Part of Disappearing Breed : Maine Lobsterman Savors Freedom, Sense of Pride

America’s dawn breaks first on the rugged coast of Maine, but today the sun seems barely to have risen. A blanket of gray fog shrouds the thick pines, and seaweed-draped rocks eerily loom and then disappear in the mist as the Brenda Melissa chugs out to sea.

Standing in the pilothouse, Ed Davis is already at work.

He grabs three six-inch herrings, or their slimy remains, from a wooden tray and stuffs them into a webbed bait bag that he has knitted. The stench, mixed with the boat’s diesel fumes, is stunning before breakfast.

“It’s not really rotten,” Ed explains. “But it’s right on the verge.”

He laughs, a deep Yhar-har-har that punctuates most of his speech.

“You go out in the morning, you feel a little groggy,” he says. “This wakes you right up. Your eyes pop right open.”

Ed’s son, Robert, hauls up the first trap. Inside are half a dozen scuttling crabs, two green sea urchins, some seaweed and a starfish. But off to one side is a large, snapping Homarus americanus --a lobster.

“We got a keeper,” Ed shouts over the engine. “Ayup, we got a keeper already. It’s gonna be a good day!”

Ed Davis is a lobsterman, or, as he says, a “lobstahman.” He began when he was 7 and he’s 62 now. His father was a lobsterman. Two of his sons are lobstermen. And two grandchildren are hauling traps this summer.

Eats One a Month

Each year, Ed takes thousands of lobsters from about 300 traps sunk in the cold waters off rocky Goose Cove, snug between Duck Cove and Seal Cove, on the southwest side of Mt. Desert Island. He won’t eat but one lobster a month. At most.

“I catch ‘em,” he says flatly. “I don’t eat ‘em.”

Ed Davis is a member of a disappearing breed. In a busy world of mergers and MBAs, his is a life of tradition: self-employed, fiercely independent and as crusty as the crustacean he pursues. Ed usually works alone, outdoors in thick fog and brutal cold, risking his life and a small fortune to chase an ancient, ugly arthropod. More important, he is uncommonly happy in his work.

“The only thing I ever wanted to do was lobster,” he says. “It’s a good life. It’s a free life. I never had to take orders from anybody.”

It has not been easy. Ed has survived bitter trap wars, winter storms and hidden shoals. A pulley mashed one hand. Blood poisoning from a sea urchin nearly killed him. Caught in tangled lines, he almost went down with his traps several times.

“Can I swim?,” he asks with a grin. “Yeah. One way. Straight to the bottom. I just can’t come up.”

Prime Lobster Grounds

These are the world’s prime lobster grounds. Lobsters range from Virginia to Labrador, in waters one foot to 1,000 feet deep. But Maine provides nearly half the nation’s lobsters--more than 19 million pounds last year, worth about $46 million at dockside.

Maine lobsters are as American as apple pie, perhaps more so. Historians say lobsters were served at the first Thanksgiving dinner in Plymouth. Colonial accounts say lobsters were so plentiful that farmers ground them into their fields for fertilizer, while waders picked them off the rocks for dinner.

That has changed, of course. Now, many lobstermen invest $100,000 or more in a boat, traps, lines and other gear. And more lobstermen are hauling more traps than ever before, an estimated 2 million traps off Maine alone. Although biologists warn that overfishing will turn both the lobster and lobsterman into endangered species, the catch has held fairly steady for 20 years.

Ed and his sons are betting the lobsters are smarter than the biologists. With three boats and more than 1,000 traps, they work as free agents, from salting bait to selling their catch. They share a cluttered wharf that Ed and his father built. It stands by the weather-beaten, wood-frame house where Ed was born and grew up. His five children and other relatives all live nearby.

“There’s very few that’s independent now,” Ed explains. “Now, we don’t depend on anybody, the boys and I.

‘We’re All Independent’

“A lobsterman’s all independent once he’s on the boat and he’s his own boss. But back on shore, most are dependent. They take someone’s bait, they got to sell at his price. Now the boys and I, we’re all independent. We got our own boats, we got our own bait, we build our own traps, we got our own dock. We market ‘em ourselves. Usually get a half a dollar or more per pound than these other guys.”

Few lobstermen grow rich hauling traps. On a good day, Ed may get 300 pounds of lobsters for sale at $3.75 a pound or more. But those days are rare. A good lobsterman in a good year may take home $20,000, even $40,000, after expenses, experts say. Ed is a little vague on such things.

“You don’t do it for the money,” he says. “At the end of the year, it’s just a living. That’s right. Course you got to eat. But it’s different than a job. That’s what keeps me in it. It’s the love of the water, and the freedom that keeps me going, you know.”

Ed is going strong these days. Last year, he had heart surgery and spent 13 days in a Boston hospital. He was laid up for months in his battered trailer, surrounded by photos of his two loves, grandchildren and lobster boats. He knitted 400 bait bags and gazed out at his anchored work boat, the Jane Marie, and hundreds of barnacle-encrusted traps stacked forlornly on the dock.

“They told me I coulda got disability,” Ed says. “Also food stamps. And fuel assistance. Cause I was laid up nearly a year. But I didn’t take none a that. I don’t want no part of it. I’d feel like I was taking charity. Like a beggar. No sir. Long as I can get by, I don’t want no part of it. I made my own life. I don’t want to be dependent.”

The doctor told him to relax, even retire. Ed laughs again. His gray hair is thinning and his gait has slowed. But his arms are thick as ship timbers, his chest broad as a barrel, and his hands scarred from sharp claws and icy roes. His face is ruddy and deeply lined. His eyes are clear and bright.

“I’ll never retire,” he declares. “Long as I’m able to go. I like what I’m doing. I like fishing. Now, I ain’t going to work so hard. Maybe I’ll coast a bit--sleep till 5, 5:30. But I’ll keep working. What else is there?”

Working for His Son

While he recovers, Ed is working for his son. Rob is 35, tall and tanned. The Brenda Melissa, named for Rob’s wife and daughter, is a classic work boat: 34 feet long, more than half open-deck. She carries radar, loran, VHF marine radio and depth sounder along with bait, buckets and Rob’s devoted dog, Sam.

The sun is still hidden in gray mist as they chug south. Both men wear chest-high orange waders, boots and gloves. Despite the damp chill, their sleeves are rolled up. As the boat pulls along each buoy--Ed’s are yellow, Rob’s white with a yellow stripe--Rob leans over the starboard side with a boat hook and snags the nylon line.

“Got it,” he says. Ed peers over.

Rob tosses the buoy aside and wraps the rope, called the pot warp, over a hanging tackle and around a hydraulic winch. The line, covered with seaweed and slime, snakes onto the deck. He reaches over and muscles two 70-pound wooden traps onto the knee-high gunwale.

Ed opens one side, Rob the other. Their work is fluid. They empty, rebait, repair and slide the traps back over in less than two minutes. Fat crabs are tossed, legs waving in air, into deep plastic trays. Smaller ones are heaved overboard.

Ed measures each lobster with a brass gauge. By law, Maine lobsters must measure between 3 3/16 inches and 5 inches from the eye socket to the end of the carapace, the solid shell that runs down the back. As the morning goes by, more than half are too small and Ed throws them back with a gentle, underhanded pitch.

‘Too Much at Stake’

“Serious fishermen don’t cheat,” he says. “They got too much at stake. You can lose your license.”

When there’s a keeper, Ed squeezes a pliers-like bander to twist a thick rubber band around the claws. Without it, the lobsters would cut each other up. Local giants have tipped the scales at 43 pounds. Ed’s biggest was 17 pounds. His keepers today weigh one to two pounds.

“She’s a breeder,” Ed says, holding up a large, squirming lobster “berried” with thousands of greenish black eggs on her belly. “Got to throw her back.” Over she goes with a splash. So does another, marked as a breeder by a V-shaped notch in the tail.

Trap design hasn’t changed in centuries. A few are wire mesh or plastic, but Ed mostly uses wood. Most have two sections, a “kitchen” for the bait and a “parlor” to catch the lobsters. Larger traps have five sections, divided by funnel-shaped knitted nylon “heads.”

“I knit ‘em,” Ed says proudly, nailing a broken slat back on a trap. “I learned from my father, Rob learned from me, and so on down the line.”

Relies on Instinct

In the fog, Blue Hill Bay turns to hazy shades of gray. Rob relies on instinct and a few pencil notes to pick up buoy after buoy, hour after hour, in the swells. Instruments show the depth, not the outline, of the rock piles and mud flats 60 to 180 feet below.

“After you been out here, you know what the bottom looks like,” Rob says. He points to his head. “You know up here.”

In the stern, Ed slices fresh skates, sculpins, eels and mackerel for crab bait. Back under the cowling, he upends a barrel of pungent salted herring for his bait bags. Waking from a nap, Sam chews some loose fish drippings, then nibbles on a life preserver. Ed shoos the dog off with a laugh.

“I seen him one day eat half a piece of sandpaper,” he says. “Chewed it right down. Didn’t bother him any. He was lying on the road the other day chewing on a beer can. Put teeth marks in it, too.”

A seal swims lazily by one buoy, and a porpoise neatly cuts a V in the waves off Ship Island. It is a low hummock of grass, rock and sea gulls. Nearby, another lobster boat splashes a trap into the water.”

Still Fishes Solo at 88

“See that boat?” Ed says. “Fella there, he’s 88 years old. Still fishing. By himself, too. Too ornery t’ have anybody go with him.” Ed’s laugh is hearty, like a lawn mower kicking over.

By noon, Ed and Rob have hauled 250 traps. Lobsters have just molted their shells and the catch is meager: only 22 legal-size lobsters. Crabs are another matter. The two men have filled tray after tray, some 350 pounds in all. Rob’s wife will pick out about 40 pounds of crab meat later for $7 per pound

“Not a very good catch for all that time,” Rob says with a shrug.

“Hard fishing,” Ed agrees. The Brenda Melissa heads for home.

Back in his trailer, Ed pulls out dogeared scrapbooks. His poodles, Sam and Bridget, jump in his lap. Here is a photo of his grandfather, the dashing, mustachioed sea captain who first settled in Goose Cove. There is Ed’s ex-wife, who left him after 40 years for another man down the road. And there is young Ed, smiling and shirtless, loading Air Force bombers in the Marianas Islands in World War II.

Proud of Service Time

“In my life, there’s two things I’m most proud of,” Ed says. “The time I served my country. And my children. That’s what I’m proud of.”

He pauses, then looks out the window at three lobster boats bobbing on Goose Cove. A salty breeze rustles the birches, and a cormorant flies by.

“This is my life,” he says. “I never had no desires for anything else. Sometimes I’d have liked to be a little richer. But that ain’t important.

“I’ve been happy doing what I do. If I had to do it over again, I’d do it the same.”