell-O shots, Bud Lites, a special cider from South Africa. Clayton’s gripping onto a two-gallon cooler of vodka and grape juice like some one might rip it away from him.
A sharp whistle pierces the air. “Everybody quiet down and turn to Channel 10,” yells Scott Herrick, one of the organizers. The noisy crowd passes the message from boat to boat until everyone settles down. Sandie Galvez, a petite mom of teenagers who could pass for a 25-year-old, gets on the VHF radio and begins singing “The Star Spangled Banner.” A former lounge singer from L.A., her voice comes clearly over the mike as she nails the high notes at the end. This particular song produces goose bumps, especially in this charged atmosphere. At the conclusion of the song, a roar of cheers spills out of the rafted boats.
Now it’s officially party time.
More than 110 lobster boats from all over the state will race at this event. This lobster boat race competition takes place in a variety of locales from Portland to Winter Harbor in the summer, but here in Rockland, considered “The Lobster Capital of The World,” the races are particularly exciting. As the first boats of the lobster races spray rooster tails, there is a deafening engine blast from one of the boats as it takes an effortless lead. The cheers from the rafted lobster boats go up along with hands holding red plastic cups. The racers circle around and cruise on by the flotilla to get their accolades as sea gulls decide at this very moment to suddenly swoop in and do these crazy zig-zig aerials. At once it is a confetti of birds, like a ticker-tape parade.
The grills are cooking full throttle. “Who wants a meat stick?” The cooler lids open and close. A couple of girls dive into the bottle green ocean. Some do front flips off the stern. Clayton is bobbing in the water, his vodka grape juice cooler his only personal flotation device. A couple of boats over, where the kids are a little younger, people get yelled at for letting their Jell-O shot cups litter the water, as someone from the older crew dives in to collect debris. These are people who protect their waters fiercely. “You know better!” someone yells. Then, the mood goes back to playful as another cry rings out: “Survival Suit Contest!” Within moments, five guys are frantically wriggling into full body neon orange immersion suits designed to keep someone warm and protected in the water in case of emergency. To the crowd’s delight, they don their suits in less than 10 seconds and launch themselves over the side of the boat.
Soon, a recognizable boat comes around the bend. With a half dozen people on board, the 40-foot lobster boat The Instigator approaches and everyone knows who Ryan Post is. Largely credited for organizing the earliest lobster boat races, Post is a rising voice in the lobstering community. Given the cheeky nickname “Captain Hollywood” by his friends, he is the creator of the educational lobstering DVD Maine Buggin, and is regularly consulted on public lobstering matters in the news. Right now he’s got radio personalities Tom O. and Mr. Mike from WTOS’s The Morning Mountain Show on board and the crowd whoops it up every time The Instigator passes by. Also on board is a video crew. Word is that the Portland marketing company, Aura360, was on board to get footage to turn into a pilot that it can pitch to television networks. The idea is to produce a television series based on the races similar to the hit show “Deadliest Catch.
In the end, Galen Alley, of Beals Island, has won the race, setting a new speed record. He was clocked at 68.1 m.p.h. in his 30-foot fiberglass boat, Foolish Pleasure, breaking his own record of 64.5 m.p.h., which he set last summer.
“This has been such a beautiful day,” said Stacy Campbell, in her bikini and beat-up straw hat gazing out at the water. “Everybody you’d ever want to spend time with is right here.” There is no such thing as a “Perfect Maine.” But today, living, working and celebrating in a lobster community is about as close as it gets.
To see more pictures of the day, fan "The Ghost Trap" on Facebook and view "Photos"  photo: K. Stephens
 Captain John Ready  Captain Brendan Ready The next few posts are going to be about Maine's people, about lobstermen and sternmen (and by the way those titles encompass both genders) who have a story to tell. The Ghost Trap isn't about lobsters. It's about the characters who work hard, live hard and inspire us not to complain about an 8-hour day. Summah time is heating up. Let's see who's up on the docket.
Meet cutie pie brothers John and Brendan Ready, owners and operators of Catch A Piece of Maine. Recently featured by US Airways Magazine (which I happened to recently see on my flight home ) the Ready Brothers have come up with a fresh solution to Maine's morass when it comes to marketing the lobster brand. According to the US Airways article, "The Ready brothers graduated with degrees in business from Boston’s Northeastern University and Stonehill College in nearby Easton, Massachusetts. And they both knew they were coming home to Portland. 'You can walk down the street and still see fishing boats, and on the other side, boutiques,' John Ready says. 'It’s the best of both worlds.' "
What they're doing is they're allowing customers to own and receive their very own “share” of the catch direct from their crew of personal lobsterman. This model is very similar to CSAs, which is a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer. We're in a global trend where a lot of people want to know local food comes from. We're in a social media culture where we also want to know who butchers it, grows it, farms it, catches it. The Ready Brothers understand this. That's where they bring the "personal" in. For example, they offer a "Premium Partnership, where you actually own a lobster trap in Maine and all of its catch for the entire year to be shipped to any destination of our choice, or a 'Lobster Share' entitling you to a gourmet dinner for four delivered anywhere in the country." Their promise entails: "Most importantly, we are bringing you closer to the dock allowing us to sell direct so that we as lobsterman earn a premium and effectively preserve the traditional working waterfront."
This more than anything, makes them my heroes. We have a lobstering industry that is breaking its back. There are plenty of lobsters to be caught, but Perfect Storm of a double dip recession, encroaching government regulations, an exorbitant rise in bait/fuel and shockingly low (some say price fixed) boat prices are devastating the livelihood of so many of our lobster fishermen. The rising voices of the lobstering industry have been calling for innovation in terms of branding and marketing and these guys have simply taken what is fascinating (the lives and hard work of lobstermen) and turned it into a viable market.
According to their website:
Catch a Piece of Maine was created, with the help of family, friends, and fellow lobstermen, in part as a response to the financial realities of the lobstering industry and as a means to introduce you to our traditions, trade and the sea. Through Catch a Piece of Maine we have toppled the barriers between lobsterman and consumer, allowing those who love to eat the freshest most delicious lobster a chance to get to know the dedicated lobsterman who harvests their dinner. Bringing the consumer closer to the dock allows us to sell direct so that we as lobsterman earn a premium and effectively preserve the traditional working waterfront.
We as lobsterman are all stewards of the sea; always making sure today’s catch is available for tomorrow’s lobsterman. Our industry exemplifies hard work, tradition, heritage, and sustainability. We pride ourselves on our eco-friendly manner of harvesting, producing little to no by-catch and enforcing strict laws to allow the release of all lobsters too small and too large. Lobstering is hard work and capital intensive, requiring boats that cost as much as a house, on top of equipment, traps and fuel. In the past several years the price of bait and fuel has tripled while we’ve watched our working waterfront slowly disappear.
Stay tuned for more stories of people who exemplify the word True Mainer.
 photo: Dale Landreth A strategist hired by the Governor's Lobster Task Force Committee (did you even know there was such a thing?) has basically broken down 4 types of people when it comes to eating lobster. Which one are you?
- Traditionalists—they want steamed lobster, at picnic table with family and are comfortable with the process of cooking, cleaning, eating while enjoying family time This group accounts for 11 percent.
- Adventurous—total foodies; they love food and will try different foods any way they can get it. This is the marketplace, along with fine fast diners. Charts showed 29 percent for this group.
- Convenience seekers—those surveyed said they would eat it if it is easy. The lazy lobster eater makes up 30 percent of the survey.
- Aesthetic and moral protesters—PETA accounts for 11 percent.
Me? I'm a traditionalist all the way. I'll cook it myself. I'll dig right in and yell at my table mates for being squeamish.
Study done by Kristen Bailey, vice president of the Moseley Group.
Story can be found here.
 This month's guest lobster blogger (loblogger?) is Monique Coombs, an author and blogger for Lobsters On The Fly. Often the image of the lobsterman as a single, solitary guy hard at work doesn't take into account that many women are either lobster fishermen themselves (never lobsterwomen--never!), as well as sternmen. Often the wives, sisters, and mommas do their part to keep the industry going--kind of like Rosie The Riveters...with varnish and knitting needles.
By Monique Coombs
This time of year, in a corner of our living room, there is a stack of heads (not human) and a bucket of string. We're all thankful that the weather is warming up here in Maine but cursing the mud and rain. I am also cursing the heads and string that are strewn about my living room. Every spring, lobstermen go through their traps and replace their trap heads, sell some and repair others. My husband puts together everything that he can himself because it is cheaper. It is cheaper because I do some of the work and I am free labor.
He cuts the heads into the sizes he needs and then cuts out holes for the hoops. Then, we work together to insert the hoop into the head, which will later be what the lobster travels through in order to get into the trap... and not get out! The strings are laced around the outside of the head with a large knitting needle.
It's tedious work, but a very important part of the trap. By helping him do this, I give him more time to bend traps, move more traps around and continue fishing (even though it sucks right now). Every year, my husband says we'll just do as many heads as he needs at a time and we won't have to sit and do them all. But, our "done" pile is empty and our "to do" pile is growing. I have to wonder if the folks at Discovery Channel run their Deadliest Catch marathon at this time of year, knowing that it coincides with everyone's head-knitting and hooping marathon.
Fishermens' wives have been helping their husbands in this way forever and will continue to do so until fishermen make enough money to hire someone, which they probably won't anyway because they all like things done their own way. Or, traps are suddenly made differently, which probably won't happen either because... did I mention, fishermen like things done their own way?
Right now, we have a little 10-month-old boy crawling around. He has only gotten stuck a couple of times. It would piss us off if he wasn't so damn cute and looked so freakin' funny stuck in a pile of heads.
Next time I drop in on this stitch and bitch, girls, let's have a discussion on the best ways to mask the stench of fish. If it weren't for me would my husband ever not smell like bait???
K. Stephens
You know, I was actually hesitating to write a post about this whole Matinicus shoot up trial because I didn't want to manufacture any negative stereotypes about the way lobstermen do their biz. And since I've never set foot on Matinicus or know any of the parties involved, I'm hardly qualified to play armchair psychologist But when you come across a local columnist who says things like this--
Matinicus Island has long had a reputation as a wild and lawless place. Nineteen years ago the Knox County Sheriff, wanting to bring some law to the island, sent a deputy. The islanders overturned his truck on his lawn and - there is no other way to put it - drove him off the island. No deputy has dared live there since. Read more of this column here.
--Well, how can I NOT post something about it? Trap Wars fascinate everyone. it's a major part of The Ghost Trap's plot, but I just wouldn't have the ovaries to write it the way Joe did in his column. Sure, it's his experience, and you can't argue with someone that his perception of an incident or a group of people is wrong. It's his perception; it's the way he sees it. But, is it reality? I'm worried about this fascination with trap wars is turning into a blanket appraisal of how ALL lobstermen handle conflict in Maine. It's not all shotguns and boat sinkings. This isn't The Sopranos in Grundens. You can't call an entire island lawless.
My touring partner, Ryan Post couldn't be more irritated by the media attention on this--
Ryan Post of Rockland, a lobsterman who fishes out of Metinic Island about 12 miles west of Matinicus, said he knows the fishermen around Matinicus and he hopes the incident doesn’t cause the rest of the country to think poorly of midcoast fishermen.
“We have a bit of black eye because of this case, and it’s getting out all around the United States that we are a bunch of pirates running around the sea,” Post said. “That’s not who we are.”
more
It's the culture of this island that keeps people riveted. Many island lobstering communities don't have police out there the way the mainland does. They've self-policed for centuries--and they have their own very distinctive rules and norms. James Acheson, author of The Lobster Gangs of Maine, was the first person to articulate what had always been understood cultural behavior around defense of boundaries. According to Acheson,
"An older person from an established family with a long history of fishing might infringe on the territorial rights of others almost indefinitely.. . An unpopular person,a young fishermen, or a newcomer encounters trouble more quickly. Sooner, or later, however, someone decides to take action around the interloper. sometimes a small group of fishermen decide to act in concert, but boundary defense is often effected by one person acting alone."
The point is these are clans-- these lobster "gangs." They are tight-knit communities whose resources and ability to generate income are limited--that's the reality. The rules state you have to own land on the island and be part of established families to lobster fish. Even sternmen get grilled. "Who are you, who did you apprentice under?" If you are considered a newcomer or an outsider, an established chain of events will happen. First there will be verbal warnings, next there might be visual warnings ( two half hitches around the offending buoy). Don't get the message yet? There will be surreptitious molestation of gear. As we have seen from the events of last summer, it can escalate--and nobody wins in the end. What needs to happen is that if these self-policed communities want to retain their freedoms to remain self-policed, there needs to be self-regulation in times of escalated conflict as well. If that means holding closed-door meetings or inquiries, or even trials, then that's what they need to do so somebody doesn't get killed over it. .
But face it. The handshakes and the nicey-nice behavior don't make the news. Two lobstermen who overcome their misunderstandings, who talk it out and effectively manage their own conflict don't sell. But God, can we afford the hype?
 By Ryan Post
Our family has designated April 15 every year as the day we all go to the island and set our traps, 100 at a time. And this isn’t any random, “toss ‘em wherever” method—if anything it’s like the way my aunt orchestrates Christmas—everything is hyper-organized, from how good a shape the traps themselves are in (none can be what we call“stove up”) to the exact length of rope tied to each trap. And the area where each trap will be dropped is already pre-arranged before we even get on the boats. Yep, it’s a little OCD. But it has to be, because if you drop a brand new $65 trap into shallow water in the spring, what’s going to happen is, it is going to continuously get rolled over by the tide. And in a matter of weeks that $65 trap turns into a $5 trap.
Every year, I put out 800 traps, which is the Maine state limit and I’ll steam out 35-45 minutes a day to my designated fishing area and haul about 300 traps per day. Spring is a notoriously tough time to catch anything. It’s a little bit like planting a row of seeds. You don’t go out the next day and expect waist-high flowers. We’re the farmers of the sea and when you work with lobsters you’ve got to know their quirks. They’re real picky and you can’t blame them. They know how to work those traps better then we do. First of all, they burrow down into deep waters in the spring. They don’t like the cold; they don’t like any fresh water runoff coming from the shoreline and they don’t like old salted bait that time of year. You’ve got to coax them with fresh herring or alewives. Beyond that, they won’t start migrating inland to shallower waters until the temperature of the ocean gets up to about 43 degrees or higher.
Still, it’s the chase that makes me go to work even if I’m not making a dime. Last spring I put a couple of 13-hour days in, and went $300 in the hole. Got up the next morning at 3 am—and did it all again. But that’s okay. It’s a great thing we don’t catch all the lobsters that go in our traps—or else there would be none left. That’s the way we do it in Maine. We are the original conservationists when it comes to lobster and we treat it as it should be--a sustainable resource.
And if you want to call me an environmentalist….go ahead!
 By Ryan Post
About four years ago, I was in the British Virgin Islands sailing around on this catamaran and when I went ashore, I found this little tiki bar on the beach—the only bar on the whole island. I sat down, ordered a bushwhacker, which is a combination of four, five or six, alcohols. I didn’t really know what’s in it. It was bushwhacker—it speaks for itself. Next thing I know, this guy comes up to me, very friendly, probably in his mid-50s and he starts talking to me. Now, wherever you travel, there are two questions people will always ask you. The first one is “Where are you from?” So this guy asks me where I’m from and I tell him and he says, “Oh Maine, my wife and I love Maine.” The very next thing people always ask is “What do you do?” So I told him I’m a Maine lobsterman and he instantly sat back, looked at me a little differently, and then signaled to the bartender to buy me another drink. Like I needed another bushwhacker at that point, but whatever. So after this exact same thing happened a few times with people asking me what I do and proceeding to ask me 100 questions and I got to thinking: why not put cameras on my boat and document what my sternman Jon Hill and I do for a whole year --then put it on a DVD?
At around the same time, I happened to be an extra in two scenes in the Oscar-nominated movie, In The Bedroom (I was officially: “guy in a sardine factory” and “guy in bar”). I was also in the film Empire Falls, though they redid the shot. Again, “guy in bar.” I know you’re thinking, what a stretch. So, having been part of this really interesting experience, I was starting to think, “I’ve got to do my own thing—take people’s questions about the lobster industry and put it on film.” Why not? I love explaining to people where I come from, my family and my heritage, where I grew up and what a perfect medium to convey these stories on film. Nothing had ever really never been done like that before—not like a Year of the Life. If you’ve ever seen that program about the Alaskan king crab industry on the Discovery Channel and how hard those guys work--just that footage alone justifies the price people pay for that product. My hope was to do the same with Maine Buggin’ so people could see past the myths and fantasy of lobstering and see how it really works.
I decided to focus on the educational side of lobstering to make it just as accessible to a six-year-old as to a 96-year-old. Right now, I’m already going into the school systems, bringing live lobsters into classrooms and explaining to the kids what the industry is all about. Especially around here, I think the kids really need to know how the industry works. Rockland, Maine is the lobster capital of the world. Period. There are more lobsters caught in Penobscot Bay and the surrounding islands than all of Maine—and the whole U.S. put together. But as lobster fishermen, we’re a dying breed right now, in some very touchy times. There’s a lot of prediction about us all being part-timers in the next few years. And let me tell you, for an industry that has been around for hundreds of years and which accounts for 80% of the U.S. catch, this is beyond a crisis—we’re in a free fall. It’s like Detroit’s automakers—if they didn’t get a bailout, Michigan and the whole U.S. economy was predicted to collapse. Well, it’s the same with us, only we don’t get a bailout. If the lobster industry crashes, then Maine’s economy is right directly behind it. I’m talking the restaurants, the tourist industry, the bait dealers, the trap builders, the marine stores, the sales of trucks and boats. I mentioned my family’s island in the last blog. This is where it gets hugely personal for me. My family’s island is now at stake. It is a humongous amount of work and responsibility to maintain a private island when you have 8 or 10 houses on the island and all the docks. Without lobstering we won’t have that island—it is run and maintained by the lobster industry. Even if I had to file for bankruptcy, but that wouldn’t even hurt the most. It would be letting down my great, great, grandfather, and everyone down the line, all the people who kept this island in the family through hard times. You’d never know how much of a failure it would be for my family if we had to let go of that island. It would be catastrophic. It would truly be the downfall of everything we stand for. My ancient relatives would turn in their graves-it goes that deep.
So. If you get a kid in junior high to believe how high the stakes are for us right now, perhaps that kid will go on to be lobbying for us in the future. We need lobbyists, because we are on the bottom of the totem pole. Fishermen and lobstermen just want to get up in the morning and put in an extremely hard working day (whether it’s 12 or 18 hours) and they want to come back at the end of the day, sell their product, fuel and bait their boat up and they want to go home. We need people not involved in the industry, but who understand what it is to lobby for it.
As you can see, lobstering is not a job, it’s a lifestyle. The difference between having a job is you can put into a 13-hour day and you’re guaranteed to make money. You put in a 13-hour-day lobstering say in the spring and you can go $300 in the hole. And then you get up the next morning at 3:00 in the morning and do it again. Whether you make money or not you have to go fishing. It’s a business that can be great one year and you’re losing your house the next. It’s a sacrifice that not everybody can make.
So stay tuned for The Maine Buggin' DVD next month. It’s set up in 8 or 9 chapters to show what all the ins and outs of our daily life on and off my boat, the 40-foot Instigator. I’m going to continue writing a blog for each chapter so you can get to know me, my sternman, and the people of Maine. The good times and bad and all the times all between. I promise you I will lead you into a world you’ve never seen.
And if you ever see me around and want to ask me a ton of questions—go ahead. The bartender knows to make mine a bushwhacker.
 By Ryan Post
In the news lately, people have been getting the impression that all lobstermen are a bunch of pirates running around with Jolly Roger flags swinging swords and shooting guns. . . and though some do fit that category, it’s not the case for most of us. Trap wars have been going on for generations, but some major things have happened this summer with a shooting, boats being sunk—lots of traps being cut all up and down the coast, including mine. In this industry, you walk a fine line—if you put your tail between your legs when someone cuts your traps—you’re done. But if you go off and be a pirate and cut someone else’s traps—you’re also done. All that has been going on up and down the coast is that we’re not getting enough money for our product. Tensions are high and people are really struggling right now. At it stands, even I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the winter. What's happening is lobstermen are not very happy with their economic situation and some think the grass is greener on the other side—or the fishing is better over in someone else’s territory as the case may be—and they don’t always obey the invisible territory lines. When people are really struggling, losing their boats, behind on their mortgage payments, that’s when you see bad behavior. I don’t condone the piracy and I don’t cut traps. Our family has never gone down that road. I don’t do it because I don’t want people cutting mine (even though they still do). If you get caught whacking those traps off, you could lose your license for two or three years. And people who retaliate are usually the ones who get caught. Still, I get why people on the outside are fascinated by this—it’s not like the politics they deal with in their office, but it’s not a Hollywood movie, it’s real to us. And when lobstermen are getting a fair boat price, that’s when you will see things settle down and find peacetime on the water.
My friend K. Stephens just released her first novel, The Ghost Trap, the story of Jamie Eugley, a young lobsterman struggling with the grinding responsibilities of a head-injured fiancée and mounting trap wars in the midcoast. The Ghost Trap seems to be art imitating life with the timing of trap wars this summer. What’s honest about some of these scenes is that you may think you know who cut traps (which almost always starts the wars), but you don’t really know for sure. And isn’t that the truth about how trap wars sometimes start…and end? I loved this book when I read it. It really hit home and relates to a lot of how I grew up on an island. Jamie is born and raised around a lobstering community in a small town in Maine and has loyalty and dedication to the industry, with a lot of drama around trap wars as well as a romance that is doomed. When I read it, it didn’t almost seem like fiction, but like I was reading pages from my life and how I grew up.
This character doesn’t lie down and let people run over him and his family, but at the same time, he’s hard working, well spoken and not the one to start conflict –and that’s what I relate to. People have the misconception lobstermen aren’t educated or intelligent, but it’s just the opposite. You have to have intelligence, navigational skills, be able to operate a boat, have common sense and an unbelievable work ethic to survive in this business. When you’re on a boat, anything can happen at any time. There are no tow trucks that come out and jump-start you. You need to adapt, overcome, find solutions to fix the problem and that comes down to time on the water, a lot of experience and again, common sense. Put me in most situations on the water or off, I’d rather have a lobster fisherman with me than someone who has a mega IQ but who has no common sense and couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag.
With The Ghost Trap and my educational DVD, Maine Buggin, K. and I will be going around to bookstores and events all over Maine this fall. We’re going to take an ordinary book signing and turn it up a notch by bringing some real excitement to the lobstering industry. Splicing excerpts of her novel that relate to chapters of my DVD, we plan to bring energy, passion and the educational perspective to how lobster traps work, how invisible territory lines are drawn, and why trap wars usually happen outside of the news. I don’t think anyone’s ever done this before where a novel and an educational DVD dovetail so well. (Join this Facebook Fan Page to learn more.)
I wrote this column because all people are hearing in the news about lobstermen are the negatives and they need to be reminded of the positives, such as the fact that we are the original environmentalists, conservationists and stewards of our sustainable industry because of the methods we’ve used over generations of our fishery. There is a lot of good in what the majority of us do. So, look for K. and me this fall—ask us any questions. Our first official appearance will be during Windjammer Weekend, Saturday September 5 at Sherman’s Bookstore in Camden from 1-3 pm. If it’s a nice day, you’ll see us out on the sidewalk. Come on by.
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