Maine: Eastport Lobster fishing

     Welcome back to Moose Island, Maine.  Fishing has always been at the heart of the community here - the first European inhabitants established fishing camps.

     A unique sculpture along the water looks like a fish hatching out of an egg.

     Early accounts speak of fish so plentiful during spawning season that people would catch them with pitch forks.  In fact, the local Indian tribe is known as the Passamaquoddy which translates to "The People of the Pollock."

     We saw how the sardine canneries came and went, how boat building left and is now making a come-back.  Today we are looking at a fishing industry that has just come to the area in the last twenty years and is just now catching its stride.  We are heading out with the crew of the "Ocean Warrior," a 49 foot boat designed to catch lobster.

     A couple of the modifications are indicated by the red arrows below.  

     

     First is the rear of the deck - you will notice that it drops off flat.  This is so lobster traps can slide off of the deck unimpeded.   Another modification marked in red is a large steel plate on the side of the boat.  This is to protect the side of the ship where traps are hauled aboard.  We saw these boats being built at Millennium Marine - where they bring about $600,000.   

     The work "day" starts just before 3 am when we meet at the boat.  It is a two hour ride out to the fishing grounds, and there is a lot to get done on the way out.

     Bins of herring have been loaded aboard to use as bait in the lobster traps.

     All of this bait is packed into small mesh bags so that while it attracts the lobster, they can't just tear it right apart.

     47 year old Jason Aubuchon is packing the bait bags.

     Jason has a degree in finance from Missouri State and worked for some years selling payroll and accounting services.  He had long tired of office work when a friend suggested he try commercial fishing, and he has not looked back since.  He has worked these waters for five years; previously he fished in the Gulf of Mexico and on the Atlantic from the Carolinas.

     There is a heavy fog that lies over the water the entire day, not unusual for summertime in Maine.  We finally arrive at the fishing grounds and the men get to work.

     The traps are laid out in long lines - 14 traps on each run.  Today we are picking up 39 lines for a total of 546 traps.  Marker buoys indicate the end of the ropes that go down to the lines.  With waters ranging from 250 to 300 feet deep, the ropes that tie the traps and the marker buoys together run a half mile in length.

     Upon spotting the buoy at the end of a line, the first order of business is to hook the rope and pull the line aboard.  

     This is Howard, a 41 year old father of three children who is raising three step children.  

     Howard spent four years getting a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Maine, but has taken to fishing rather than teaching.  The money allows him to support a family and there is a lot more scenery at work.  He has been with this crew for 5 years.

     Aboard the boat is a pulley system the ropes are hooked to.   This in turn is driven by the engine, so the boat does the work of pulling the traps up from the ocean floor.

      Shortly after the buoys are on board the anchor for the front of the line comes up.  This is temporarily stowed on the back ledge of the boat.

     The lobsters are "pre-sorted" as they come out of the trap, with the ones that are obviously too young being pitched back into the sea.  Here Howard shows his mad "Air Jordan" skills with a behind-the-back toss.

     Meanwhile Jason pulls out the old bait bag and replaces it with a fresh one.  These traps have a life expectancy of five to ten years, and cost a bit over $100 per trap.

     Here is what this work is all about - Maine Lobster.

     Lobster from these waters are world renowned for their quality.  The largest of these can tip the scales at over 40 pounds, making this the largest crustacean in the world.

     A second sorting is done on a work table, where an exact size measurement is taken.  Those large enough have a large rubber band placed on their claws and are dropped into a "live well."

     The live-well is just a large containing area where fresh seawater is continually pumped through.  

     The third member of the deck crew is Randy.

     

     47 year old Randy has two children of his own and is raising four step-children.  He has fished these waters all his life, and when he isn't lobstering he is digging clams.  Randy has been working on this crew for 15 years.

     When a full line is up the traps run in two rows all the way back the boat.  As the ropes are brought in, they are carefully laid out so that they won't tangle up.

     When a line is line is completed, Randy throws the anchor back in the water.

     The boat surges forward, and the weight of the anchor pulls the traps off the boat one by one.  They move along pretty fast - a foot tangled in a rope would almost certainly mean death.

     After the last trap hits the water, the other anchor is yanked off the back rail.  Another couple hundred feet of rope and the marker buoys are yanked off the boat as well.

     These guys go through this same routine twice a week, nine months a year.  They are practiced and proficient, each knowing the other's next move. 

     Orchestrating the whole show is David Pottle, a son of Eastport who has raised two daughters in this area.

     David has a computer to help him with navigation - it shows the gps location of the boat, the depth of the water and the spots where the trap lines are laid out.

     David grew up with a father who had a local construction and excavation business, and has worked since he was a young man.  His mother said that about as soon as he could walk he was trying to get lawn mowing jobs.

     As of twenty years ago, there were no lobstermen working out of Eastport.  David and a few others started out small, and have grown it into a viable local industry since.

     David had engineered a bunch of large tanks at his house to hold the lobster he caught until they could be taken to market.  Other folks started lobstering, and they relied on him to hold their catch.  This grew so large that four years ago he decided to buy a property on the end of the island.  The first order of business was to remove the ruins of an old cannery and create a proper facility.

     David has since built this spit of land into this site.  On the far right is the pier, and then the office and warehouse area.  On the left end are receiving and shipping docks where trucks can back right up to the facility.

     Inside, David built Maine's largest indoor lobster holding tanks.  You see, if lobster are kept in water 40 degrees or below, they go into a sort of hibernation state.  

     Lobsters can be kept in this state for as long as two months before they show any appreciable weight loss.  This is a huge advantage when it comes to dealing with the wholesale markets.  When prices dip, David can hold the lobster until they (hopefully) return to reasonable levels.  David has grown to the point that he now is the buyer for 26 local lobstermen, plus his own catch.  With the addition of his facility to the area, it is also much easier for trucks with bait to get in and out.  As a result, the lobster business is growing.  And in a town of 1300 people, 26 lobster crews mean a lot of families have a decent living because of the persistence of those who started fishing them twenty years ago.

     Back out on the boat, the men hit a snag.  Literally a snag.  Another lobstering crew has dropped a trap line atop one of the Warriors, and the ropes are coming up in a big tangle.

    There is a lot of gear that goes into doing this job, and none of it is cheap.  David spends upwards of $30,000 a year just on rope.  It is a special rope that sinks so that passing whales don't become entangled, potentially damaging themselves and the traps.

     But this isn't these guy's first rodeo.  Soon their line, lying beneath the other line, is cut and spliced and the other crew's trap line is returned to the ocean floor.

     Their whole line is moved away from the spot, hopefully solving the problem.

     A couple of days ago we saw that the United States border in this area was not clearly defined for many years.  Well, out here on these waters there is about 100 square miles of water that are still contested with Canada.  As a result, crews from both countries fish this particular area.  Here is a Canadian lobster crew moving through the area.

     One has to hope that the other crews all operate as cleanly as these guys.  All that bait that is put in the traps serves as food for the lobster - much like a farmer fertilizes his fields.  The field is fertile with lobster because the men work it in a manner that makes it sustainable - a big deal in an area that saw much of its valuable fish stocks wiped out with overfishing.

     

     546 traps later, the job for today is done.  This is a bit over half of David's traps - they will be returning tomorrow to finish the job.

     We head back toward land and watch the fog disappear as soon as it reaches land.  It really is quite pretty.

     As we head back toward Moose Island, we pass the lighthouse that David uses as his company logo.

     The crew puts the lobster into the containers they will be in when they go in the tanks back at the fishery.

     With the big commercial pier out of commission since its collapse, we have to take the catch to another old pier where a small crane hoists the pallet up.  The crates are then loaded in a pickup truck and driven back across the island to the fishery.

     On the way back the bins are washed down and the boat prepared for tomorrow's run.  It is now after five o'clock - three am will be here again soon.

     The boat is anchored offshore and a dingy picks the men up.

     The usual dingy captain got here late today - but he shows up to help weigh the lobster and pack them in the storage tanks.

     11 year old Lane's mother is the book keeper here, and he is always in the middle of things.  He really is a proficient navigator of the small boats.  Last week he tore up slips of paper and wrote out "pay-checks" for $10000000.  He signed them and gave them to the men.  Later, when the men were standing around and he saw David pulling in, he shouted that they better get to work or he was going to take their "paychecks" back.

     The crew is tired, but the job isn't done until everything is weighed, recorded and stored.  

     In about eight hours, they will meet back here and do it all over again.  

     From here the lobster head south and into the main fish markets.  David has purchased a refrigerated truck so he can make some smaller deliveries himself.

          Jason was a big help during my stay in Eastport - he let me use his extra bedroom and his wi-fi for almost a full week.  

     I have never eaten lobster before, so he cooked a couple up.

     Lobster that were swimming in the ocean a few hours ago -  if you like lobster it doesn't get better than that.

     Last year a local woman was diagnosed with cancer, so Jason and a bunch of the local fishermen did a calendar as a fundraiser.

     What do you think ladies?  I think it's a pretty scary sight - a bunch of salty dogs cavorting about lobster traps in their britches.  I forgot to ask Jason which "month" he was.

     Which brings us to today's "Faces in the Crowd. "  This is one of Jason's dogs charging back up the hill after a swim in the bay.  

     And today's parting shot - a "no hunting" sign in the Eastport cemetery?

     There must be a medical school somewhere close by . . . 

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Have a great day !!
David

Maine: Eastport Canneries and Port Authority

      Welcome back to Eastport Maine, where properties overlooking vistas that would be called "million dollar views" in other locations are commonplace.  In fact, one of the best spots on the island is called "poverty rock" - a place no one wanted to live not long ago.

     Of course the area is not without its share of adversities.  This last winter 16 feet of snow fell.

      There is no winter melt here, so 16 feet of snow truly totals 16 feet of snow.  You would think that since the snow is going to melt and run into the bay in the spring that locals would just push it into the bay.  But the State of Maine says no - you can't put the snow in the bay.

      It built up to the point that there was nothing left but little walk ways.  Finally the state came in with trucks to clear out the snow - and dumped it into the bay.  Government coming to the rescue for problems they created is always good for some humor.  It is like what we saw a couple of months ago when the State of North Carolina banned sea level rise due to global warming for the remainder of the century.

     But year after year these folks pick themselves up, clean up from the aftermath of the storms and get on with life.

     Another big adversity that struck the town was a devastating fire back in the 1880's.

    The net result of this event was that the entire downtown was rebuilt - out of brick. 

     Numerous buildings from this time period grace downtown with the style of that era.

     Funny that someone created a bank named "Frontier National" in Maine - I looked it up on the FDIC page and it says this bank didn't open until 1901 - yet we have it "written in stone" that it was open for business at least 19 years earlier than that.  

     Then there are the gales.

     A gale is defined as a wind over 32 miles per hour.  Some of them are significantly higher - as evidenced by this factory that was blown apart by one back in 1976.

     Then there is the ice.  

     According to an old book in the library, the missing chunk of the bridge above was taken out by a chunk of ice during the spring thaw.

     Then there are the economic calamities.  In the last article on Eastport we looked at how shipbuilding had boomed and then busted because those at the top rejected the notion that motors could propel boats.  But just as the ship industry was starting its nosedive, the townsfolk found a new way to support themselves.  They started boiling and smoking juvenile herring (called sardines) and packing them in oil.  Canning facilities and fisheries sprang up all over the island.

     The industry was dominated by European interests, and to start with the local canneries mimicked the labels of the European products.  But soon their products came to be recognized as worthy on their own merits.

     Women worked in the canning facilities and the men ran the boats.  A boat called the "Eastport Pinkie" was designed for the purpose of bringing in the huge hauls.

     The herring would be trapped in coves and inlets with nets which would be drawn tighter until they were encircled in a small area.  Then they were hauled aboard the smaller boats which were towed by tugs to the packing plants.

      The industry boomed from the late 1800's through the 1950's. During the peak years there were some 50 million pounds of sardines being packed and shipped out of here each year.  Then came the Great Depression of the 1930's, and the industry went bust.  The resulting fall was so sudden and severe that the town itself went bankrupt.  About all that is left of these facilities today are fields of pilings rotting into the sea.    

          This was about the time when Roosevelt started the tidal power project here, but that soon fell on its face.  All that was left was a small remnant of boat building and small amounts of fishing.  In the 1960's the Army Corps of Engineers built a commercial dock by downtown designed to harbor a fishing fleet and allow some larger passenger ships and freighters to tie up.

Photo taken by James Lowe

     The Corps stated that the pier had a twenty year life expectancy.  Well, after fifty years, this last winter did it in. The inward edge of the pier collapsed.

     It isn't surprising - salt water is brutal on everything, as evidenced by this concrete piling nearby.

     So currently the fisherman have to anchor wherever they can - or, as many of them have done they can move to another town where they can tie up.  

     A few years back, it looked like there was hope for an economic revival - a natural gas company was looking to put a facility on the island and export liquefied natural gas.  But in a tight vote over a bitterly contested issue the town's people voted against it.  That left those voting for it to ask the others what they were going to do for economic revival. 

     

     So back in 1977 the town decided to create a port authority to bring shipping back to the area.  It decided that the port authority would be created on equal footing with the city - that the city would not have power over it nor would the port authority have power over the city.  The city manager and one other councilman would sit on the port authority's board, but other than that it would be independant.  And the port authority would operate like a business - it would have its own checking account and have to live or die by its own merits.  Initially the shipping took place on the pier that the Corp had built downtown - quite obviously a location with many limitations.

     The port authority acquired 40 acres on the other side of Moose Island to use as a terminal and warehouse site.  Early on the consulting firm of Booz-Allen, who makes their money from government consulting said that Eastport was not a viable port.  In spite of this, the Port Authority put together 6 million dollars and went forward with construction.  The very next year they were able to convince Georgia-Pacific to ship their pulp-wood from here. 

     Inch by inch, against many challenges, the town and the port authority were able to build a new commercial port facility on the opposite side of the island, finally finished in 1998.  Since that date, the port has built itself up to where it is now handling 12% of all of Maine's commercial port traffic.  That might sound like a lot, but in the big scheme of things that is very little.  And it appears to me that times are about to change.

     Meet Chris Gardner, a native son of Eastport and named executive director of the Eastport Port Authority 7 years ago.

     Of course, of immediate concern right now for Chris is the city's main pier.  Workers have moved in to repair the pier, and the net result is that when it is finished it will have the capacity to house a fishing fleet 30 percent larger than was here previously.  

    Chris understands that the biggest problem is that people have been thinking "too small."  There is a huge industry that the area is uniquely suited to handle, and thus he has been land-banking property beside the new port facility for the last seven years.   This gives space for the port to expand in the future, a future which may not be far off.  

     You see, this is the northernmost and the easternmost port in the United States.  That makes it the closest port to Europe and the Suez Canal.  Further, at dead low tide the waters around the island are over forty feet deep - the deepest on the east coast of the United States and so deep that they never freeze.  And the access waterways are over 100 feet in depth.

     

     Currently, the two major canals of the world - the Suez and the Panama are undergoing enlargements to handle a new generation of cargo ships that are coming.  Ports all along the eastern coast are making huge changes to be able to handle the new boats.  The harbors all need dredged deeper, which is not only a huge expense but also an environmentally troublesome issue.  We Saw in Wilmington NC how many square miles of cypress and live oak trees were killed by saltwater intrusion when that port was deepened.

     "We have always had to turn to the sea for our answers" says Chris.  "We have the deepest port in the United States - and God dredges it for us twice a day."

     

Eastport  Commercial Port - Photo by James Lowe

     One of the problems facing Chris when he first came to office was how to sterilize wood chips.  Europe demands that all woodchips imported have to be boiled so that no pests enter their country.

     With the help of a local company Eastport has put together a method of sterilizing the wood-chips onboard the ship they are loading - relieving them of the problem of building a separate facility to handle the process.

     Another huge innovation is this large conveyor system that loads product onto conveyor belts and runs it directly out to the ships to be loaded.  But this leaves the area's port dependant on one industry - wood and paper.

     To move forward the city and the port still have a problem - inland access.  In the last article on Eastport we saw how the only land access runs through the heart of the local Indian reservation on that causeway built back in the 1930's - not a good long term situation with so many trucks coming and going.  

     So Chris has a plan that covers many of the area's problems.  The plan is to bring a rail line out to the port, built in conjunction with a new access route for cars and trucks.

     He has researched the right of ways and won the cooperation of all property owners affected, consulted with environmental groups, spoken with state and federal agents and on every front the plan seems to be a winner.

     The old causeway would be torn out, allowing tidal waters to once again flow freely in and out of the bay on the reservation.  Traffic through the village would cease, the reservation's village would have more developable lands.  Tourists arriving by land would have a much easier trip in, port traffic would have its own routing, port cargo could almost immediately make its ways onto the nation's railways, and the length of the journey for the ocean-going vessels coming to and from Europe and the Suez Canal would be reduced.

     $ 300 million gets it done.  That is less than a quarter of what it cost to increase the height of one bridge in New York harbor so that the new freighters can come in.  Having met Chris and seeing his determination, I bet he gets it done.  It will be fun to see when we return in seven years on the main fundraising trip.

     A few miscellaneous points of interest around - there is a lot of neat random artwork around Eastport.  Here is a moose that reminds me of Douglas Jones's Fish Art that we saw on Tybee Island in Georgia. 

     There is an old mill here named Raye's Mustard Mill and Museum.

     They have dozens of types of mustard that they make - it looks an interesting place.  But when I walked in they admonished me about my camera, warning "we don't allow pictures."  There are enough other things of interest here that I moved on without investigating.

     Meet Joe, Sheila and Jaxson Schofield.  

     A few years back Joe's first wife, who was an addictions counselor, lost a battle with cancer.  He had been childhood friends with Sheila, and after a year or so of going it alone he befriended her again.  She had fallen into the night-life scene, so Joe basically pulled her off a barstool and helped her get sober.  That was almost four years ago.  Sheila just graduated with her bachelors degree in nursing and is taking the state board exam for registered nurses this August.

     They since have had what they call their "miracle baby" - Jaxson.  They were both very surprised when Sheila got pregnant - Joe is 53 and Sheila 45.  Jaxson is a bundle of energy, and it was great to spend a couple of days with folks living in gratitude for the blessings they do have and focusing eagerly on the things in life they can change.  They seem to fit right in here - a couple that has reinvented themselves in a community that has honed that skill.

     I needed a few days work, so Joe put me up on a ladder replacing rotted wood on a house he is getting ready to paint.  The ladder said it is rated at 300 lbs - we pushed the rating a bit but it held up ok.  It was fun to do a bit of carpentry work again.

     Today's "Faces in the Crowd" is a fellow who was keeping track of me while I was photographing down at the pier.  

     In small towns there are lots of folks that "keep track" of things.  I think that these are the same folks that set up home-owner's associations in the larger towns.

And today's parting shot -

      When you have to plow 16 feet of snow over a winter, the edges of a road become a bit blurred.  Mailboxes are either buried under the drifts or become collateral damage.  The solution?  The "mobile mailbox" - a "box in a bucket."  A bit of concrete in a tin pail and you can move the box wherever you need.

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Have an awesome day !!
David