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Lovin’ Lobster
From trap to table — catching the king of crustaceans
When I was growing up my parents would treat the family to a homemade lobster dinner a few times during the summer. Dad would come home with a bag full of crawling creatures and I would make a run for the other room.
By Kelly Michaud
I was terrified of them.
I didn’t like how they looked inside and out (especially that green stuff inside of them). I didn’t want to touch those creatures that turned red after mom tossed them in the pot. I wanted nothing to do with them. Luckily, Dad always brought me home a Happy Meal.
Now I wish I could go back and have all the lobster that I turned down (Mom was right, taste buds do change).
The sweet taste of fresh Maine lobster cannot be compared to any other delicacy. While it takes some work to enjoy them, just thinking about the sweet meat dripping with butter can make any lobster lover salivate. I still steer clear of the “green stuff” or rather the tomalley, but never again will I pass up a chance to have lobster.
While many of us enjoy lobster, how often do we think of the work that goes into capturing these crustaceans?
Well, I decided to find out what it takes to lobster on the waters of Maine’s Midcoast.
The alarm went off at 5 a.m. the morning I was scheduled to go lobstering with Michael Baudanza on his boat, Red Hot. I immediately hit the snooze button. Waking up this early cannot be normal ... (well at least not normal for me) but for the hundreds of men and women who lobster, rising early is an accepted way of life.
I pulled myself from bed and an hour later I was crouching in a dinghy with the captain and his sternman as the fog shrouded Owls Head harbor. The boat came into view amongst the others that filled the harbor. The ocean was quiet and calm, and the sun looked as though it was struggling to burn off the fog.
A few people had warned me of two things: be prepared to get up early, and watch out for the smell of the bait. Let’s just say I got over being tired quite quickly as soon as the smell of rotten herring started to creep into my nostrils. It was one of the very few times in my life that I wished I didn’t have a sense of smell. You can’t really prepare yourself for the rank stench of the bait.
“It’s a messy process but a nice way of life,” Baudanza said as he and his sternman Donnie Widdecombe poured the bushels of bait into a holding container. He laughed when he saw me covering my nose and cringing.
After getting bait and filling up on gas, the three of us made our way out of Owls Head harbor to fish the Rockland bottom. We passed other lobstermen waiting to get their essentials from the docks before beginning their work day.
Baudanza guided the boat past Owls Head Lighthouse and Widdecombe stood over the bait. Grabbing handfuls of herring at a time, he stuffed them into netted bags, getting them ready to put into the traps. That’s a job I’d pass on in less than a heartbeat.
The day’s goal was to haul about 200 traps. By state regulations, lobstermen are allowed to have 800 traps, with 10 percent replacement in case a trap gets cut or lost. Days begin as early as 4:30 a.m. for some and can last 8-10 hours. During the month of July, Baudanza said his days last about seven hours. August is when things really pick up.
Baudanza has spent the better part of 25 years lobstering; for 14 years he has worked for himself.
“I fished with the boys I grew up with and learned from them,” he said. “When I went out on my own it was trial and error, and I basically taught myself.”
Cutting through the water, the boat passed some young lobstermen fishing the way Baudanza had started. The pair stood in their boat, hauling the traps by hand.
The trap lines can be 70 to 100 feet long, Baudanza said. He, like most who make lobstering their profession, haul traps with a winch. It’s not real grueling work, he said but added that the real strain comes from the repetitive bouncing and pulling on the traps.
We soon came up on the first string of traps. Baudanza grabbed his buoy, yellow with three black stripes, and attached it to the hauling winch. The coastal waters are speckled with multi-colored buoys. Each lobsterman has his own colors and brands each buoy so they can be easily identified and not confused with others.
The line came zipping up and in a matter of seconds the trap popped out of the water, dripping with salt water and crawling with creatures. But there were no lobsters in this one, just plenty of crabs.
Widdecombe grabbed the trap and threw the crabs back into the ocean. The bait they had put in the trap a few days before was gone so they replaced it.
Tying it inside the trap, I asked how they could put up with the smell of the herring.
“I’m used to it — maybe if I put my head in there ...” Baudanza said, laughing.
But by 8 a.m. I, too, had grown accustomed to the smell. Who would have thought? It was still lingering there somewhat, but it wasn’t bothering me as much. And I was beginning to see how this could be an enjoyable job.
“I enjoy being on the water,” Baudanza said. “The part I like the most is early, about 5:30 a.m. - the tranquility of it. It’s just you and one other person — that’s what I like. There aren’t a lot of people around and you work by yourself pretty much.”
We continued down the line. Each buoy marks two traps and captain and sternman each worked on one, removing the crabs and hopefully lobster, before replacing the bait and returning the trap to the ocean’s bottom
“I get bit an average of three times a day by crabs and you’ll know when I do,” Baudanza said as he picked out some crabs. A few minutes later, I found out. One grabbed onto his finger before it went flying back into the ocean.
“When you see a lot of crabs it’s usually a good sign that the lobsters are running and they’re coming through,” he said.
But after hauling a line of about 30 traps, they only had about six lobsters.
“I’m a little disappointed with this string,” Baudanza said. “I don’t know where they are.”
We made our way near Rockland’s Breakwater Lighthouse. With the next string the luck improved. The spot is crawling with crustaceans because the lobsters go into the rocks to hide when they’re shedding their shells, Baudanza said. When the lobsters are headed back to sea is when they can catch them.
Shedders, as they are called, are more plentiful at this time of year than hard-shelled lobsters. Shedders don’t net quite as much money as the hard-shelled lobsters and the price per pound tends to change nearly as often as does the tide.
As each trap popped out of the water, I kept peaking to see how many, if any, lobsters were in it. It felt like finding a prize during a scavenger hunt or opening up a present that you weren’t expecting.
“That’s when it’s fun — when you have five or six lobsters in every trap,” Baudanza said.
But even if a trap is full of lobsters, there’s a chance that you’ll only be able to take two or three from the water.
First, you need to see if the lobster is a female and if it has eggs on its tail. If the lobster is a breeder, it must be returned to the water. Usually the lobster will already have a V-notch in its tail. If not, the lobsterman who finds the lobster must notch it. Next is checking the size of the lobster. The body (carapace) must be at least 3 1/4 inches long and less than 5 inches in length to be legal.
The two men continued to haul traps and as each popped up, a swarm of seagulls would appear, diving for the traps, hoping to get a piece of the bait. Each lobster boat in the water around us seemed to have its own pack of gulls trailing them or circling above the boat. After awhile it got really annoying — the longer a pack followed you, the braver they became as they touched down on the boat trying to get at the bait. But, Baudanza and Widdecombe said, you just have to ignore them and hope you don’t get bombed, dived at or otherwise bothered by them. I came home unscathed.
But annoying seagulls aren’t the only problem.
There is tension on the water, Baudanza said.
“It’s dog eat dog out here,” he said. “Everyone thinks they own the bottom and those guys that have been around a little longer think they have an inherent right because they’ve been feeding the lobsters for years. Some guys cut traps or will dump their traps on top of yours.”
That’s when things get tangled and you need to cut your traps to undo a mess and then reattach things, he explained.
“I hate being tangled up — it’s a pain in the butt,” Baudanza said as he tried to figure out a mess of rope and buoys and a tangled trap.
After spending seven hours on the water and capturing a few hundred pounds of lobster, we returned to Owls Head. The day was still young and there was still work to be done. The two worked cleaning down the boat as I jumped over muck and tried to stay out of the way. Back at the dock a crew greeted the boat to unload the day’s catch.
“We go in and sell, wait for a check, then go home,” Baudanza said. “My appreciation of this industry is knowing that I’m self-employed, know that I don’t have to punch a clock and knowing that I don’t have to answer to anyone.”
The hauling, the smell, the seagulls, the tranquility — it’s all in a day’s work of lobstering off the coast of Maine.