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Fishermen’s Forum Feels Like a Neighborhood

by Eva Murray

David Cousens was my neighbor, back a long time ago, before he had anything to do with the Maine Lobstermen’s Association or I had anything to do with Matinicus Island. He was a legit young lobster-catcher, while I was a kid with a marginal summertime hobby, but we pulled traps out of the same water, in sight of our grandparents’ homes, off South Thomaston.

I haven’t caught a lobster I could call my own since the early 1980s, when just about any damned fool (including this teenager) could get a lobster license for a few bucks and a little bit of paperwork. In those days there were no tags, no escape hatches, no weak links, and none of these manufactured multi-colored plastic parts all over the trap. There were no rubber bands on the claws. There was no apprenticeship, there were no zones, and there was no 800-trap limit (not that I was ever at any risk of exceeding some limit!) There were, of course, territories. The peer pressure made sure you knew you were an underclass sort of joke if you were a summer-only lobsterman—usually called a “schoolteacher,” at least where I lived, whether you taught school or not—but with a reasonably thick skin you could still get away with maintaining a few traps and a low-budget, part-time operation. You didn’t have to invest a lot.

My little string of traps, tended by skiff and hauled by hand over an inshore ledge where nobody in a “real” boat could go, did not by any means constitute a fishing business. I freeloaded most of my bait off my grandfather, and Rockland Boat (remember them?) wasn’t making extra trips to the bank on account of my large purchases: the latest lobster measure, a few Styrofoam buoys, and a couple of cans of paint–orange and red.

I ate more of my catch than I sold.

I had two relevant skills: I could assemble and repair wooden lobster traps—which basically meant pound nails--and I could row hard. Neither of them proved useful to any future maritime exploits. I went to college on said college’s nickel, moved to Matinicus as—I admit it– a schoolteacher, and found myself surrounded by a fishery that was basically “go big or go home.” My fishing career was done.

These days, in the winter, I think it fun to wander around the Fishermen’s Forum, even if not as an actual commercial fisherman (or woman. There is no such word as fisherwoman, but you know what I mean, and don’t let’s get started down that track right now). Even for a few of us peripheral types, the Forum sort of feels like Main Street: you run into people you know, or think you might have known once. You say “Hi” a lot. You make idle chatter with “people from work” in a happy sense. Well, I did, anyway.

(Oh, no, thinks the hard-boiled reader; this is ridiculous. We are getting sentimental about a trade show, where we go to look at Diesels? What the hell next?)

At this year’s Forum, the MLA annual meeting was largely a David Cousens retrospective. The list of projects and issues Cousens has tackled since getting involved in the MLA is basically the recent history of lobstering in Maine. Not so very much had changed in years, since the end of the sloop days, up to roughly the time I had my silly little one-string wonder where a handful of trap nails still went to haul every time, along with a bucket of herring and a sour cream tub full of handmade wooden plugs, and my grandfather in the next boat with his metal lunch box. In recent decades, the industry has become much more complicated, and Cousens has done well. He truly was due a nod of thanks, and they got Angus and Chellie and a few other dignitaries in there to say so. It felt good seeing the South Thomaston boy, who had run circles around my goofy little rowboat back in the day, being recognized for years of work speaking up. I am tempted to mention the expression “speaking truth to power.”

I am also tempted to mention the line from Harry Potter where Dumbledore acknowledges that it’s hard enough to stand up to your enemies, but it’s even harder to stand up to your friends.

My primary aim at the Forum this year was to talk to people about pot warp, but I also had friends to see. It isn’t all fishermen, of course. The support people are there, earnest shoreside folks who worry about workplace safety and rescue equipment and emergency response and gear and details. Jillian, the cook from the Sunbeam was there. Most of my editors were there, note-pads in hand, and I got to meet a couple of colleagues from the newspapers and put faces to names. I got thinking that maybe next year we should organize a meet-up in the bar for the marine-type writers–although at last year’s Forum, when I was trying to talk to Genevieve McDonald of “Chix Who Fish” in the Samoset bar, the place was packed so tight you couldn’t hardly scream at anybody.

The geeks find each other, the trash collector people find each other, the writers, the old gossips, the trade union guys all find each other. I spent a fair amount of time gabbing about plastic with Eric at the Plante Buoy Sticks booth. We talked about chemistry and recycling and engineering specs, and for sure I learned a few things. I met with people who had worked on the pot-warp buyback last time around. I answered questions about ferries. I tried to ask Representative Poliquin a question but he was deep in the weeds over the steel tariff. Oh, well.

I guess just about the only person whom I’d really hoped to talk with, but missed, was Wayne Hamilton.

I can report that the “whales and rope meeting” at the Forum was pretty animated (now, there’s a bit of an understatement). I did not so much feel the warmth at that session. The room was jammed full, with some in the audience primed for a confrontation or at least a decent heckle. The presenters, who evidently drew the short straw back at the office, tried to make the case that many things we take for granted nowadays appeared completely nuts once. Descriptions of some of the proposed technology for rope-less buoys did sound pretty “out there;” we’ll have to see. I did pity the reporters who were trying to take notes in that room. They probably could have stood a beverage about then, as well. We might gather quite a crowd around the tap.

Eva Murray is the Recycling and Solid Waste Coordinator for Matinicus Island. Eva’s last lobster license was dated 1990, the year her son was born, and cost $53.00, which at the time she thought was an awful lot of money.