Lobster: A Living Tradition on Maine’s Coast
There’s something visceral about Maine lobster. It’s not just the taste, though there’s no denying the rich, briny sweetness of a perfectly boiled claw. It’s something deeper. A lobster isn’t just an ocean bug; it’s a piece of Maine’s culture, its history and its unique ecosystem. It’s also a damn fine meal that can transport you to a bracing, rocky shoreline even as you sit in your own dining room.
The story of Maine lobster goes back to the indigenous Wabanaki people, for whom lobster was a natural part of their coastal diet. While these early Americans saw the lobster as a gift from the ocean, it was hardly the esteemed delicacy we think of today. And there are numerous stories of colonial servants and prisoners being fed lobster until they protested, but there isn’t much evidence to support this being the case. What is indisputable, however, is that lobsters were overwhelmingly abundant and lacked any status in the colonial food world. In 1630, William Wood authored a book for potential settlers and summed lobster up thusly: “Their plenty makes them little esteemed and seldom eaten.” Despite lobsters’ lack of popularity, a nascent lobstering industry began in Maine in the 1600s.
Even then, there were uses for these cold-water crustaceans. Lobster shells made excellent fertilizer (they still do; at my local garden shop in Maine you can buy lobster-enriched topsoil if you need a hit of nitrogen and phosphoric acid), and the meat is high in protein, making it a valuable — if then somewhat disdained — nutritional source. But unless lobster is immediately cooked, it spoils within a day, so it remained an overabundant food source exclusive to coastal New England until the mid-19th century.
Several Post-Civil War developments changed the trajectory of the lowly lobster: first were advances in canning technology, enabling lobster meat to be cooked and packed in coastal New England to travel as a valuable protein source for Americans pushing ever westward. Even more so, the expansion of railroads had a profound impact on the Maine lobster industry. For the first time, live lobsters could be transported out of state to the growing urban markets of Boston and New York. By the late 1800s, lobster was being served in upscale city restaurants. Concurrently, it was marketed to a growing middle class as a special-occasion luxury food. Summer tourists visiting Maine might not be able to eat lobster at home, but they could enjoy it on a coastal vacation, further cementing the connection between the place and the meal. This shift in perception, combined with transportation advances, growing affluence and marketing strategies, solidified lobsters as a premium seafood, making it a staple on restaurant menus and a symbol of coastal New England, and particularly Maine, cuisine.
By the early 20th-century, a boom took place, and lobstermen weren’t just feeding their communities; they were supplying an entire nation. The fledgling industry that began in the 17th century, in places like Bar Harbor and Portland, found itself at the heart of a rapidly expanding economic engine. The Gulf of Maine, with its cold, clear waters and rocky seafloor, teemed with the marine creatures, and there were few jobs then as lucrative as lobster fishing.
Today, Maine leads the nation in lobster production, harvesting over 100 million pounds of lobster a year. Unlike with much of the fishing industry, which has changed dramatically since the introduction of massive industrial trawlers, lobsters are caught mostly the same way they were 450 years ago. The most prominent modernizations are regulatory: The industry has adopted stringent restrictions aimed at sustaining Maine lobstering. Lobstermen manage their catch by size: Crustaceans under the minimum three-and-a-quarter inches from the rear of the eye socket to the end of the body shell are tossed back, but so are those over the maximum five inches. This gives younger animals an opportunity to breed and older, larger breeders an opportunity to continue.
Easily identified by the cache of eggs beneath their tails, egg-bearing females must be returned to the sea. Beforehand, however, their tails are notched so they can be identified as a breeding female, even when they’re not actively carrying eggs. Lobster traps are monitored too, with hatches that allow below-minimum lobsters to escape.
Lobstering is a year-round industry, and while today’s boats are equipped with GPS and sonar, successful lobster fishing still requires what is often multigenerational knowledge of the best spots for traps, the depths to set them and the right time of day for hauling them in. As someone lucky enough to spend part of the year in Maine, I’ve gotten to know a local lobster team, the brothers Jett and Lake Lindelof, who haul lobster each summer in the Midcoast Maine waters of Penobscot Bay. Unlike many lobstermen, Jett didn’t learn the trade from his father and grandfather but is quick to remind me that many lobstermen on his home island of Islesboro do.
Jett found his way to lobstering at the tender age of 12, when he went looking for work that would keep him on the water as much as possible. He met a fisherman in need of a deckhand and spent his first summer waking at 4 a.m. in time to help load the boat by 5 a.m. and be out on the water to haul traps two at a time. His primary work was baiting traps and banding lobsters, the typical practice of binding the powerful crusher claw and smaller but equally fierce “pincher” or ripper claw with rubber bands to keep the captive lobsters from attacking each other (and to protect the fingers of fishermen). Over the course of 10-hour days the team would haul 400 traps over dozens of miles, crisscrossing Penobscot Bay and bouncing between idyllic tourist haunts like Rockport, Isleboro and Camden.
The following summer, Jett and his older brother rehabbed an abandoned 20-foot boat on their property, got student licenses and lay 50 traps around their home island. He said it was only a few days before his phone started ringing and lobstermen who’d been fishing for years (and generations) gently but firmly informed him that he couldn’t just lay his traps wherever he wanted. Although a fishing license gives you access to an entire zone of Maine water, lobstermen work by the unwritten law of territorialism. The newest fishermen must go the farthest afield into waters that haven’t already been claimed. While the community was tolerant of the teenagers’ ignorance, the Lindelofs were quick to move their operation into more northerly waters; if they’d dawdled, Jett remarked, it would have been a matter of weeks before their traplines were cut as a warning from more established fishermen.
Six years later, their operation has grown from 50 traps to 800, and four days a week of lobstering from May to September. While roughly half of lobstermen fish all year round, this requires spending winters in deeper, colder ocean waters to follow the lobster as they move seasonally. Lobstermen who are based farther inland tend to take the winters off, splitting their time with other jobs. For Jett, lobstering isn’t a forever thing; it’s something he opted into to be on the water, to challenge himself with starting and sustaining a business, and to participate in a community that is unique to Maine. Lobstering “didn’t feel like a job to me. It’s very important to Maine’s economy, heritage and culture. It’s family-oriented. It’s passed down through generations. It’s something very special about Maine.”
For fishermen whose sole profession is lobstering, the biggest concern is the impact climate change is having on their waters and on the future of their industry. As the waters in Maine warm beyond the 50-60°F temperatures that are ideal, lobsters will migrate toward the northern regions of the Gulf of Maine and beyond, into Canadian waters, particularly along the coasts of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. These regions are already seeing increased lobster populations as the lobsters move to colder, deeper waters. While lobsters may be more abundant in northern waters, these regions may not be as accessible to Maine lobstermen due to the distances involved, the costs of fishing farther offshore and the potential for increased competition with Canadian fishermen. Additionally, warming temperatures could alter the timing of molting seasons, affect the availability of food or bring new predators into these waters.
The connection between lobstermen and their coastal communities is deep. In towns like Rockland, Camden and Bar Harbor, the lobster trade provides jobs in every corner of the economy — from the wharves to the restaurants, the docks to the shops. Lobster traps line the shore, and lobster boats are a permanent fixture in the harbors. The local culture is steeped in lobster history, and visitors to the state often arrive expecting to be part of that legacy — whether it’s enjoying a lobster roll at a local diner or going on a boat tour to witness the lobster traps being pulled in.
Speaking of lobster rolls (that’s lob-stah, in Maine-speak), what do you need to eat and enjoy lobster at home?
First, you must start with a fresh, live lobster, and for that you need a lobster tank. Rouses Markets is one of the few area places remaining where you can even consider a homemade lobster dinner. Lobster in hand, you can go a few different routes. For a boiled lobster dinner, à la a rustic Maine lobster pound, you’ll need a generous amount of melted, salted butter, nutcrackers (claw crackers) and, ideally, metal picks to extract even the tiniest bits of meat from knobby little lobster legs. While a cold beer hits the spot alfresco on a sunny Maine afternoon, lobster at home is even better with a French white burgundy. Chardonnay has a creamy, buttery mouthfeel that complements the meat beautifully, and the French ensure good minerality and fruity acidity of their burgundy, so you don’t wind up with a mouth-coating butter bomb.
If a lobster roll is what you desire, you must first decide: Connecticut style? Or Maine style? The lobster roll is said to have been invented at Perry’s in Milford, Connecticut sometime in the 1920s. I think of it as the lazy person’s lobster, as Connecticut-style is simply lobster tossed in hot, melted butter and served on a hot dog bun. The Mainers, meanwhile, serve their rolls with the meat lightly tossed with mayonnaise and maybe even some minced celery, nestled inside a wider, flatter and lightly toasted New England hot dog bun. This really is beer territory, and a hazy IPA with bright, tropical fruit notes, like Gnarly Barley’s Jucifer, balances all that white bread and richness.
And, from low to high, if you want to live like the 19th-century New York upper class who clinched lobster as a luxury food, consider experimenting with either Lobster Thermidor (1891) or Lobster Newburg (1876). Both sit firmly at the crossroads of (at the time) innovative cooking techniques and French haute cuisine. Lobster Newburg melds poached lobster with a decadent sauce of cream, egg yolks, and sherry, cognac or madeira, while Lobster Thermidor preserves split lobster shells, into which cooked, chopped lobster meat is stuffed, after blending with a buttery wine sauce or a winey béchamel sauce and topped with a cheese (typically Gruyere) before broiling to make a little crust, depending on who you’re asking. The whole stuffed shell is then briefly broiled. If you’re going to do this I recommend leaning in and entirely avoiding anything like a green salad, but sticking to roasted potatoes, well-chilled champagne and something like chocolate mousse to finish. Then, a long nap.
Whatever way you eat your lobster, hold tight to the fact that you are eating a piece of history, and a piece of a very vital and vibrant present. I’m hard-pressed to find someone who can think of lobster without thinking of Maine; even those who have never been there can experience a taste of that magical place when they eat lobster.
