The new england coast

The Luckiest Lobsterman
(from Chapter 1: Downeast and Midcoast Maine)

In 1999, Steve Hale fell off a wharf and fractured his back. "The doctor said I wouldn't lobster anymore, that I was all done fishing," he recalls. "I had to sell my lobster boat and my traps to pay the medical bills."

He couldn't haul traps, but he could change diapers, so when his grandson was born, Hale knew there was still something he could do to help his family—"I could watch Jack."

Hale had been fishing since he finished high school in 1972. He'd gone to college nights to earn a business degree and held several management jobs in Midcoast Maine's fish processing industry, but something always lured this first-generation lobsterman back to the sea. "I thought that fishing wasn't a way to make a living, but I was wrong. It’s a good life," he says. 

Maine lobstermen harvest fifty to seventy million pounds of lobster valued at as much as $300 million each year. It's labor-intensive, unpredictable, solitary work, but for commercial fishermen who monitor eight hundred traps—the maximum allowed by law—it can be big business. "All of my friends are fishermen," Hale says. They share a common trait: "We're too stubborn and obnoxious to work for anybody else," he says. We have to work for ourselves; nobody else will put up with us."

"I went away a couple of times, but I always came back to fishing," says Hale. "I like the freedom. If I don't make a living, it’s my own fault."

When little Jack was about three, Hale had an epiphany. He bought a lobster boat, christened it the Captain Jack, and began taking tourists on lobstering excursions out of Rockland, "one of the prettiest and most protected harbors on the coast," with his grandson by his side. "Smartest thing I ever did," he says.

Even the Mainers who come aboard learn something about lobsters and the men and women who make a living in pursuit of these mysterious and delicious crustaceans. Captain Hale tends three hundred traps now. "Since I started the tours, I leave the full-time fishing to the full-time fishermen," he explains. His catch can be purchased right off the boat; it's tough to buy a fresher lobster.

Jack, he says, is the "star of the show." Now eight years old, he's eligible for a student license that will allow him 150 traps of his own.

"I just love what I'm doing; I'm very lucky. I couldn't imagine doing anything else," Hale says. "Just being on the water… every day is different. There are never two days that are alike."

While part of the allure is meeting people from around the world and answering perennial questions, such as why the lobsters in his traps aren't red (the red pigment in a lobster's shell is only unveiled during cooking), Hale confesses, "The best part is that I get to spend the days with my grandson."

Photo Gallery: A Maine Lobster Boat Adventure Aboard the Captain Jack

Photo © 2006 Kim Knox Beckius.