KC: [00:00] Okay, just to test levels, can you tell me what you had for breakfast this morning?

FB: [00:11] Chocolate eclair donut.

KC: [00:15] Is that typical?

FB: [00:16] No. It was what was available.

KC: [00:22] And what about dinner last night?

FB: [00:29] I don’t know what the hell I had for dinner last night.

KC: [00:35] Okay, then, tell me about – did you go fishing today?

FB: [00:42] Yes.

KC: [00:43] Tell me about fishing today.

FB: [00:48] I don’t know. Got up at four o’clock this morning, got ready, left here at four o’clock. Put bait on the boat last night, so I didn’t have to do it this morning. Went to haul.

KC: [01:00] Great. Okay, looks like we have levels set. Can you tell me about your background in the area?

FB: [01:10] Lived here my whole life. Born here. My father was raised here. He was born in New Hampshire, and he’s been here his whole life. I don’t know.

KC: [01:26] What about your background on Frenchman Bay?

FB: [01:29] It’s the only place I’ve ever fished to amount to anything. It’s changed a little bit, but not a lot. Mainly from when I was a kid, everything’s changed with the traps from wood to wire. The ferry that goes to Nova Scotia used to be a normal boat; now, it’s a catamaran. I don’t know.

KC: [02:00] Can you tell me what you do on the bay?

FB: [02:04] Lobstering, scalloping. In the springtime, I go elver fishing, which is not on the bay but right next to it in the brooks and rivers.

KC: [02:17] Can you tell me a bit more about that?

FB: [02:19] What, elver fishing?

KC: [02:20]Yeah.

FB: [02:22] Use a flake net. You’re allowed no more than thirty feet from the tip of the bag, the codend, where they gather up to, to the outside wing. It’s shaped like a V. You can’t touch the middle third of any brook. You can touch either side of it, but you can’t touch the middle third for conservation purposes. So they can still run up by. Until the adult eels in the fall – September, October – they turn around and run down to the Sargasso Sea. The ones from all of North America and all the ones from Europe, they all go down there to spawn. It’s the babies that come back [that] we’re catching. They’re no more than three inches long, and they’re clear. There’s no rhyme nor reason on which brooks they come to. They’re not like smelt, alewives, nor salmon. They don’t come back to the same brook that they’re from. They just come back and pick a brook to go into that will go to a pond. They live up to twenty years or so – they’re not sure how long – before they turn around and do it again – before they run out and the cycle starts again. So the ones that I caught this year, the parents of them could have come from Europe. We don’t know.

KC: [03:49] And what about scalloping? Can you tell me a bit more about that?

FB: [0:03:52] I drag for them. I don’t dive for them. I’m not jumping off a perfectly good floating boat. The drags, common drags, or what they call Stonington rock drags, I’ve used them before. They were okay. Chain sweeps – I’ve still got a good chain sweep I like – I don’t mind – that works good for certain bottom. [On] sandy bottom, chain sweeps work good. Rocky bottom, they don’t work as good; they swallow every rock there is. Your rock drags will pound through the rocks and get your scallops out. You’ll still get rocks in them, but nowhere near as many. The drags I switched to three years ago or four years ago actually come from Scotland. They’re enviro-dredges. They’ve got springs on them, and we tow them across the bottom. In sandy bottom, you can adjust the springs so they dig into the sand, and they’ll flip the scallops up. On rocky bottom, you want them short so they don’t pick up all your rocks, and they’ll flip the scallops up in the water column, and they go into the drag. The heavier rocks, the springs will just bounce off them. It won’t pick them up; you’ll pick up a few rocks, but not as many. You can adjust the springs on them so you don’t pick up nowhere near as much garbage. Back in mid-’80s, the ring size for scallops was two and a half inch. In the early ‘90s, they switched it to three inch. When they was going to give us a change again, they was going to give us three and a quarter inch for two years, then go to three and a half. A lot of us went to three and a half. The three-and-a-quarter inch – the state turned around and screwed everyone who switched to it for two years because they only let them have it for one year. Then, I think it’s early 2000s, we went with the federal size of a four-inch scallop ring. And now, any scallop you catch has to be at least four inches or larger to keep them. And the four-inch rings let way more small scallops out. You don’t see nowhere near the small scallops you used to, so you don’t even know if there’s enough spat and seed on bottom. You don’t get it as often. If you actually do get a lot of the spat and seed with four-inch rings, it should be a good year the next time the area’s open again because it’s showing that there’s some there.

KC: [06:38] Where in the bay have you found to be most productive for scalloping?

FB: [06:43] Wherever there’s any amount of current. Scallops like current. Right outside Sorrento, outside Flanders Bay, Bar Harbor shore, off Hancock point towards Skillings River, up towards the Sullivan bridge down through there – they do good up there. Scallops like current. Wherever there’s current, that’s where you want to try it. It’s hit or miss. There’s not a whole bed of them everywhere. You got one little spot, you find them there, and that’s it. I’ve done it before – you make one little tow – you get them in one tow; you’re not going to get them again. They’re just small – there can be small pockets or big pockets of them.

KC: [07:34] Can you tell me a bit about lobstering?

FB: [0:7:42] Started out with wooden traps – half-round ones, square ones. They slowly petered away to the wire; some people went half and half, half wire, half wood. They’d take the wooden frames and put the wire on them. Everyone used to hand-knit their own heads. When I was six, seven, eight years old, I used to go with my father to the woods cutting spruce bows for the wood round ones. The limbs off the tree and clean it off and whittle them down so you could bend them to make the shape for the traps. I started going with wire ones mid-’80s, and the wire ones I started with was a small trap, like twelve [inches] high, nineteen [inches], eighteen [inches] wide – thirty-six, and they slowly got larger from there. A lot of guys are fishing four-foot traps now; fifteen inches high is the average. You’ve got a few guys that fish five-foot traps. Double bedroom heads. No one knits their own heads anymore; it’s all shrimp twine cut out with aluminum hoops put in them, or what they call a hake mouth. It’s just how the head is cut, and then it’s [inaudible] off a certain way. Vent size went up. I can’t remember what it was originally, but that went up twenty years ago to let the smaller lobsters out. With wooden traps, you didn’t have to worry so much about the biodegradable escape panel. If a trap was lost, a wooden trap, it would dissolve, and they’d get out. A lot of people still use steel hog rings in the vent. The vent is made out of plastic, so when the steel hard rings let go, it floats up, and they can get out if the trap is lost. I use a piece of wood. I cut a piece of cedar out and put it in the door. When that lets go, if I lose my traps, they can get out, whatever’s in it.

KC: [09:55] What do you think about the transition away from wooden traps?

FB: [10:02] It’s made things easier. You don’t have to lug rocks or bricks anymore to sink them in the springtime. You get a rough spell in a storm with the wire ones [and] they just fill full of garbage; they don’t move so much. You get a rough spell with the wooden ones. They go right to shore and stave up, dissolve on the beach.

KC: [10:21] Have you been fishing the same grounds the whole time you’ve been fishing?

FB: [10:27] Yeah, pretty much. I ain’t changed too much. Just try a few different areas in the same area, try a few different spots. That’s it, here and there. When I was younger, when I went with my father down the Schoodic shore, we’d turn around and have to dump the sea urchins out of the traps; there’d be so many of them. If I’d saved all my sea urchins for the past ten years in my lobster traps, I would not have a fish tray [inaudible]. So they’ve gone, which is good because they don’t eat the – because the more the kelp has grown back for your lobsters and all your other fish. It’s got a place to hide. If nothing’s got a place to hide, they’re not going to hang around.

KC: [11:24] Why do you think they’re gone?

FB: [11:27] Some disease or something went through because the sea urchins depleted, the starfish have up and disappeared pretty much too, and they’re all related. Whatever it was [that] killed one, killed the other.

KC: [11:42] Shifting gears a bit, can you tell me about your experience as harbor master?

FB: [11:52] I don’t know. I don’t do much really. People call and want moorings mainly. That, and figuring out where people want to put moorings when they get boats and stuff. Other than that, it’s not too complicated. It’s nothing like Bar Harbor, having to deal with the cruise ships and so many people wanting to show up and tie up all the time. It’s simple over here.

KC: [12:20] How long have you been harbor master?

FB: [12:29] At least eight years. Seven, eight years, I think, somewhere around there.

KC: [12:35]Do you think you’ll continue doing it?

FB: [12:38] Yeah, for a while.

KC: [12:40] And then how often do you get out on the bay outside of when you’re fishing? Do you ever?

FB: [12:47] What? Just go for a boat ride?

KC: [12:49] Yeah.

FB: [12:50] Well, we ain’t done it yet. We usually do it once in a while on a Sunday and go to Bar Harbor [and] get a pizza. That’s about it.

 

KC: [13:00] And then what vessels do you travel the bay on?

FB: [13:05] What vessels?

KC: [13:06] Yeah. What kind of boats have you had?

FB: [13:08] My own? Oh, what have I had for boats?

KC: [13:11] Yeah.

FB: [13:12] I had an outboard boat until I was seventeen. And then I got my great uncle’s boat after he died. The Pluma Estella, which is a thirty-six-foot wooden boat, which I took and rebuilt that – me and my father did. He showed me what to do. I got that just when I got out of high school. Got it in ’94 [and] finished it in the fall of ’95. That was built in 1959. That was built right in town here, in Winter Harbor, right down at the end of the road. They launched that one early in the spring because they had a spring storm, and the water was coming up into the boat house, and it was rocking it and pounding on the cradle. So they launched it and got it out, and they spent the next week finishing putting the guards on it and the windows in it, I was told. When I got done with that one, I went up to Canada and bought a hull, a long beach forty-three foot. I brought it back here. I turned around and cut it in half, lengthened it out. When I was done, it was forty-six-foot-eight. Took me two years to finish it, and I had that for – lost it in ’08, 2012 financial issues, the bank got it back, and I got my father’s old boat after that, which was the original Elaine Sue. I renamed it Plan B. Had that until 2019. That sunk on me down at Addison when I was scalloping. In the process of fixing another boat that I bought, I was working on – I ended up getting the Plan B up and out of the water, and then I was working on what I got now, my Atlantic Viking, which is thirty-eight-foot Novy [Nova Scotia] boat that we’ve redone. I put that in – I think it was the middle of July of 2020. I bought that boat in the fall of ’18, November of ’18. So it was pretty much two years going through that – not quite two years. I’ve had that one ever since.

KC: [15:47] How do you feel about using wooden boats compared to fiberglass hulls?

FB: [15:57] Wooden boats get more buoyancy. Most of them are more comfortable than a fiberglass boat, according to how they’re built, how heavy they are. The heavier the boat, the more comfortable it’s going to be. It’s not going to [inaudible] and throw you around as much in rough weather.

KC: [16:17] What are the advantages to a fiberglass hull?

FB: [16:19] Less maintenance. Way less maintenance. Fiberglass, like I said before, that one I bought up in Canada, the first one, I cut it in half and lengthened it out. You ain’t going to do that with a wooden boat. You’re not going to cut it in half and lengthen it out; that’s totally out of the question. It’d never hold back up.

KC: [16:48] Do you have a preference? Which type of boat you prefer?

FB: [16:56] No, not really. I still like wooden boats. I just don’t want to deal with the maintenance anymore.

KC: [17:05] What do you use to navigate, and has that changed?

FB: [17:11] Yeah, from when I was a kid, all my father had was a number machine and a compass. That’s it. I remember one time in the fog, he cranked the engine up to so many RPMs. He said, “There, take it and keep it on that course right there.” We run for so long, forty-five minutes or so [inaudible] fog, and slowed down. He looked at the number machine. He said, “Yeah, it should be right here somewhere.” And he’d find them, haul – but now you’ve got chartplotters, which is just a digital chart; shows you right in the middle of it all the time. There’s a picture of a boat, and just keeps moving around it, whichever way you want to go. The machine I’ve got on my boat, I’ve got a radar overlay, so it overlays the radar right onto the chart, shows me the boats, where they’re hauling and everything.

KC: [18:10] I’m curious: what was it like fishing with your father growing up?

FB: [18:21] I don’t know. Good. We get along fine. I learned a lot from paying attention to him on how he’d done stuff, and I did stuff a little different when I got on my own. But no, it was good.

KC: [18:39] What was one of the most important things you learned from him when fishing? Is there a memory that sticks out to you?

FB: [18:50] Yeah, we were scalloping once down off Palm Point, down the Schoodic shore, and was dragging in some mixed bottom; it was muddy, gravelly, sandy bottom. I looked on the table, and you could see just the top of it. I thought it was a real-life freaking octopus because there was a scallop underneath it, and the scallop opened its shell, and it moved it up and down. I didn’t know what the hell it was until I took a hose and rinsed it off. It was a plastic octopus sitting on a scallop shell is what it was.

KC: [19:25] Did you get to keep it?

FB: [19:27] Yeah. I think my father still got it somewhere, down in the house. But it ain’t very often you see something like that, a plastic freaking octopus. Trying to think. What else? We’ve had whales come right up beside us before, which is pretty neat when we were hauling. Always makes a day better.

KC: [19:55] How did you get down to the shore when you started? Have there been multiple places that you’ve launched boats?

FB: [20:02] I’ve only fished out of Winter Harbor. Pretty much that’s it unless I was scalloping. I’ve been down to Addison scalloping when I took my boat down there for a while, for one winter this past winter. Scallop season goes from December 1st through just end of March. And this past season, I was over to Southwest Harbor. I was traveling an hour every day to have my boat over there. I was taking my boat over from here, steaming over. But the weather was getting so miserable. It was an hour either way; it’s an hour steamed by boat or an hour steamed by vehicle. It didn’t matter.

KC [20:45] Do you have other family members who work on the bay other than your father?

FB: [20:53] Got a bunch of relatives down in Jonesport. I don’t know how many of them are still lobstering down there. I ain’t seen many of them in a while. The only Backmans down here are just me and my father now. At one point, I think it’s four – I think it’s four of them were down here at one time, which is my father’s great uncles and his grandfather, the one who raised him. So, they all was in the fishing business at one point or another. One of my great, great uncles, Benny, was a boat builder. He’s the one who built the first boat I had, The Accommodator, with his brother Donald, which is who I ended up getting the boat from – Don Backman. After he died, I bought it from his widow, Pluma. I bought the boat and all of his traps for $7500. When we got the boat, stripped the floor out of it, stripped the house out of it, and I went to put a 350 Oldsmobile in it, I got screwed on the engine. The engine was a piece of junk. Then, I had to find another engine. I found another engine, and we put that in. But to get into it nowadays, it can be big money according to how fancy you want to get and how much you want to spend.

KC: [22:36] And your relatives in Jonesport, what kind of fishing do they do?

FB: [22:40] They go lobstering.

KC: [22:42] Anything else?

FB: [22:43] I don’t know. I ain’t really talking to them.

KC: [22:48] Can you tell me about your perception of the bay? What was the bay like when you started working on it?

FB: [23:00] I don’t know, it was about like it is now, except everything’s grown up more. I mean, everyone used landmarks for pieces of bottom. They always said the bald spot on Turtle Island. Well, that’s what the old timers always said. The bald spot on Turtle Island over old Schoodic, which would be Schoodic Mountain up Franklin. Ever since I’ve been alive, there’s never been a bald spot on Turtle Island;  it’s when they cut it off back in the forties and fifties. That’s what they went by. That’s just like down on Schoodic Island, the lone tree on Schoodic Island. There is no lone tree now. It’s just a southern group of trees. There’s nothing up in the middle at all. And there’s a piece of bottom called the Phil White House Piece. And as you’re coming down over the town dock, the house is painted blue now; it’s not white, and you can’t even see the house anymore because the trees have grown up in front of it. So stuff like that’s changed.

KC: [24:07] Who else was on the water at the time when you started working on it?

FB: [24:16] Who else? What do you mean, who else? How many people have been and gone?

KC: [24:21] Yeah. Like, how has maybe the number of people on the water changed, or do you remember people?

FB: [24:27] There’s more people in the harbor now than it was when I was a kid. Since I’ve been down here fishing, there’s been – one, two, three, four, five – seven people that pretty much died or got done fishing since I’ve been, and there’s been multiple other ones that show up in their place. There’s no more room in the harbor for boats because the boats have gotten so much bigger, and there’s probably at least fifteen more fishermen, if not more, in the harbor down here now than there was back in the early ‘90s.

KC: [25:21] Were there people fishing in areas then that they aren’t now.?

FB: [25:28] No, we’ve all fished the same areas somewhat. Some of the other bigger boats are going outside further than they ever did. Back in the ‘80s, when I went with my father, he always turned around [and] set all of his single traps – short warps in and around the shores. He wouldn’t set anything for forty-fathom warps outside Schoodic Point or beyond until after the lobster festival, which is the second Saturday in August. He would always wait until then because there was never nothing out there to catch. And then, after September, he would lug stuff outside the three-mile line, and now people are fishing outside the three-mile line year-round. It’s just that part of the fishery has changed; there’s way more lobsters around now than there was back in the ‘80s. And they’re just moving different. Before, they would move in, and you’d catch them when they shed. You wouldn’t catch nothing to amount to anything. You’d be wasting your time and your bait to fish fifty/sixty-fathom warps outside; all you’d catch would be crabs. You would never catch enough lobster, so it’d be worth it. And now, it’s worth it. You can keep fishing year-round, pretty much.

KC: [26:52] Was anyone fishing something else in the bay that they don’t fish anymore?

FB: [27:00] We used to go gillnetting. I went gillnetting with two different guys down here in the ‘90s, and that was a whole other different fishery there. A lot of them went gillnetting throughout the whole summer, right up until – back then, scalloping started November 1st. Now they’ve changed it to December 1st, but they turned around and put too many regulations on it, on the gillnetting for groundfish, that a lot of guys got done and started going lobstering. It’s just the federal government sticking their fingers in something they didn’t need to. Now, everyone is concentrated on lobstering because it’s the only thing left. They ruined groundfishing with the regulations.

KC: [27:53] And then what is your perception of how the ecology on the bay has changed?

FB: [28:00] On what’s changed?

KC: [28:02] Or stayed the same.

FB: [28:04 ]There’s no more urchins to amount to anything. The starfish have died off in the past few years. There’s more lobsters around now than there ever was, to a certain point. Codfish have come back. There’s codfish everywhere now. Some of it’s good, some it’s bad. We’ve got pogies up here now. Menhaden or bunker or whatever you want to call them. The last time I ever saw any of them, except for the past six years. Back in the early ‘90s, one year, they showed up here. That was it. So it’s mid-‘90s to 2016/2017 before they started showing up again. And now we’ve got all kinds of them up here. The whole state of Maine’s very full of pogies now, and I guess where they always were down Massachusetts, they haven’t got anything right now. They bypassed them. They’re coming up here. I don’t know if it’s because the water’s too warm or what, but it gives us another fishery to do.

KC: [29:15] And how have the people on the water changed?

FB: [29:19] There’s no respect like it was. You always had respect for your elders and who’s been fishing in a certain area. These young kids don’t give two shits. They got a license, and they think they can fish where they want. A few of them have respect for the older guys, but not many. On that part of it. You always give someone who’s always fished there the common courtesy and stay away from them so your gear don’t wrap up with them. You get a lot of them that are chase-asses. They know they catch lobsters, so they’re going to follow them.

KC: [29:57] And how has the look of the bay changed?

FB: [30:09] I don’t know if it really changed much, not in my time. You got more boat traffic now than you were than we did thirty years ago. But that’s about it. You’ve got way more cruise ships – well, you ain’t got that many cruise ships this year coming into Bar Harbor, but what was it? Around a hundred cruise ships last year came in. So, that part of it has changed.

KC: [30:34] What impact do you think the increased tourism has on people working on the water, the ecology of the bay?

FB: [30:44] As long as they don’t throw garbage overboard, I don’t think there’s an issue, really.

KC: [30:49] And how has what people do on the water changed?

FB: [30:56] Well, in the summertime, there used to be two different fisheries; you used to have gillnetting and lobstering. Now we’re all stuck lobstering.

KC: [31:06] Can you tell me stories about something you used to do that no longer happens?

FB: [31:11] Well, gillnetting would be the only thing.

KC: [31:15] Did you ever go shrimping?

FB: [31:17] Yeah. I went trapping shrimp. I forgot about that. Until they shut that down because they didn’t figure there’s any shrimp left around. There’s still shrimp around, but they’re just not coming in as far as they used to. They’re still outside quite a ways. I used to trap them; I never dragged for them.

KC: [31:38] Where did you used to go shrimping?

FB: [31:41] In the bay. Frenchman Bay. Out down outside Schoodic a little bit, but mainly over between Egg Rock and Turtle Island. There’s a piece of bottom where it’s mud, where all the guys would tow it. For the ones that were rigged up for shrimp dragging, I would set my traps right on the edge of it. Because every time they’d tow it, all it does is it would rile the shrimp up and drive them away from the drags at times, the nets. I can go back and haul them traps every other day. I’d get a bushel basket to a triple at times, which is good fishing.

KC: [32:21] What does a shrimp trap look like?

FB: [32:25] I don’t know. You can take a picture of one. I got some outside. Square box with what they call an envelope in the top, which is just a square funnel. It’s not a round funnel like you put oil in – a square, rectangular, about eighteen inches long, about an inch and a half opening that the shrimp go down through.

KC: [32:46] What do you value about the bay?

FB: [32:51] Fishery. Every fishery. I got every license I could possibly get. The only license the state wouldn’t give me was a sea cucumber license and an urchin license because I never got them early enough to keep them. So, fisheries are the biggest thing to me.

KC: [33:13] What do you value about your time on the water?

FB: [33:17] I’m my own boss. If I don’t like the weather, I can turn around and come home at any point in time I want. Self-employed. Pick your own schedule. You want to take time off, take time off. I can’t think of nothing else.

KC: [33:37] What do you think are the most important things the bay is used for?

FB: [33:41] I know that some people are doing the aquaculture stuff on oysters. I think they’re doing mussels way up in the head of the bay, up towards Lamoine, up that way. What was the part –? Read that question again.

KC: [34:01] What do you think are the most important things the bay is used for?

FB: [34:06] That and fishing. Lobstering, scalloping.

KC: [34:15] What do you think about the dynamic between aquaculture coming in and fishing territory and such?

FB: [34:26] According to how much aquaculture stuff they’re trying to do. I mean, the oysters don’t bother nothing. The mussels don’t really bother too much. They keep them away from where everyone generally always fished, I mean, because they don’t have – they’re not trying to take up sixty, seventy acres [at] a time to do it. That’s the biggest thing. What they’re raising actually filters the water and cleans the water; it doesn’t pollute the water.

KC: [35:01] Do you have a favorite memory of being on the bay?

FB: [35:14] I don’t know. Every day’s a good day. [laughter] I don’t know.

CH: [35:22] What does an everyday look like?

FB: [35:25] Every day? I don’t know. Every day is different. The weather determines the day. Scalloping in the wintertime. If you can pick a day you ain’t have to wear two, three or four sweatshirts. That’s not bad. It ain’t so miserable, cold out and snowing.

KC: [35:49] What do you want for the future of the bay?

FB: [35:56] Well, just leave – I don’t know. Don’t want it polluted and gone to hell. I don’t know the future of it. I don’t know. I’m living in the present. Not the future yet.

KC: [36:12] Is there anything else you want to talk about before we end the interview?

FB: [36:20] No, I’m good.

CH: [36:22] Great.

KC: [36:22] Perfect.

CH: [36:23] Then we’ll move on to just some charts. I’ve just written down some locations that you’ve mentioned. Then, I was going to ask if you could circle those or highlight them. Show us where they are. Here is a chart. So I’m going to give you that. You mentioned when you were talking about scalloping that you scallop wherever there’s current. Are those places that you would highlight if I asked you to do that? The same ones that would be on that map over there, or are they different? I noted you said outside Sorrento, Flanders Bay, Bar Harbor Shore, Hancock Point, and somewhere in Sullivan, the bridge, I think.

FB: [37:09] I don’t know. All the people scalloping are going to see this, is [they]?

CH: [37:12] No, and it’ll also be – when and if maps are created from this, it’s going to be like – it’s not going to be specific.

FB: [37:22] Biggest thing we had issues with was this damn salmon farm shit because they wanted to put one right here, which is what they call The Hop is right here, deep hole right here. That would have killed every bit of them scallops right there before long because them salmon when they overfeed them and their waste settles on the bottom, it kills the bottom. So that was the biggest issue when that was in play, which you heard all about that anyways. I think they wanted two sites or three sites, sixty acres a piece. I know they wanted one here and one or two over this way somewhere. But every time I’m scalloping, I always go to look where there’s current. This Long Porcupine here, that’s The Hop, the island. But they also call the deep hole The Hop, which is a fifty-fathom deep hole in the middle of the bay, and all that current running down through. It builds up, hits this island, and it just pulls right through here. Every bit of that right there.

CH: [38:40] And would you mind just labeling that one? When you get the chance. Sorry for interrupting.

FB: [38:45] One. All this down through here. I don’t scallop it because I haven’t got to because I’ve got other spots I’d hit. There would always be three or four boats here. But I do know down through here on this edge, them guys scallop, too, because all that – if you look at it, it’s just a funnel that drives right down by here when that tide’s going.

CH: [39:12] Could you label that two?

FB: [39:15] Because usually when everyone’s over in here, I’ll go hit my small spots that I like to go to. That way, I ain’t got anyone chasing me. Over here was good too, right in here just before the [inaudible] that goes to Egg Rock, that little – right in there. I don’t know why, but that current runs right through there.

CH: [39:51] Could you call that three? Oh, perfect. You did. And then you mentioned that you’ve been roughly lobstering in similar areas your whole life. If you could just do vague – because I’m not trying to give away your spot, but just wondering vaguely the area.

FB: [40:06] So, it’s Winter Harbor area, pretty much.

CH: [40:10] If you could circle it or highlight it, whatever is easier.

FB: [40:15] For Winter Harbor, where we fished, the majority of us. I can’t see if that’s marking – it must be. Pretty much all this down through – where to? Am I here? I go over here to Jackknife and over this way. I’ll go to the three-mile line, and then you can go right from about – that’s as far as I go, right to there, all that right there.

CH: [40:56] Could you just maybe, right up in here, call that four? And then, how long have you been lobstering? I realized that I don’t think we asked that.

FB: [41:06[ I started going with my father when I was five years old.

CH: [41:10] And what year was that?

FB: [41:15] I don’t know, I was born in ’76, fall of ’76.

CH: [41:19] So ’81 would be five years old.

FB: [41:22] Somewhere around there, if that’s what you figured.

CH: [41:25] You mentioned that you often fished around Schoodic Point with your father. Do you have a more specific –?

FB: [41:29] Down here. We always fished down here. That’s Big Fish (Nubble?), Little Fish (Nubble?), what they call the pieces of bottom. That’s the York Ground. Nope, that one’s the York Ground. That’s the Jetty Piece. This here is what they call – Dale Torrey told me, that one there. That right there is the notch bottom. That right there, if you get right on it, you can look right up through see the gap right between there. There’s another one up here. When you look up through, you could see another one. It’s just a great big gap between the islands. This one here is what they call (Ladoga?)bottom because when you were on the western side of it, you could look up in here where the boat ramp is. Down in the street here, there’s an old sailing ship named the (Ladoga?). You could just see the stern of it right there. So that’s why they named that one the (Ladoga?)bottom.

CH: [42:27] Would you mind circling those and calling them five? Yeah, perfect.

FB: [42:37] This here is what they call the (Phil Whitehouse?) Piece. Right here.

CH: [42:43] Could you call that six?

FB: [42:46] And the house is actually right there.

CH: [42:49] Could you also call that six?

FB: [42:54] As you are coming down over town dock hill, that’s the house right there. That it would be. I’d fish from the three-mile line right now. Right there. I got 360 traps, I think it is, outside here. Right there. 360 or 370.

CH: [43:41] And could you call it –? Could you also just do a little four down there? Perfect. Thank you.

FB: [43:48] I used to fish outside further, but this I got is slow, and it just – it takes me an hour to get to here from the harbor.

CH: [43:59] Speaking of Winter Harbor, you mentioned that there is a place where your boat was rebuilt. Could you circle where that is roughly?

FB: [44:08] Where my father rebuilt it? At his place. About right here, 208 Newman Street. That’s the address. We did it in his shop, and actually, when we rebuilt that one – what do you want? What do you want for a number on that?

CH: [44:27] Could you just give me a seven on the other side? That way, I know it’s not the address. Thank you.

FB: [44:39] We rebuilt my Accommodator there. When I did that Prometheus, I finished that hull off there. And when I went to the Plan B, that was actually one my father built, that boat there. He built that and launched it in ’83; it was two years building it. And the boat he’s got now, the other Elaine Sue, that’s forty-three-foot. He built that right there, too. He’s got the only wooden boat left in the harbor. And that was built in ’08.

CH: [45:12] And then, could you also go ahead and circle the boat launch?

FB: [45:21] It’s right there.

CH: [45:22] Great. If you could label that eight for me? And then you also mentioned, I think, Palm Point somewhere on the Schoodic shore.

FB: [45:31]Right here

CH: [45:32] Great. So that would be nine.

FB: [45:37] I don’t know if you can see it or not.

CH: [45:39] Maybe just do like a big X or like a high – yeah, perfect. And that would be nine. And then you mentioned in terms of navigation spots, there is the bald spot on Turtle Island and the lone tree on Schoodic. Do you know where you would be to see those things?

FB: [45:57] These are landmarks from being out here. So you could look in to see where you were, and that would be – of course, they ain’t got Schoodic Mountain on it, but Schoodic Mountain – once you’re outside here, you could see Schoodic Mountain, and then you use them for landmarks, reference points.

CH: [46:15] So where would you be trying to navigate using those as reference points?

FB: [46:19] They would be pieces of bottom where you’d set traps. Like if you could see it right here, you’d be setting up this edge here. Before they had charts to go by this, like chart plotters, when you’re running your boat, they’d follow an edge; they run it back and forth, and you’d use the flasher to see how deep the water they’d be in to try to follow the edge of the bottom. That’s what they would use them marks for. That or where they started a string or ended a string of traps.

CH:  [46:48] Great. Could you also show me the area roughly where you went shrimping?

FB: [46:54] That was right here. Went right through here, right there. That was a majority of where I set my shrimp traps right there.

CH: [47:05] Great. And could you call that ten, please?

FB: [47:09] Because them other guys that would go dragging, they’d start up here dragging; they’d set the nets out and tow right to the Southered, then they’d turn around and take up, turn around and tow right back around to the (Nord?).

CH: [47:18] And then you mentioned mussel farms in the Upper Bay. Do you have a rough idea of where that might be?

FB: [47:24] I believe it’s right here.

CH: [47:26] Okay, great. Could you call that eleven, please? That’s everything on this chart. I want to go ahead and pull out – we have a chart of–

FB: [47:34]You want some more info?

CH: [47:36] Sure, if you want to give us –

FB: [47:40] On Turtle Island here, the high spot, which I guess I believe is right about right here.

CH: [47:48]That could be twelve.

FB: [47:51] If you can get on there and go up – get on the beach here, go up through, there’s a well right there. Don’t fall in the well. There’s a platform on there. I think it’s three-quarter-inch, six-by-six plate. It’s jacked up, and they got beach rocks all around it, and that’s where they had a cannon on it or a gun during World War I, I believe. Whatever the cannons are, the guns are, over in Bar Harbor on the knoll. That’s the same exact guns, I believe, is what they said was on there. The cannons or whatever. That was to try to catch the Germans that was coming in.

CH: [48:39] Yeah, I heard about some Germans landing ashore in Hancock.

FB: [48:42] Yeah. I can’t remember how they came in, though. A sub, I thought. I don’t know who’s got the book. I looked at a book one time, and it had the maps of the silver mines and stuff. On Jordan Island, right here on this side – no, Stave Island. Not Jordan. Stave Island. Right about in here somewhere, there’s a silver mine.

CH: [49:07] You can call that thirteen, please. Thank you. Do you know anything about that?

FB: [49:12] Don’t know nothing about it. Never been on there. But I see a couple of maps, and I can’t remember where the other ones were. I know over in West Bay. Over in here, what they call West Bay. There was some, but I don’t know where they were.

KC: [49:30] Do you know of anyone who we should talk to as we continue to work on this project?

FB: [49:39] You can probably talk to my father, but I don’t know if he’s in yet or not. He took his grandkids out mackerel fishing tonight.

CH: [49:50[ We would love to get a contact at some point because we’re just trying to increase the people we can talk to.

FB: [49:56] Get more information.

CH: [49:58] Yeah. I just want to pull this chart out also, and I know this is pretty zoomed out. This is the entire Gulf of Maine, from Cape Cod to Bay of Fundy. But I just want to see if you could point out where your boat sank off of Addison.

FB: [50:12] Wow, that’s down to – it’s in Eastern Harbor.

CH: [50:19] Only because I really love that story.

FB: [50:22] I didn’t like it. Right there. Mark it?

CH: [50:43] Yeah, if you can mark it and then call that fourteen.

FB: [50:48] I’m pretty sure that’s it right there.

CH: [50:55] All right, great. I think those are all of the locations. So I think unless there’s anything else –

FB: [51:02] Now, would you want some more?

CH: [51:04] If you have more, we’d love –

FB: [51:05] Other spots. The breakwater over here – I don’t know how many golf balls I got. I got at least fourteen golf balls one year scalloping, which is unheard of – because a four-inch scallop ring and the golf ball’s about one inch and a half across it.

CH:  [51:21]So why do you see so many golf balls over there?

FB: [51:25] They’re standing there whacking them off to try to hit the breakwater, hitting them off the corner there on that little knoll. I don’t know which house it was, but it was right there. They was hitting them off, and the tide just took them down around, is what it did.

CH: [51:38] Could you draw the fifteen next to that?

FB: [51:42] I went scalloping right there.

KC: [51:49] Did you already mark the area where you found all the cool stuff that you dragged up?

FB: [51:53] No. No, I didn’t mark that. The dump used to go from about here – what they call the dump where I’d get most of my stuff was right there.

CH: [52:12] Could you call that sixteen, please? And while we have the mike on, would you mind telling us about that again?

FB: [52:21] Mainly, I guess when Bar Harbor burned, they put everything on a barge and kicked it overboard, pretty much to sum it up. And that’s where they dumped the majority of it. Well, that’s where the majority of it landed anyways. They could have dumped it out further to deep water. I’m not sure. And they could have drifted in. But that was where we went scalloping, and that’s where we picked it all up.

CH: [52:45] What kind of things did you find mostly?

FB: [52:48] Glass bottles, ceramic stuff. That’s about it. Other than that, if it was anything made out of wood, it dissolved pretty much, except for the stays or whatever they’re called on sailing ships. You didn’t know where you was ever going to get them. There was no particular place where you were going to get them. If you got them, you got them. And right off to the side of it here, what they call Burnt Channel, right here is where I got a bunch of coal from them sailing ship from when they’d run in to go up to Hancock Point or up to the train station where the train ended up at, the [inaudible] car go up in.

CH: [53:32] Would you mind highlighting that and calling it seventeen?

FB: [53:46] Up here at Bald Rock somewhere – I ain’t exactly sure. I think it was off the southern end of it a little bit; there’s a Model A or Model T Ford on bottom.

CH: [53:56] Really? Could you guess where that is?

FB: [53:58] I’m not really sure. I’d say right in here somewhere.

CH: [54:02] That would be eighteen.

FB: [54:03] I guess it ain’t very deep water. But that’s what all divers have told me. When they were scallop diving up here, they came across it. Of course, there ain’t nothing left of it now; everyone hit it with their scallop drags – [inaudible] it all to hell.

CH: [54:18] How do you think it got down there?

FB: [54:20] Drove out on the ice and sunk. Back then, this whole bay would freeze over – back in the ‘20s, ‘30s. There’s a picture somewhere I’ve seen of one of them – it’s got to be a couple hundred feet long, if not longer – going up the bay, and it made it just about right in here, just above Bald Rock. They’re cutting the ice and pulling it up through teams of horses that can get up the Hancock Point or wherever it was just up by Hancock Point to get it so they can unload it. (Lenny Biscoe?), who fished out South Gouldsboro here – this is a stupid amount of current that runs down through what they call the halibut hole right here between Jordan Island and Ironbound. He said when he was a kid, he used to go with his father out on Ironbound and cut firewood in the wintertime by team of horses and a sled, pull them right out and right off the island.

CH: [55:16] Could you just go ahead and show us Halibut Hole and call that nineteen?

FB: [55:23] The Halibut Hole? Skillings River. I scalloped all this up in through here too, every bit of it to about in here, down through.

CH: [55:43] If you could call that one.

FB: [55:48] You already did a one right there, though.

CH: [55:50] Yeah, because they’re both scalloping places.

KC: [55:53] We’ll also use the other chart.

FB: [55:57] Yeah. You got the other one there. Trying to think what else?

KC: [56:06] What’s the coolest thing you found on the bottom, in your opinion? A thing that you’ve dragged up.

FB: [56:14] The bottles.

CH: [56:17] Which bottle is your favorite?

FB: [56:18] I don’t know. Them old ink bottles are pretty neat. But of these that got writing on them, that’s old, pretty cool, too. The Ithaca water bottle I got. I thought that was pretty neat. I’d never seen one of them before. I had a vase I dragged up one time. I don’t know what I did with that. It had one chip in it.

CH: [56:40] Wow.

FB: [56:41] It was not a vase. A water jug with a handle on it. But I don’t know what the hell – what it’s called. Pitcher. There we go. Pitcher. That was all ceramic. That was older than hell. You could tell it was by looking at it.

CH: [57:01] Perfect. Well, thank you so much. This is so helpful and wonderful.

FB: [57:06] I can’t think of nothing else off the top of my head.

KC: [57:10] Okay. I’m going to stop the recording then.

[END OF INTERVIEW]