Islander Tries Old-Style Pollution-Free Lobstering

by Steve Cartwright

Matinicus — where generations of families have lobstered by oar, sail and engine — is again the site of a fisherman rowing in classic style, in a peapod.

Nat Hussey isn’t a native islander, but he has wholeheartedly adopted island life, working as a sternman and bringing his musical talent to this tiny, 20-mile offshore community. On warm summer evenings, he sets up his amp and guitar and invites others to join him on the steamboat wharf in the harbor. He has written and performed tunes such as “Haul ‘em up,” and you can guess what that’s about.

Hussey, 47, is a former mainland lawyer who grew up in Bowdoinham, attended the University of Maine and practiced law in Brunswick and later worked for the state corrections department. Now, along with making music, he is fishing a few dozen traps from his just-launched Matinicus Island peapod, built by the nonprofit Carpenters Boatshop in Pemaquid. This is one way men caught lobsters more than a century ago.

He calls what he’s doing “zero-carbon lobstering,” because by rowing, he is not running any motor, and his gear is all recycled, even down the buoys he repainted. So far his fellow fishermen take it all with a grain of salt. Hussey is well liked on the island, where his wife Lisa Twombly operates the only store, selling groceries, beer, wine and ice cream.

When Hussey is rowing out past Wheaton Island in open water, he says he feels “like a marble rolling around in a pickup truck bed” and the vastness of the sea comes home to him. “How did I think I was going to come out here in the wild in a tiny wooden boat that I don’t yet even know how to handle, dealing with finding buoys, safely hauling traps aboard, resetting them and getting home dry and intact? It’s completely ludicrous. These guys have decades of subconscious knowledge and centuries of inherited instinctual intuitive skill. Me, well, I’ve got an OK singing voice.”

Lobstering by hand is no way to get rich. Hussey might as well call his endeavor “zero profit lobstering,” but despite hardship he says he will persevere, just as he and his family have succeeded in becoming year-round Matinicus islanders, after moving there in 2006. Hussey is a teaching assistant at the Matinicus Island School. He and Lisa have a daughter, Lydia, a student at Putney School in Vermont.

“Yes, this is my crazy solo project,” Hussey said. “I've been supported very well (by fellow fishermen) from what I can make out. I think I scare a lot of people, but I try to apologize when I get the chance. Carpenter's Boatshop built the 'pod. Their enthusiasm and attitude made it a great partnership.”

Hussey said longtime Matinicus lobsterman Clayton Philbrook helped him set his first 50 traps. “Clayton is a good friend and doesn’t have a sternman right now, so I trade a load of his gear getting set for a load of mine. We zip off to Two Bush ledge, tie a trap to warp. Warp to buoy. A causal flip off his wrist and I give it a shove. Over it goes. One trap in the water. Why here? How will I remember? I didn’t plan on coming over here. Then it’s five in the water and another five behind the Beach Ledge marker. How will I remember? I didn't realize my buoys were so small and essentially invisible out here,” Hussey writes in an on-line blog.

“This patch of ocean where I’ve worked hundreds of days for four years suddenly seems as foreign as parachuting into Siberia or the Amazon Basin. It’s so big. Everything is so far apart. I’ll never remember. I’ll never be able to see the buoys. I’ll never be able to set them back where they are set now. How does he (Philbrook) know this? He seems so casual. Like I sing a song, he drops traps,” Hussey wrote

Hussey tinkered with a system of tipping traps onto his peapod so that he didn’t have the backbreaking job of hauling traps straight up over the gunwale. “Late Monday, I came up with what I thought was the right design. The trap just popped up and in. The sun shone. The water was friendly. I got my first paycheck $42.10,” he said.