Q:  [0:00] All right.  We’re here with Addie.  Addie, how do you like to introduce yourself?

 

A:  [0:08] My name’s Addie Huckins.  I’ve been fishing out of Northeast Harbor for the last three-ish, four-ish years now.  I’m graduate of the college.  I’m just figuring it out. (laughter)

 

Q:  [0:28] What year were you born?

 

A:  [0:30] ’99.

 

Q:  [0:31] ’99.  When did you start fishing?  What year would that have been?

 

A:  [0:37] 2021.

 

Q:  [0:41] Can you tell me where you grew up?

 

A:  [0:43] I grew up in northern Michigan, in the Keweenaw Peninsula, two hours north of Marquette.

 

Q:  [0:51] Where are your parents from, and what did they do?

 

A:  [0:54] My dad’s from Montana.  He’s a fisheries biologist.  He does stream ecology and trout monitoring in a bunch of endemic coastal brook trout populations that are threatened by mining activity.  So, he’s a fisheries guy.  My mom’s from Michigan, and she’s a botanist that works with local land trust organizations to help people put their property into a trust, and then she does native plant work.  If you go to her and you’re like, “Oh, I want my property to be more ecologically sustainable native plant gardens,” she’ll do that.

 

Q:  [1:47] Wow, that’s awesome.  Do you feel like having that background really influenced –?

 

A:  [1:52] Oh, absolutely.  I had a very clear idea of my path.  I didn’t know what each step was going to be specifically, but I was like, “OK, I’m going to go to college and do the thing and do the thing and be like them.”  They’re incredibly supportive.  I’m very lucky because I was getting experience in the field doing working with grad students on their projects when I was a kid. (telephone rings) Sorry.  Charlie.  So, when I was a high schooler and a middle schooler, I was with my dad and his grad students working on their projects out in the field, going with my mom to native plant symposiums.  So, coming into COA, I had a really good foundation to work with for what I wanted to do with research and an understanding of academia in a way.

 

Q:  [2:59] Wow, that’s awesome.  That’s really unique.  Do you have any siblings?

 

A:  [3:03] I have one little brother, just turned 21, and he’s about to go out west to Oregon for an internship with – I don’t think it’s Fish and Wildlife.  It’s one of the Fed departments.  He’s a cool guy. (laughter)

 

Q:  [3:22] You kind of touched on this, but do you have any history of fishing in your family?  This can include parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, or relatives?

 

A:  [3:31] Not in a commercial way.  I definitely come from a family of outdoorsmen, I would say.  The men in my family love fishing, but it’s way more River Runs Through It, and way less – they’re not commercial fishermen.

 

Q:  [4:02] Do you have any history of family working in other roles in the fishing industry, such as bookkeeping, fish processing, marketing, bait, or gear work?

 

A:  [4:10] The closest that would come was my dad working as a guide out of Glacier National Park that I’m sure was fly fishing related, but still, a very well – that would be way more on the ecotourism sector, I would say, than the fisheries sector.  There might be a tiny bit of overlap.

 

Q:  [4:38] Cool.  Did your dad teach you how to fish?

 

A:  [4:40] Yes.  My dad and my grandpa. (laughter) Yeah.

 

Q:  [4:44] Was your mom into it at all?

 

A:  [4:46] Yeah, yeah.  She was definitely into it.  It was a whole family affair, yeah.

 

Q:  [4:53] Cool.  Are you married?

 

A:  [4:56] No.

 

Q:  [4:57] Do you have any children?

 

A:  [4:58] No, thank God.

 

Q:  [5:02] Can you describe your educational background?

 

A:  [5:05] I went to a classic standard Midwest public high school in Houghton, Michigan, and then I came to College of the Atlantic and graduated after five years. (laughter)

 

Q:  [5:24] I’m going to shift into your role in the sector.  How would you describe your role in the fishing or aquaculture industry in Maine?

 

A:  [5:32] I work as a sternman or a deckhand, so I have stayed on the same boat for the last three years, but my position has shifted as new people have come on and the crews changed.  Yeah, basically, I work the square end.  Square end is my business, and he can deal with the pointy end.

 

Q:  [6:05] How long have you been doing that?

 

A:  [6:08] I think I started in ’21.  2021.  Maybe 2020.  But definitely, I was fishing in the summer of ’21.

 

Q:  [6:16] Is it just in the summers, or do you do it year-round?

 

A:  [6:20] Year-round.  This is the first winter that I haven’t fished since ’21.  I said, “I’m out when my hands get cold.” (laughter)

 

Q:  [6:31] How did you get into that work?

 

A:  [6:34] One of my friends was going to be living with a lobsterman who was looking for a sternman, and I was also looking for housing.  He was like, “Oh, I’ve got a friend who works on boats.  Maybe she could be her sternman.  She also is looking for housing, so maybe she can move into the house.”  We talked, and it all worked out.  I ended up moving in with them and then working for that fisherman, and that’s how I got into it.

 

Q:  [7:09] Do you remember what you felt like before starting the job?

 

A:  [7:13] I was definitely anxious.  I knew I had a good starting – I wasn’t coming in completely green.  I worked as a work-study on the school’s research vessel, on the Osprey.  Even though I had no commercial fishing experience, I was like, “I can tie up a boat, I can drive a boat, I can fuel up” – all of those basic boat things.  It’s like, “You don’t have to teach me those things.  You just have to teach me the fishing things.”  I was anxious about it, but I knew that I at least had a good foot to start off on.  But I was scared.  Those first few months, I was scared all the time.

 

Q:  [8:03] What kinds of things were scary?

 

A:  [8:06] It’s very open and vulnerable, especially in Northeast, which is a very busy harbor.  So, new things where there’s a lot of commotion right by.  Everyone’s watching you.  You’re trying to back up the trap trailer on the dock, and there’s like 50 men watching you, and they do it every day, and they can do it without thinking, and running the like hydraulics and crane and everything.  It was a lot, and it was very overwhelming at first, especially because you’re moving such heavy things.  There’s a lot – when you’re not used to it and it’s new, it feels really dangerous and scary, like loading traps from the pier onto the boat and loading bait from the pier onto the boat.  You’ve got 1000-pound barrels of fish swinging around, and you’ve never done that before. The first captain I worked for also definitely was like, “How you perform reflects on me.  So if you fuck up, that’s on me also.”  So, I was very scared.  He basically was like, “People are going to be looking at you extra because you’re a girl, and I don’t want that to reflect poorly on me.  So, keep it tight.”  I was very nervous.  I didn’t want to mess up.  It’s easy to mess up.  There’s a lot going on.

 

Q:  [9:50] Amidst all the scary stuff, what hooked you to keep doing the work?

 

A:  [9:55] I think part of it was the scary stuff.  I liked that aspect.  I love being out on the water.  I love going to bed tired.  You put in a lot of like work, and that felt like – I don’t know.  It felt very primal, like I am doing work that feels like there’s a product at the end, especially after coming out of school where I’d been spending so much time on my laptop, writing papers for hours and hours, versus being like, “OK, I am outside, moving my body, getting shit done.”  It felt very rewarding in a physical way, and I was like, “I can do it” – that I could do it, and it made me want to keep doing it.  It’s classic man quits job, goes fishing in Alaska vibe.  I was like, “OK, I want to keep doing this.”  Yeah, it got me.

 

Q:  [11:16] Did you feel when you were in the learning stages that you had some level of support in the community or with the people you were working alongside?

 

A:  [11:27] I felt very much an outsider of the community at first, especially, it was like, “Oh, you’re the girl from up at the COA.”  And I was like, “Yeah, I am.”  I was young.  People, if they knew me, there were whispers.  It’s like, “Oh, there’s that girl who’s from COA.  She’s one of the tree-hugger hippie people.  So, I felt, yeah, very unsupported at first, but not in a necessarily bad way.  I was just like, “OK, I am doing this, and I’m going to figure it out.”  My first captain was not super warm and supportive about that journey, but would – “Yeah, you did good.”  I’d be like, “OK, I did good.”  Especially because we lived together, so, there was weird dynamics with – “OK, we’re going to go to work together, and we’re going to work and then drive home together and then eat dinner across the table from each other.  I think, at first, he was also trying to not – he was trying to keep friendship at home and how he was on the boat very separate.  So, I think you might have been a little more cold, too, with the “Great job,” pat-pat kind of stuff.

 

Q:  [13:12] Yeah, that’s interesting.  Most of the time, you don’t go home with your boss.

 

A:  [13:15] I wouldn’t recommend it. (laughter) I would say don’t do that, actually.

 

Q:  [13:21] I’m curious.  How do you feel your education – maybe a similar topic – how did that relate to the work you were doing, if at all?

 

A:  [13:34] Absolutely.  I had a nice continuity because most of my time at COA, I would say, was focused out on the research islands.  I spent three summers on Great Duck and would hop around to the Rock.  I was working on Osprey.  I went from boat stuff, island stuff, and would interact with the lobstermen out there around the islands, not always in the best way.  But listening to the conversations on the radio.  I was very used to it in a good way.  Coming off, I had all the boat experience from working on Osprey and from landing on the islands.  It just transferred really nicely.  I was like, “OK, I’ve been spending all this time on the water on boats.”  I’m just going to keep doing that in a different light, but it felt like I couldn’t – I don’t know.  It would have been a lot harder for me to start fishing had I not been doing that throughout all my time at COA.

 

Q:  [14:55] Do you hold any commercial fishing licenses?

 

A:  [14:58] I do not.

 

Q:  [15:02] Do you lobster inshore or offshore?

 

A:  [15:04] Inshore?

 

Q:  [15:06] Do you own your own boat?

 

A:  [15:07] No.

 

Q:  [15:08] Do you have any experience in the industry beyond directly fishing or harvesting itself, for example, in bookkeeping, bait or gear preparation, in post-harvest, processing, marketing, trade, in advocacy, or community-based organizations related to fisheries?

 

A:  [15:24] Yeah, I would say in the post-fishing preparation.  There’s a lot of times where I’ll make sales with people on the island.  I also work for my captain’s wife in her restaurant.  That’s a nice full day when we go out, we get her basket of lobster and crabs or whatever she wants, go back, pick them out for her, bring them to the restaurant.  Some days, there’s a nice 48-hour loop where I get to go fishing, do all of that, and then I work in the restaurant the next day and get to sell the lobster rolls from the lobster that we caught yesterday, which is the most satisfying thing ever.  So, there’s that aspect of it.  I definitely help with bait, planning, and preparation.  We crunch the numbers of how to do our bait recipes, what makes most sense, and some of that behind-the-scenes stuff.

 

Q:  [16:42] Can you tell me more about the – not your secret bait recipe.  Can you tell me a little more about that?

 

A:  [16:47] Are we going to do herring and redheads and skate this week?  Are we going to do alewives and pogie and black cod head?  All of the different options you have for bait.  Frozen, fresh – are you going to get it boxed frozen in the little boxes?  Big box frozen in the big boxes?  Are you going to go to the bait yard and get whatever they have?  Then, figuring out – it’s like, OK, however much it costs, we know we don’t want to spend more than however much on bait this week.  But bait might be staying really well in the water.  So, you can leave it a long time, and that might change how we do the break-up – more hard bait instead of more soft bait.  Or maybe it’s summertime, the sea fleas are out, and the bait’s really going quickly.  So, it’s all of those factors and variables of cost, how long it’s going to last in the water, how soon we’re planning on getting back out to that gear and then coming up with a bait plan for the next week or next two weeks, or whatever.  It’s like, OK, are we going to buy 30 barrels of pogie?  Now, that will take us however long out to the month.  That whole number-crunching game plan, bait game plan. (laughter) Yeah.

 

Q:  [18:37] What does an average day of work look like for you?

 

A:  [18:41] I get to my captain’s house at 5:15 in the morning.  We load whatever we need to load at the house – if it’s buoys, trap trailer, whatever – head to the harbor, or if there’s someone else we meet (inaudible) there usually is.  Meet the other crew in the harbor.  Head out to the boat.  Get that bait preparation done if we need to get bait from the float onto the boat or if we need to unbox frozen bait from the truck or whatever ponds (sp?) need to be moved for that day.  Get all that done.  Aim to be out of the harbor – we usually leave about 6:30, heading out after all of our boat loading.  Then, we haul steady until 2:00, 3:00, or 4:00, depending on the day.  Head back in.  Scrub down on the way in.  Figure out if it makes sense to do bait prep then or the next morning.  Go up to the restaurant for an emotional support snack and process.  We have a little decompression session in the truck of whatever happened during the day.  Then, head home. (laughter)

 

Q:  [20:22] I know it’s work, but do you have a favorite part of your day?

 

A:  [20:27] Heading out and heading back in are really pretty good feeling.  OK.  Well, the skiff ride out in the morning, and the skiff ride back in – that’s got to be probably my favorite part.  Getting back in on the skiff, leaving the float, and going back in towards the shore.  That’s prime feeling. (laughter)

 

Q:  [20:51] Good sunrises and –

A:  [20:53] Good sunrises.  Yeah.  It’s warm.  You can think about what you’re going to eat for dinner. (laughter) And you don’t have to do anything else. (laughter)

 

Q:  [21:03] Yeah, morning, you’re ready to go.

 

A:  [21:05] Yeah.

 

Q:  [21:06] Evening, you’re ready to go as well. (laughter)

 

A:  [21:07] Go.  Yeah. (laughter)

 

Q:  [21:11] I’m curious, do you guys source your bait from the same dealer every time, or is it different?

 

A:  [21:17] It changes a lot.  Bait is getting crazy and expensive, so I would say last summer was probably the most consistent, where we were buying from the bait yard.  Well, yeah, it still goes all over.  There’s almost never super extreme consistency with where we’re getting bait.  Prices change all the time.  Might get a bad barrel from one dock.  So, it’s like, “OK, well, we’re not going to go there this week.”  Also, this dock has whatever – they fill their barrels up to the top, or they’ve got it salted.  So, there’s no – we hop all around all the time.  I feel like more recently, more individuals have started working to go – people are driving down to Boston now, loading up trailers with bait there because it’s cheaper, and then driving it back up here and then selling it, which is new because you have to go further to get cheaper bait. Some guys are starting to go in on little partnerships with that or they buy in bulk.  If someone has a good yard for it, then they, as individuals, will sell to other individuals.  So, if you’re “in the know” about how so-and-so is going to get fifty barrels of herring, he’s going to drive down with his trailer to Portland, get a bunch of bait there, and drive back.  That, I feel like, is becoming increasingly more common than just the one bait dock where everyone is going to go for their bait.  More scheming of how we’re going to get it.  Yeah.

 

Q:  [23:28] That’s a lot.  Is that something that’s being navigated on a daily basis or weekly?

 

A:  [23:34] It’s nice when it’s weekly.  It’s hopefully more weekly or monthly.  We usually get enough bait so that we don’t have to get it again until the next week, ideally.  So, yeah, a week, week and a half, sometimes two weeks, is usually the turnover time for planning.

 

Q:  [24:07] Got you.  Remind me again where you fish out of?

 

A:  [24:10] Northeast Harbor.

 

Q:  [24:11] Northeast Harbor.  For selling, do you guys sell –?  What’s that look like for you guys?

 

A:  [24:17] We’ve also moved around a lot recently, but this past year, we started selling to Ronnie Musetti, who owns The Nor’easter, because he started buying lobster.  Let’s see.  Last year, we were selling to Trenton, the Trenton Bridge Lobster, but also sometimes to the guys in Southwest.  It’s also the numbers game of who has the best price versus your loyalty to someone you’ve been selling to for a long time is also becoming a weird thing.  We might show up to Southwest one day and be like, “Hey, I heard so-and-so’s buying for this price today.  Are you going to match it?”  And they’re like, “No.”  And you’re like, “OK, maybe we should stop selling to Southwest.” I would say there’s also more increasing infidelity with you you’re going to sell to.  We’ve changed it up probably four or five times, at least, in the last few years.  Even a few times within a summer.  People were selling to multiple different places at a time.  Ronnie will get the nicer lobsters that we know will get a better price, and then Southwest can have the standard crates or whatever happens that time.  It’s crazy.

 

Q:  [26:21] That influences the day.

 

A:  [26:22] Yeah.

 

Q:  [26:23] (inaudible) workday for sure.

 

A:  [26:24] It’s like, “OK, are we going to steam all the way over to Southwest?  Are we just going to home?  Well, then we have to crate up on the dock.”  And then it’s like, “Ugh.”  Yeah.

 

Q:  [26:31] How do you feel your background or identity shapes your work in the fishing sector, including how others perceive or treat you?

 

A:  [26:39] I feel like I have – OK.  I definitely had cosplayed in the beginning when I first started fishing.  I played up the more rural side of my upbringing.  I was like, “I’m going to hide the COA parts and just appear more rural,” I would say.  Then, as we got more comfortable and got to know each other, I started speaking more freely about what I was thinking.  It’s fun because I love it when people ask me questions about what we’re seeing, like, “What’s that bird?” or “What’s that fish?”  I think that’s a cool dynamic that I get to have with people that I work with, is that people will ask me about the things that we’re seeing and why it’s happening because of my research background.  Sometimes, we’ll stop the boat and be like, “What’s that bird?” or “What’s that fish?”  That’s cool because I feel like it didn’t happen in the beginning when I wasn’t being as honest about myself. Also, there’s a lot of screaming and fights that we have sometimes.  I don’t know.  It’s weird because it affects all of our interactions all the time every day.  I’ve, over the years, been more upfront about how I actually am feeling or thinking about something.  There’s a lot there.  Yeah. (laughter) There’s a lot there.  I definitely am not fully 100% myself when I’m at work, though.  I think I can have more productive work and conversations that way.

 

Q:  [29:31] That makes sense.  How does your role in the fishing sector work with your family or caregiving responsibilities, including future plans, if relevant?

 

A:  [29:44] I hope it doesn’t. (laughter) I’m not quite sure.  My version of my nuclear family is going to my housemates at home, and they’re like, “Oh, long day.  Addie’s not home yet.”  I’m like, “Well, maybe I’ll bring you a treat and bring home …”.  I do have fun being provider – bring home crabs for dinner sometimes.  Yeah, I don’t think – I haven’t thought about it.

 

Q:  [30:29] That’s OK.

 

M1:  [30:31] I’m wondering, to the point of question about background and identity – I’m wondering if you feel like your gender has any role in that.

 

A:  [30:37] Yes.

 

M1:  [30:39] Can you talk more about that (inaudible)?

 

A:  [30:40] Yeah.  So, I feel like I have multiple layers that I had to work through in the beginning to just get my footing and my bearings and have people be like, “OK, yeah, she deserves to be here.”  The first one was, yeah, you’re a young woman.  People are going to scrutinize you more to start with.  Then, it was like, OK, so it’s like, young woman, comes out of COA.  Suspicious.  Looks like one of them tree hippies.  Suspicious.  Worked out on the research islands, so liberal.  Suspicious.  So, I was working through these layers of identity that I knew were going to make it harder for me to make connections with people.  So, I would morph.  Yeah, I’m just a hard-working horse girl from the Midwest – was how I would choose to, in the beginning, be female because that was a more acceptable entrance point. I feel like if you’re not familial – it’s standard and common for sisters or daughters or wives to go out with their male family counterparts.  It’s like, OK, yeah, that’s cool and cute and good and normal.  It’s like, “Oh, she’s going with her brother.  That’s so nice.”  But if you’re not in that bubble of girl working on boat, I feel like the other bubble that you immediately get put into is very sexist, weird, misogynistic, gross – “Oh, this is obviously not women’s work, so there has to be something really wrong with you for you to be doing it.”  Either you’re strung out, and you really need the money for drugs, feels like a common – “Oh, well, what’s wrong with you for you to be here?  You must have some dirty, weird issues with you.” It’s hard because it’s like, OK, I’m not in that bubble, and I really don’t want to be in that bubble.  I swear there’s nothing wrong with me.  But it does feel like there’s a weird assumption because, increasingly, there’s more and more women on boats.  I feel like there are – especially in the Bar Harbor fishing community, maybe.  There’s some guys that pretty much only have female sternman, but it’s maybe because they’re more like pervy old dudes who want to look at their female sternman all day.  Obviously, they must be kind of easy if they’re going on this boat.  So, there’s all these weird – I don’t know if they’re stereotypes or assumptions about why you would be on a boat as a woman.  Because obviously it couldn’t just be because you like the work.  Does that answer your –?  I went off on a huge, little tangent there.  Yeah. (laughter)

 

Q:  [35:06] That was really interesting.  With all that, do you feel like there’s room to grow on the boat, change your role, and how do you feel about that?

 

A:  [35:18] Yeah.  I mean, my role definitely has changed.  I went from being very quiet, kept my head on, I’m going to get the job done and not draw any unnecessary attention to myself.  I don’t want to make it obvious that I’m young and a girl and new to this, so I’m just going to shut up and do it.  My role in the beginning was way more timid, obedient.  I was just going to get it and not cause a scene.  As more time has passed, I’m comfortable on the boat.  I spend most of my time on it.  I spend most of my waking hours with my captain.  We’re comfortable.  The more comfortable that we got, then the more I would be like, “Hey, actually, what if we did it this way?  Maybe that doesn’t work.  Maybe we should try something else,” or just be more vocal and willing to share thoughts, I guess, in terms of both boat planning and conversation that was happening on the boat. Now, I love my captain.  The family is like family to me.  I know that they’re – if I stop fishing, I’m not going to leave – they’re not going to leave my life.  We talk on the phone. (laughter) He jokes that I can’t leave because not only – I’m stern-girl, therapist, bookkeeper, secretary, dog sitter, house watcher, which is such a huge change from how my relationship was both to him and the boat in the beginning.  Now, it does feel more like adoptive family, which is really nice.

 

Q:  [38:00] I’m glad it got to that point.

 

A:  [38:02] Me too. (laughter)

 

Q:  [38:04] I’m going to switch into questions that deal with environmental change.  Can you describe any changes in the marine environment that you’ve noticed?

 

A:  [38:15] Water is getting warm.  I would say there are more crabs than ever – green crabs, rock crabs, small little crabs inshore.  Surface water temperatures are warm.  There’s so much like biofouling on gear.  I would say from my first year to now, even in that very short time frame, I’ve noticed that I’ve seen less kelp, more tunicates, more crabs, more sea fleas, more jellyfish.  Fewer schools of baitfish like herring and pogie.  More shrimp, which is cool.  The shrimp are coming back. There’s a whole lot of change happening.  It’s all related, but changes with fisheries  here affect our bait choice.  If you could use nothing but herring every day and not spend all of your money on it, that would be ideal.  But there just aren’t that many herring left, and there aren’t that many pogie left.  So, you keep jumping from the next best option to the next best option.  It’s like, OK, well, now that option’s gone, and now that option’s gone. It’s something that we saw on Great Duck with our gull colonies out there because if we haul up a trap and there’s old bait from last week, 20 years ago, you’re going to dump that pocket overboard and put fresh bait in.  But that’s not a financially viable choice anymore.  So, you’re going to bait on top of it.  But if the herring fishery is taking a huge source of wild food for herring gulls, let’s say, then the new option would be old bait that’s dumped overboard.  It’s like, OK, now that is the standard food that we’re seeing gulls bringing back to their chicks.  It’s like, OK, you can tell that’s old bait.  It doesn’t have scales.  It’s kind of mushy.  We know that the gulls are eating old lobster bait.  Then, fishermen stop dumping their bait overboard.  Now that option is gone.  So, gulls start bringing back weird jellyfish.  Never should a gull be choosing to forage and bring back jellyfish, which has nothing to it, for their chicks.  Which, just to me, was a very visual – it’s there.  You can see it.  That was a change that has been happening. You hear people talk about – I remember two summers ago the scallop boats were having a really hard time.  I just remember hearing someone say on the radio, “Shells like fucking pie plates, and they’re all dead.”  They bringing up – it’s been harder and harder for people to find scallops or find live scallops.  I just think about that a lot.  They were finding huge, dead scallops in places that are good dredging waters. Lobster are moving.  It’s getting harder and harder to fish inshore.  Traplines that we had in spots a few years ago that were just ass-deep in lobster aren’t – it’s just too warm.  It’s too warm for them.  Our better gear is our offshore gear along the three-mile line most of the time.  But what should have been the standard predictability of it’s early spring, we’re going to get a big rush of lobster moving in, and then it’s early summer, and we’re going to get a big rush of lobster moving out.  All of these patterns that people have been generally depending on for years aren’t happening anymore, which makes it really hard to plan where you’re going to set your traps and how you’re going to invest in bait because normally, you can have a sense of, OK, it’s August, water temperature’s however high.  If we set our strings of traps in this channel, we should get lobster as they’re moving in or offshore, or however that seasonal pattern that you should expect to be there happens. But it’s just been jumbled chaos of, “When’s it going to happen?  When it’s going to happen?”  They haven’t hit yet.  When are they going to hit?  Then people are like, “Well, maybe they’re never going to hit?”  People are like, “No, they have to.  They have to be somewhere, but they’re not where we expect them to be and not where they’ve been for the last 30 years.”  Then the joke is like, “Well, how’d you do for crabs?”  It’s like, “Oh, we got shit-ton of crabs.”  Everybody’s doing great for crabs.  The bottom ecology is definitely changing. Last summer, Diver Ed was in – where was he?  He was looking for – he was hired to dive to find some lost traps up in the sound and said that the bottom of the sound was just covered in dead pogie.  Around that time, we were seeing a lot of dead pogie floating on the water or in traps.  It’s not uncommon to occasionally have a pogie swim into your trap, but there were dead pogie all over.  Then, Eddie said the bottom of the sound was just covered in dead pogie.  It’s weird.  That’s an anomaly.  Weird things like that have seemed to be happening more and more.

 

Q:  [46:26] Thank you.  How do those changes impact your work in the fishing sector?

 

A:  [46:32] They make it harder.  It feels more like flying by the seat of your pants instead of being able to generally have a plan for what you’re going to do with your gear and your bait.  Bait is always cost.  Regardless of what you catch, you’re going to spend the same on bait.  If you’re not making that money back because what you have known to be true for the last 30 years isn’t happening anymore, and your bait and fuel and crew are still steady, consistent costs in your day-to-day, it’s hard to stay afloat.  You don’t have the – I feel like almost everyone has, for the long time, had the security of being like, OK, even if it’s not a good year, I’m still going to make it by.  I’m not going to go backward financially.  That isn’t necessarily a given anymore. If there’s no herring or very limited amounts of herring, and herring costs $600 a barrel, and you’ve had a bad few weeks and you really need to catch some lobster, and you think that – well, lobster love herring.  Maybe this is how I get my money back, and you’re going to buy this expensive herring, put it where you have known lobsters to be for 20 years, and they’re not there, and you just spent $1200 on nothing.  That’s becoming more of a reality. Then, it’s like, OK, well, now, what else can I use for bait?  Maybe alewives.  It’s like, why are we using alewives for bait?  Ecologically, that’s a nightmare, but the bait fish that you should be able to depend on and rely on, the herring fishery shut down early, and the pogie fishery shut down early.  It’s like, OK, well, I guess we’ll use alewives, which aren’t as good of a bait.  The ecological impacts of that are horrendous.  Who knows?  It’s like, OK, what else will we use?  Maybe we’ll use frozen rockfish from the Pacific, the West Coast.  It’s like, OK, wait, so we’re using bottom – we’re fishing for groundfish in the Northern Pacific, freezing them, shipping them to Northern Maine to use as bait here because we can’t find our bait fish anymore. We used frozen red racks (sp?) that were shipped from Germany three years ago.  There was a day where I was using bait from Washington, bait from Germany, bait from Florida, and bait from Maine and New Jersey.  Like, what?  Ecologically, that’s a nightmare.  It’s sad to think about.  I have to turn off my brain most of the time when I go into work because I can’t think about it because it’s just so depressing.

 

Q:  [50:45] Yeah.  You’re filling the bait bags and trying not to think about it.

 

A:  [50:47] I’m not thinking about them.  I’m just like, yeah.

 

Q:  [50:51] In addition to the bait, is there anything you’ve tried in response to cope with or adapt to the different changes?  This can be where you fish or what you fish for, when you fish, the gear you use, or pursuing other livelihood opportunities.

 

A:  [51:12] I have the nice freedom to be able to do that.  The fishing strategy has changed.  We’ve gotten more used to shifting gear around midseason and not being too tied to any one region.  We shifted gear all the time last summer.  If the string wasn’t doing well, we’re going to pick it up, move it somewhere else, and hope that maybe it will do better there.  We aren’t using the primo bait options, but to find a good midpoint of cost and effectiveness, it might not fish the best, but it might last a bit longer.  So, we’ll use that combo of bait.  Yeah.  Just finding ways to cut costs and just be more willing to not have to stick with the plan if the plan isn’t working. For the most part, people are freaking out.  If all of your assets and livelihood are tied into your business, which for most fishermen they are, and then your business isn’t running how you need it to run, I think it’s pushed a lot of people for an early retirement or an early game change.  But for a lot of people, that’s all they know how to do.  I’m worried that a lot of fishermen are just going to – it’s like running into a brick wall where it’s not working, but you need it to work because you don’t know what else to do.  Change is scary.  Even with however much adaptability and flexibility with what you’re doing, it’s still not enough.  Then you hit a point where you almost have to keep going because it’s not like you can just stop.

 

Q:  [53:46] What has made it possible to make those adaptations?  For example, are there any resources, relationships, knowledge, training, organizations that help you guys navigate those adaptations?

 

A:  [54:04] Everyone loves Maine Lobstermen’s Association.  MLA is a pretty good supporter.  But in terms of what help people that I know have received, it’s almost nothing.  We know that the MLA is fighting for the cause of lobstermen, but in terms of individual support, there’s been next to nothing.  People talk about – Janet Mills was going to give you a $5,000 check if you went through this whole application for financial hardship.  What’s $5,000?  So, most people didn’t even do it.  Yeah, it’s something, but it’s nothing.  It’s nothing for the operating costs of a boat.  Yeah.  I can’t really think of anything.  There’s a pretty strong anti-handout feeling that I think might keep people from looking for those sorts of programs.  God forbid you’re like the Canadians and get paid to not fish.  That’s crazy.  I can’t think of anyone that I’ve known that’s gotten help like that.

 

Q:  [56:04] Are there kinds of adaptations you wish you could make but haven’t been able to?

 

A:  [56:09] I have been trying to get my captain to think about diversifying.  I forget what the name of it is.  There was a group that I reached out to where their work helps lobstermen diversify their income by getting into aquaculture, I think based out of Portland or Biddeford or somewhere.  It’s a really cool group.  For years, I was like, “Hey, we should start some kelp lines.”  He’d be like, “There’s no money in that.”  I’m like, “But there is.”  I finally got to the point where he was finally considering it, but then I was like, “I don’t know.”  Then I reached out to this group, and they were like, “We need more information.”  That would be the strongest thing that I’ve tried to implement is trying to get him to at least have some winter macro algae support. I wish I could remember the name.  They’re a group that would subsidize fishermen trying to expand into aquaculture so that you know you have a buyer for your harvest, which is probably one of the hardest things about aquaculture, especially kelp and seaweed farms.  If you don’t know who your buyer is, then you waste a whole season of growth because the harvest is two days.  Then you’ve got all this seaweed and nowhere to sell it.  This organization takes that risk away because you know who your buyer is.  I think they subsidize some beginning costs for gear.  But if you’re a lobsterman, you already pretty much have all the gear, knowledge, and skills that you need to start doing aquaculture. I think the Nordic fish farm has put a sour taste in people’s mouths when they hear aquaculture – they think of salmon pens – as an opposition.  You hear aquaculture, and you think it’s easier salmon pens or good fishing ground and that there’s no ability to coexist or work together or have that be an integrated, economically viable way to make a living.

 

Q:  [59:01] That’s really cool.  How did you come across that organization?

 

A:  [59:05] Instagram. (laughter)

 

Q:  [59:09] What’s your biggest concern about the marine environment for the future of Maine coastal fisheries and aquaculture industries?

 

A:  [59:24] I would say warming waters and fishery collapse.  There’s so much bait that people use all down the coast.  It’s so many fish.  We’re rerouting the flow of – the fishing industry reroutes trophic flow of nutrients on a massive scale.  If climate change is your starting foundation for how – that’s hardship enough for these marine communities.  Then, if, on top of that, you have massive amounts of bait fish being taken out of the most vital trophic level and being shot down to the bottom as bait food, that’s not helpful.

 

Q:  [1:00:45] If you could tell policy makers in Maine what the biggest priority should be to help people adapt to this, what would you tell them?

 

A:  [1:01:00] Oh, gosh.  Having people who look familiar because they are also fishermen have – people need resources and help but aren’t going to accept it if it comes from some high up fed.  Don’t trust those guys.  They’re not looking out for me, obviously.  But if someone who I work alongside and fish alongside is working with those policymakers to be like, “OK, guys, this is how we should implement these changes” – there’s just so many oppositional factors against the fishing industry right now that it’s hard to think about how effective help and change – what that would even look like because it just feels like there’s so much to overcome.  It feels like there’s so much to overcome that I don’t even know what the help would look like.  It’s a big problem.  I don’t know.  It’s hard.  I think ground level – having help and support come from ground level or what appears to be community is, I think, far more effective than a top-down, trickle-down approach because there’s just so much distrust and frustration there that it’s hard to think of how that could actually be productive.  I hope not, but I don’t know.

 

Q:  [1:03:35] I think having the conversation is helping build the bridge.  So, good on you. (laughter) I’m going to shift into climate resilience strategy questions.  Have you participated in any climate resilience or adaptation training or programs for the fishing industry?

 

A:  [1:03:54] A little bit.  Mostly in my social media, aquaculture networking way, but no, I haven’t seen what a workshop for fishermen would look like.

 

Q:  [1:04:18] Do you have something in mind that would be helpful to you?

 

A:  [1:04:24] I don’t know.  Yeah, I don’t know.

 

Q:  [1:04:31] What strategies do you think would be effective in building resilience against climate-related impacts for fisheries?

 

A:  [1:04:41] Not describing them as climate-related impacts.  It’s hard because fishermen are aware that their ocean is changing.  They know it better than anybody else, and that’s a point of defensiveness, where it’s like, “Well, I spend my time out there.  Who are you to tell me that it’s changing?  I know it’s changing.”  But then, you reach a standstill where it’s like, “OK, and then what?”  They’re like, “Well, then, nothing.”  When I’m having conversations like this, I word things very – I beat around the bush.  We’re not going to talk about climate change.  We’re going to talk about what is palpable and avoid these scary buzzwords where you’re immediately going to get a defense up against it. So, language is incredibly important, I think, and probably, in my opinion, one of the most misused and mismanaged ways that the fishing community and NOAA, the DMR, and these regulatory agencies are not connecting – ineffective use of language.  So, how conversations are worded, I think, is the first step to even gain ground on how to help.  Could you repeat the question?

 

Q:  [1:06:47] I think it was here.  What strategies do you think would be effective in building resilience against climate-related impacts for fisheries?

 

A:  [1:07:05] I wish there was – in a way, not that I wish anything was subsidized because I don’t think that would actually really help, but fishing is one of the only industries where you never know what your product is worth.  A maker should be able to set their price for their good, and fishing doesn’t work like that.  I don’t know how that change even would or could be implemented.  During COVID years, you would buy a lobster roll in Bar Harbor for $45, and we weren’t seeing that money.  It was $3.18 a pound.  Our selling price was $3.18 a pound, but restaurants in Bar Harbor are getting $45 for half an ounce of lobster meat.  That’s ridiculous. Fuel costs are rising, and bait costs are rising.  At the end of the day, you still don’t know what your own paycheck is going to look like.  In a way, one of the reasons why the lobster industry has been so successful, I think, is a lack of market regulation in that way.  But I think now it’s also really hurting people because the work is the same, the cost is the same, and increasing.  Each year, we’re making less and less money for the same and more amount of work.  But someone is making a lot of money for almost no work.  I don’t know what or how that would look because, again, overhead and regulation is scary, but that’s just a – yeah, I don’t know.  That’s huge.

 

Q:  [1:09:44] Are there other changes, not only environmental, that are impacting your work that you want to tell us about?

 

A:  [1:09:55] There’s a whole lot of change happening.  I think environmental change is definitely causing the most distress to the industry, and we haven’t even started talking about whales yet. (laughter) Probably like on that note, political change –lobster, and especially Maine lobster, has become a really polarizing topic.  People are always going to buy lobster, but just the fear and divisiveness that is coming out of this whole entanglement conflict is making positive change almost impossible because there’s so much polarization.  When you’ve got organizations red listing Maine lobster, it becomes this whole thing.  It’s a whole thing now. So, political change.  We used to get a lot more money to ship more lobsters overseas to China, but because of some trade tariffs and some presidential stuff, that doesn’t happen anymore.  That’s a huge change in the flow of money and who is buying Maine lobster and why they are or are not buying Maine lobster is huge.  Canada stopped buying last summer for a period of time.  There were lobster floating in crates dying because most of our lobster at this point gets shipped to Canada to be picked and processed and sold as meat, not as whole lobsters but as meat.  But if political change is happening and stuff with Canadian fisheries is changing and all of a sudden, Canada’s like, “OK, we’re not buying any Maine lobster for the next few weeks” – it had nowhere to go.  In a way, it’s like the market is both flooded but extremely confined with buying options.  We need a rebrand. (laughter)

 

Q:  [1:13:08] You mentioned whales.  Did you want to say anything more on that?

 

A:  [1:13:12] I could say a lot on that.  It’s, I think probably the most perfect example of a human ecological crisis that I can think of.  I started at COA.  I worked with Allied Whale.  I was on those boats doing whale research.  I came out of whale research world.  I’m still in whale research world.  Then, I went to the commercial fishing world.  I think, in a way, I’m really lucky because I have a very fluent idea of the issue on both sides and how, again, miscommunication and improper use of language is snowballing a problem into something way harder to work with. Also, how people communicate in small, isolated rural communities and access to information and how greatly that varies.  I can sit here in my little ivory tower and walk over to Lexus Nexus and have whatever information I want at my hands because I know how to fact-check, and I have been taught how to research and find information for myself.  I have internet and wi-fi and someone to go to give me more information about something that they’re an expert in.  Versus if I lived in Bernard and didn’t have wi-fi and most of my communication is with people that I fish around or when I walk to the public library to sit on the Facebook for a few hours and look at my little fishing Facebook groups. The point being that the game of telephone for how information spreads in the fishing community is – I see a paper or something – I see something on Facebook or the news or something.  We’re all tied up in the harbor later that afternoon.  I’m like, “Hey, did you hear about that thing that I saw?”  Everyone’s like, “What?”  They, in turn, go, “Hey, did you hear about that thing that so-and-so saw?”  The language changes a little bit.  It snowballs a little bit.  Someone jumps on Facebook again and is like, “Oh my god.  I can’t believe this thing that I heard.”  Then, over time, that becomes truth.  I feel like truth – this is al also very “woo.”  Truth in this instance of whales is also very relative.  I can have a truth, and you can have a truth that are both true to us but not congruent. If I’ve grown up knowing – knowing because everybody in my life has ever told me that no whale has ever been killed in Maine waters in the last 22 years.  It doesn’t happen.  I know because everybody around me knows so.  That’s what they’ve told me forever.  That is truth to me in that moment.  Sorry, I’m going all over the place here.  This is so hard. Say I know that no whale has ever been entangled or killed in Maine waters in the last 22 years.  And then, all of a sudden, there’s these pictures of whales with rope hanging off them from agencies that I know are trying to steal my livelihood because it must be political and for money and so-and-so.  They must be lying.  Everybody thinks that everybody has to be lying and the communication is so poor or nonexistent or worsens the issue.  Then, GMR and NOAA implement these gear regulations.  It’s like, “Well, I already spent a shit-ton of money last year on gear regulations.  Why do I have to do it again?”  Well, it’s like, “OK, well, those ones didn’t work.”  It’s like, “What do you mean they didn’t work?  I don’t see any dead whales.”  Then NOAA, on the other hand, is like, “Well, just because you didn’t see them doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.”  Which, to me, if I don’t understand statistics or models or graphs, sounds like you’re just making stuff up. I sat in on a scoping session, a NOAA scoping session, for how do you guys, as fishermen, think that we should make gear modifications because we have to because of this federal ruling.  This is something that we have to do because of a federal court decision, and we’re asking you guys for how you think that would be effective.  It was a shit show.  The graphs and models that NOAA was using to predict estimated whale deaths because of entanglement, if you don’t understand graphs and models, it really just seems like you’re making up numbers to fit – there’s this idea, it’s like scientists must create problems because if they didn’t have something to fix, they wouldn’t have a job. If information you’re receiving from regulatory agencies is in this very formal, high-level, academic phrasing, which it’s like, I don’t speak that.  That’s foreign to me.  I’m not going to understand that.  But my friend Joe, who I grew up next to, posts something on Facebook in my language that we know.  OK, that’s accessible to me.  The NOAA articles and why we have to make gear modifications is not accessible.  I’ve looped off on so many paths.  If there’s something that you want me to circle back to –

 

Q:  [1:20:46] No, (inaudible) awesome.  We got to find Joe.

 

A:  [1:20:49] We got to find Joe.  Yeah.

 

Q:  [1:20:50] (laughter) Can you tell me about any opportunities or positive changes you’ve experienced in the industry during your time?

 

A:  [1:21:01] Not on a larger scale, but in my own – just for myself, a positive change that I have gotten in the community of Northeast, where I am now, feels like a huge social step of progression, at least for me.  I know all these fishermen, and they know me.  We’ll reach out to each other.  I have this network of community where I’m not a stranger there anymore.  For myself, the fact that I was able to do that, feels really huge, especially because I’ve never been super – I’m never super, super open about how liberal or queer I am.  I keep it pretty latched down when I’m fishing.  They know I’m weird.  Everybody knows I’m weird.  But even as a weird hippie, it feels good that at least as a weird hippie, I’ve gotten to that point.  Maybe someone else then can be the next step of weird, and then the next step of weird because I feel like I got to where I am now maybe in part because I kept it a little more latched down.  So, the conversations that I would have with my captain about why we don’t use that word or whatever, I feel like I could have those conversations more in part because I was trying to come off as someone who would identify more closely to something that he would listen to.

 

Q:  [1:23:42] Off of that, have you noticed changes in women’s presence, participation, or status in the fishery?

 

A:  [1:23:48] I feel like every year I see more girls on boats, and I love that.  Last summer, we were selling and getting fuel and bait in Southwest.  This girl, who’s probably four – dad picked her up and set her on the dock, and she had glittery pink little rainboots and she marched up to the shed where you get your check.  She put out her hand, and they put the check in her hand.  She marched back.  And I was like, “This is it.”  I started crying.  I’m going to start crying.  It was so cute.  She got her check.  She got her money.  She fished with her dad all day.  That was awesome.  It was just awesome.  I do see more.  I feel like I do see more girls on boats every year and younger, too, which is really cool.  It’s not a weird – it’s not normal as in it’s an oddity, but it’s not unfathomable.  It’s probably a few steps in from unfathomable, which is really cool.  Yeah, bit by bit.

 

Q:  [1:25:18] Once you’re in it, I’m sure the sense of pride is just –

 

A:  [1:25:24] It’s hard.  Yeah.  It’s hard to leave.

 

Q:  [1:25:30] What is your hopeful vision for the future of Maine’s coastal fisheries?

 

A:  [1:25:36] I hope for sustainable, resilient fisheries.  I think there’s so much cool work happening.  I truly believe in the power of sustainable bivalve protein.  I think aquaculture is going to carry us, but I don’t know what – I just don’t know what it will look like, but I’m hopeful and excited for it.  I think with more moderation in fishing – it’s hard.  Yeah, it’s hard because I think – I would love to see a comeback of a lot of our groundfish and our bait fish and the cod fishery.  It’s not unthinkable.  There just is a lot of change that needs to happen to get to that point.  A lot of that is at odds with how, at least at the moment, lobstering works and functions. So, how those meet, I’m not sure.  I think it probably goes back to language and communication.  It is, I think, an unfortunate truth that, at some point, if we want sustainable, resilient fisheries, that does mean that big changes have to be made in how fishing works.  Are we talking about sustainability and resiliency in culture and community and the working waterfront?  Is that environmental, ecological resiliency and sustainability?  And how those can shift to meet each other because it often feels like they’re at odds.  Either we protect the working waterfront and the cultural history of these coastal communities, or we protect and stop fishing for – yeah.  I don’t think they have to be at odds.  We’ll be uncomfortable.

 

Q:  [1:28:50] Is there anything else you wanted to share with us?

 

A:  [1:28:54] Probably. (laughter) I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  Maybe I’ll think in writing or something – I’m sure there’s gaps that I’m going to go home and be like, “Shit, I should have thought about that.”

 

Q:  [1:29:18] Door is open.

 

A:  [1:29:20] (laughter) Yeah, I’m not going anywhere.

 

Q:  [1:29:23] Great.  Camden, did you have any questions?  All right.  Well, thank you, Addie.

 

A:  [1:29:27] Thank you.

 

Q:  [1:29:28] Awesome.

---