Day Four
The phone rang at 3:30am. I knew instantly that it was the call from
Biscuit. I was groggy from Sauvignon
Blanc and lack of sleep but I dragged myself out of bed. This was a test of manhood and I was not
going to live with the shame of having slept through an opportunity to get on a
lobster boat. In particular I felt I would not be able to face our friend Gregg Peckham, who loves the "Deadliest Catch" show and would never forgive me if I stayed home.
I got dressed in a bunch of
old clothes that Alan had salvaged from his attic--Alan and I are roughly the
same size--6'4" or so. I wore some
old khakis, two layered polo shirts, a fisherman's sweater and a windbreaker. Alan also provided me with some cut off
wellingtons that he had salvaged from the island recycling center (he started
the recycling center on the island and still volunteers there--prior to this anything
that would sink was simply dumped in the ocean).
Alan selflessly got up with
me, made coffee and offered to drive me to the harbor to meet Biscuit and his
crew. We arrived at the harbor a little
before four. A couple of minutes later,
a young bearded guy who was built like an NFL tight end showed up. He introduced himself as Rocky, one of Biscuit's
stern men. He asked if I was the guy
that was going out with them. When I
confirmed that I was he gave me the same laugh everyone else had given me the
prior evening.
Rocky and I chatted for a
few minutes before the others showed up.
I asked him what he did before becoming a lobster fisherman. He told me he had taught mixed martial arts
and was a professional cage fighter.
Yes, you heard me--I was fishing with a frigging professional cage
fighter. You can't make this stuff
up. On Matinicus, if they're not
pirates, they're cage fighters. For a
professional cage fighter he seemed like a great guy (for example, he didn't
slam my head against the lamppost and bite my ear off).
Dawn off Matinicus
Biscuit and his son Dillon showed up a few minutes later. Biscuit is a very large man (maybe pushing 300 pounds) and cannot safely make it down the ladder from the pier into the dinghy. The pier is built at a height to accommodate the twice-a-month ferry and therefore requires a 10 foot climb down a wet, barnacle-encrusted ladder to get into the boat. Dillon therefore paddled the dinghy to the beach, picked up Biscuit and then we all rowed to his lobster boat, the Dillon James (named, of course, for Dillon). (By the way, Biscuit may be overweight but he is not by any means out of shape--I watched him pick up the front of an ATV that probably weighed 750 pounds and move it three feet like it was a tricycle.)
We tied up the dinghy to
the mooring, cast off and headed out of the harbor on the Dillon James. The seas were a little rough and it was clear
we were going to be rolling and bobbing quite a bit. I am not particularly susceptible to sea
sickness, but when I have been so afflicted it was on a deep sea fishing boat
under exactly these conditions--big swells, boat often stationary or drifting,
and the delightful aroma of a bait tank nearby.
I knew that having the rookie (me) retching over the gunwales would make
everyone's day on the Dillon James (not to mention the snickering townspeople
on Matinicus) and just crossed my fingers that my stomach would not betray me.
Biscuit at the Tiller
The Dillon James was approximately 40 feet long by my estimation. It was powered by a big diesel engine--probably over 300 horsepower. The aft fishing deck was approximately 8 by 12 and had enough room for the bait tank (filled with rancid, highly aromatic herring and various undesirable pieces of what looked to be codfish--fins, tails, etc.). The wheel was on the starboard side and there was a power winch in reach of the helmsman. The lobster traps were 2 by 4 by 2 wire mesh rectangles--modern versions of the charming old wooden traps that you see on the walls of cheesy seafood restaurants everywhere.
Biscuit sets his traps in a
line. I believe there are generally 5
traps on each buoy and there are several buoys in a row in a given area. A lobsterman generally has a total of 400 to
800 traps and checks each trap every third day or so. Sometimes he can't check his traps for
several days because of weather and this leads to some 15 hour days on the water
catching up. I suspect that Biscuit has
more than 800 traps.
The Maine coast is like a
minefield for lobsters. There are
lobster traps everywhere. I would guess
that every lobster that ends up on your table has been caught at least 10 times
before he ends up at the market. The
size of a "keeper" lobster is strictly regulated and fishermen keep a
caliper gauge on board their boats to measure whether lobsters are legal. It seemed to me that about 2/3 of the
lobsters we caught were thrown back--either because they were too small, too
big or were breeding females full of eggs.
Lobsters, having been
caught in traps multiple times, apparently don't learn. They have small brains that are wired only to
find their next meal. The lobstermen
provide meals to them in the form of thousands of tons of herring bait every
day. The lobsters and the lobstermen
have a symbiotic relationship until the lobster gets big enough, at which point
it becomes a strictly one-way relationship in favor of the fisherman--a change
of events that must come as a big shock to the lobsters.
Rocky and Dillon moved with
an easy grace--hooking the buoy, setting the line in the winch, pulling up the
trap, removing the lobsters, throwing the keepers into a bin and pitching the
babies and the breeders back into the sea.
My job was to re-stuff the bait sacks with herring and other
unmentionable stuff from the bait tank and band the claws of the lobsters we
were keeping.
Rocky and Dillon at Work
The lobsters appeared to be seriously pissed off when pulled out of the trap. They assumed a claws-ready defensive position and backed into a corner. The challenge was to get ahold of the lobster before the lobster got ahold of your fingers. You then had to get the rubber bands around their claws. The rubber band goes on a spreader that stretches it to fit over the claws. You then slide the stretched band over the claw and twist the spreader off to close the claw.
The only dangerous parts of
the job were running the winch and throwing the traps back in. The winch pulled the traps up and could
probably take off a finger or two if you wrapped the line on the wrong
way. Throwing the traps back in was
potentially more dangerous. After the
lobsters have been removed and the traps re-baited, Biscuit would accelerate
the boat and the string of traps would be thrown overboard in sequence at his
order. The traps were generally in about
100 feet of water and if the line wrapped around your ankle on the way out of
the boat, you would probably be dragged down 50 feet in frigid Maine water
before you could disentangle yourself. I'm not sure if Biscuit would have stopped for
us in any case.
I had worked on the ore
boats on the great lakes after high school for a summer and I was very familiar
with the danger of loose lines, winches and going overboard. I gave the traps and lines a wide berth and
focused on stuffing bait sacks.
Biscuit dropped me off in
Matinicus harbor at about 10:30 am. We
had fished for over 6 hours--about half their fishing day. Biscuit gave me 7 lobsters as payment and
asked me to drop off four additional lobsters for Eva and Paul. I walked the half mile back to the cottage
(Eva and Paul lived at the end of Alan and Peggy's drive) and delivered my
bounty.
I was ready to go back to
bed when I got home but Ann and Peggy insisted that I go for a bike ride around
the island. We rode past the one room
school house (Peggy had done the fundraising and volunteer organizing for the
school's nice playground), up to the church (which hosted visiting pastors of
all religions), rode to the airport and watched their friend Morrie's wife take
off on the grass air strip, visited Morrie's house (which had a door from Bob
Dylan's house in Greenwich Village that Morrie had salvaged), walked through
Morrie's beautiful gardens, rode to the West side of the island and visited another
friend on a beautiful private cove, rode back and stopped at Eva's for some
bread, then ran into two other neighbors before we could get home. When we finally got back I was exhausted and
climbed straight upstairs for a much needed nap.
That night we had Alan and
Peggy’s friends Charlie and
Margaret over for Biscuit's lobsters. Charlie
was a former school administrator from Connecticut and a charming guy. Margret had a big personality and was tons of
fun. We ate lobsters, drank wine and
generally made a big mess.
More Lobsters
We were due to leave the
following morning for the AMC lodge in northern Maine where we would meet my
brother Fred and his wife Cindy. We were
scheduled to take Penobscot Air from the grass landing strip at the end of the
island weather permitting. Penobscot
flies a single engine Cessna that flies in the mail. This logistical plan was all the more
exciting since this service had two plane crashes last summer--one in high
winds that killed the pilot and another that crashed with Alan and Peggy's
friend Eva on board (in that latter case all four survived the crash). The weather looked marginal so we lined up
George and the Robin as a backup in case they couldn't fly.
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