|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
This article is part of The $42 Million Question, a Harpswell Anchor special report.
Lobstermen are under threat. They all agree on that much. The threats they describe vary from one to the next. But they are worried about their future, and the future of a livelihood that many learned from their fathers and grandfathers and want to pass to their children and grandchildren.
The risks are larger than any one lobsterman — or even the industry as a whole. Lobstering “is not only an economic driver of coastal and island communities, it is an identity of our communities,” said Kristin Garabedian, a community development officer with the Island Institute’s Center for the Marine Economy. In other words, losing lobstering would make a town like Harpswell less like Harpswell.
Most lobstermen see the biggest threats coming from outsiders pursuing their own aims without regard for the lobstermen who live and work here. Those might be wind-power proponents, whale protectors, big businesses or homebuyers.
Few, if any, see climate change as an immediate or catastrophic threat, although they are deeply in tune with the changes happening in the Gulf of Maine and are worried about human impacts on the environment they depend on.
Federal regulations a chief concern
Regulations, broadly speaking, are at the top of lobstermen’s minds, usually just before or after their rising costs in the 2026 season. (See Page S3.) They are particularly frustrated by federal regulations, many of which come from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NOAA is the source of requirements, in place since 2022, that lobstermen use ropes or plastic inserts between the buoy at the surface and the trap on the bottom that will break under tension, as a way to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales from getting entangled.
The rules add to the cost of gear, and lobstermen are skeptical that their work poses a significant threat to whales. In 2024, NOAA researchers and others attributed one whale’s death to Maine lobster gear. It was the first such death in two decades definitively linked to Maine lobstering, although scientists are only able to examine dead or seriously injured whales in about half of known cases. Ships hitting whales is the other leading cause of their deaths.
NOAA has tested “ropeless” gear, in which the buoy and rope would sink to the bottom with the trap and be released by a remote signal from a lobster boat above. The agency acknowledges the technology is not yet ready, and has not announced plans to require it.
A bipartisan effort by Maine’s congressional delegation and governor succeeded in delaying additional NOAA gear regulations until 2028. U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, is leading an effort to further push back changes until 2035.
Still, the possibility of new, expensive, complex gear worries lobstermen. “I think ropeless would pretty much make it nonproductive to fish,” said Matt Clemons, who fishes from Potts Harbor.
Lobstermen also worry that the Maine Department of Marine Resources might further limit the size of lobsters that fishermen can keep. The state agency backed down from a proposed rule change along those lines in 2025.
It isn’t only regulations on lobsters that affect lobstermen. Federal licenses are required to catch almost any species in the Gulf of Maine, whether it’s tuna or cod or scallops, and those licenses are hard to get.
Where fishermen used to be able to adapt to changing environmental and economic conditions, they are now forced into a more precarious position.
“In the past, if we had a poor year, we’d rig over and do something else,” said lobsterman Cory Hawkes, of Cundy’s Harbor.
Threats in the deep ocean, threats in the neighborhood
Lobstermen also worry about the arrival of offshore wind turbines. In 2024, Maine auctioned off a site approximately 60 miles east of Harpswell to an energy company, although that lease is in question after President Donald Trump’s administration canceled it.
Lobstering would likely be prevented from the area around floating turbines. Even lobstermen who don’t set traps in those areas worry that the ones who do will crowd their fishing grounds if forced out.
Offshore wind turbines require seafloor construction to anchor the turbines and to lay cables that will carry power to shore.
“Putting things in the ocean that weren’t there is very scary to me,” Clemons said.
Some lobstermen cite limited studies suggesting electrical fields around these cables could affect larval lobsters and other sea life, although that research is not conclusive.
Lobstermen see threats ashore, too. Wealthy buyers from out of town and out of state have been purchasing Harpswell properties, driving up prices and limiting shore access. One lobsterman put it bluntly: “You discovered us.”
Higher home prices make it harder for lobstermen to live in town. Lobstermen worry about commercial wharfs being sold and turned into private homes, leaving them adrift.
Kaileb Hawkes, who lobsters from Cundy’s Harbor, said his family keeps its wharf in the harbor going not because it makes a lot of money, but to preserve their access to the water.
The other threats lobstermen talk about vary. Some seem location dependent. David Gilley and Barry Catlin, who both lobster from Cundy’s Harbor in and around Quahog Bay, each voiced concerns about recreational lobster licenses.
Catlin said he has observed recreational lobstermen fishing more than the five traps they are allowed and keeping lobsters without measuring them.
David Gilley said that not only do recreational lobstermen catch lobsters that might otherwise go to working lobstermen, they also don’t buy lobsters they otherwise might.
Age comes up often. Lobstermen across town readily recite the ages of each captain at their wharf. The lists skew toward the 50s, 60s and 70s. They wonder where their next helper will come from, or where the next captains will come from.
Harpswell’s population is among the oldest in the state. “It’s a labor-intensive job,” said Matt Gilley, a lobsterman in Cundy’s Harbor and a member of the town’s Select Board. “There’s not a lot of people to pull from. We live in such an old state.”
Environmental changes give, and take
Warming ocean waters have devastated lobster fisheries elsewhere, including Long Island Sound and Massachusetts. In Maine, the warming water has been good for lobstermen Down East, where rising temperatures are making some areas more hospitable to lobsters.
Hawkes said the warmer years have been better for him; changing currents have cooled the Gulf of Maine in the last few years, and he has seen his catch decline.
Other environmental changes are less welcome. Starting about 10 years ago, Clemons noticed algae in his traps that he described as similar to moss.
“It’s nothing that I saw when I was a kid,” he said, and it’s not good for lobstering. “It can almost fill a trap. If you have a lot of moss, you don’t have a lot of lobsters.”
Biologist Richard Wahle, who directs the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, said Clemons was likely describing an invasive red or brown algae. Wahle said it is likely this species was introduced from another region by ships and may have spread into the Gulf of Maine as increasing temperatures gave it a foothold in regions that used to be too cold.
Matt Gilley hopes residents understand what threats to lobstermen mean to Harpswell. “It all circles back to the lobster industry in this town,” he said.
He doesn’t just mean the wharfs, or the bait trucks, or even the lobster shacks that are tied to the industry directly. He means the people who need to live in town to be volunteer firefighters and do other jobs, too.
“Without lobster,” Matt Gilley said, “it would be scary.”
J. Craig Anderson contributed reporting.
