Q: [0:00] We just usually like to start with how you like to introduce yourself.

A: [0:05] Hi, my name is Amanda Lyons.  I’m an intertidal fisherman.

Q: [0:09] Thank you.  And what year were you born?

A: [0:11] 1987.

Q: [0:14] Great.  Thank you.  Can you tell me a little bit about where you grew up?

A: [0:17] I grew up in New Haven – well, New Haven, Connecticut.  I grew up on Long Island Sound, doing recreational RV-style boating.  We used to travel around to Block Island and Newport and different places.  Me and my dad, we took a trip all the way down to the Carolinas by boat.  That was awesome.  I just fell in love with it.  When I was in high school, I went to the Sound School, which is a regional vocational aquaculture school, so kind of like the Eastport Boat School, but it was a full-blown high school and worked on boats, learned how to fiberglass, did all kinds of things.  Then, when one of my classmates, who was a year older than me, graduated, she came up to UMM, she’s like, “You got to go check out this school because it’s just like a college version of our high school.”  That’s how I ended up in Maine.

Q: [1:15] Great.  Thank you.  Can you tell me a little bit more about your experience in high school and at UMM?

A: [1:20] Sound School was fantastic.  It’s set up to literally cover aquaculture and agriculture.  We also had an ag program.  It was funded by Future Farmers of America and other sponsorships.  The first couple years, they introduced you to both the science and the tech side of the marines.  Then, once you hit your senior year, you got to choose science or tech.  But my senior year, there wasn’t enough kids, so they allowed us to do both.  I took finfish culture.  I learned how to spawn oysters.  I was doing experiments with chain dogfish.  We were trying to do embryonic development, and we cut them out of their casing, put them in petri dishes, and was developing the growth.  Unfortunately, their gestation is like 10 months, so I only got to finish half of it, and then I had to let another class take it over. (laughter) So, it was very hard to let go.

We learned how to row.  We learned how to sail.  I was on the rowing team.  We used to compete against all kinds of different schools and adults.  Our biggest competition – go figure – was Vinalhaven, Maine, because they live on an island. (laughter) But our high school was right on the water.  You can put your back right up against the building and throw a rock to the water.  Actually, a lot of freshmen on “Freshman Friday” found it. (laughter) We had the rowing team.  We had the sailing team.  Our teachers were great.  We called them by their first name.  They treated us like adults.  We were one of the few high schools in New Haven that didn’t have metal detectors and cameras, and we were trusted to actually walk between five different buildings that were all remodeled oyster shacks – oyster shucking houses.  So, that’s just high school. (laughter)

Once I came up to UMM, it just progressed, other than – I didn’t do so great my first year just because I learned so much in high school.  I was so bored.  So completely bored, that I got C’s in all my classes.  I didn’t even study for exams.  I didn’t do my homework.  The only reason why I did well is because I got A’s on the exams and did nothing else. (laughter) Not a good recommendation. (laughter)  But it was good.  I learned a lot of stuff.

Unfortunately, I ended up dropping out my senior year because I was burnt out.  I ended up getting – my first advisor was a math professor.  I scheduled all my core classes and all my easy classes my first two years.  So, by the time I hit my senior year, all I had left was four-credit labs with people like Brian Beal and Gayle Kraus, who have seriously intense senior classes.  I got burnt out, dropped out, ended up getting into the fisheries, and now I’m crazy. (laughter) But I am going back to school, and I did another year, and then I quit my heating job, so I took the semester off because I started up my own heating business, so I couldn’t do both at the same time, learning from prior mistakes.  Yeah.

F1: [5:24] I want to go back for just a second.  It’s such an interesting and unique high school you went to.  Was that your choice?  Your parents’ choice? (inaudible) pick that?

A: [5:31] My choice.  My choice.  Sound School was there – that got established back in the ’80s.  It was already a very well-established marine school, and they opened it up to more towns.  About 18 towns were allowed to go to this school and all wide ranges.  I mean, some of them were from New Haven, but we had people that were from Ansonia or Guilford.  You didn’t only have at that point the racial clash.  We also had the financial clash because you had people that had rich parents, and you had people that didn’t even have parents.  So, some were taking the city bus.  Some were getting dropped off by their parents in a BMW.  I mean, it was very unique, but our teachers knew how to handle it.

One class was a tech class.  We weren’t getting along.  It was an hour and a half before school ended.  Our teachers put us in rowboats, dragged us out into the middle of the harbor, mixed us all up, and told us that the busses would be back in an hour and a half and to figure it out. (laughter) We were 14 years old, in boats.  None of us got along, but none of us was going to turn around and call our parents to explain that we missed the bus because we couldn’t get along for stupid reasons.  So, guess what? We figured it out.  There was a lot of yelling, couple people fell overboard, but we all made it back and alive.  Then we were all friends after that.

Q: [7:17] Great.  I want to talk a little bit about your parents.  Where are they from, and what did they do when you were growing up?

A: [7:23] They’re still in Connecticut.  They’re in East Haven, Connecticut, with my sister.  My dad is a HVAC heat technician – kind of followed in the footsteps a little bit.  He worked for US Surgical for 20-some-odd years.  He was a maintenance worker, and he used to work on multiple-story size sterilizers for surgical equipment.  My mom worked at a bank for a while, and she was also a bookkeeper.  Right now, she is a bookkeeper for a global company that makes computer chips that were very important during the pandemic.

Q: [8:09] What does your sister do?

A: [8:11] My sister is an adolescent crisis counselor.

Q: [8:14] Do you have any history of fishing in your family, or did you start that?

A: [8:19] Being a commercial fisherman?  No.  Being a recreational fisherman?  Yes.  Dad raised us on striped bass, blue fish, tautog.  He used to take us crabbing for blue claw crab.  That’s when he learned that he had he was raising a little entrepreneur because we went to Essex Island Marina, and I would scoop up green crabs, and we would sell them a dollar a piece.  I had four little kids working for me.  We were selling these green crabs, and they’re like, “Oh, are they legal size?”  Of course, at that time, at that point in time, the legal size was the size of a beer can.  Here I am, eight years old, whipping a beer can out of my back pocket to measure a blue craw crab. (laughter) Yeah.  I just love the water.  I like being on it.  I always find other jobs that take me away, and I always end up back.

Q: [9:18] Cool.  Yeah, and I’m going to ask this question, I think you sort of answered it, but just for the sake of going through the thing, do you have any history of your family working in other roles in the fishing industry, such as bookkeeping, processing, marketing, bait?

A: [9:30] Nope, not directly at all.  Connecticut – you’re looking at less than a fraction of a percent that rely on the fish industries.  So, as far as growing up, all my exposure was mostly school, aside from what we did recreationally as a family.  That wasn’t until I came up here that I really got into the fisheries.  Actually, originally, when I came up here, I wanted to be a shark researcher.  Nothing close to getting into – but then I learned that instead of going for marine biology, I should have gone for behavioral science and all this other stuff.  Of course, my guidance counselors in high school weren’t very useful as far as “This is what I want to do.  What do I need to do to get to that place?”  You would think at a marine biology school that they would have at least a game plan, but no.

So, I’m like, “Well, we’ll figure something else out.”  Then, I had roommates that started rockweed harvesting.  They did it for a while, and I needed a job, and Subway wasn’t hacking it.  So, I started rockweeding, and that was actually my first job in the fisheries up here because I tried to get on lobster boats, and I tried to get on other things.  But the problem is, unless you’re a sister, a wife, or a daughter, your opportunities aren’t there.  When I asked the Acadian Seaplants if they would hire me, their only question was, “Do you know how to run an outboard?”  I’m like, “That I can do.  Dad made sure of that one.”  (laughter) That’s how I got into rockweeding.

Q: [11:28] Great.  Yeah, I want to come back to that.  Just before we talk a little bit more about that, are you married?

A: [11:33] Yes, I have a husband.  We’ve been together for 12 years, married for nine.  I haven’t quite figured out how he puts up with me, but he does.  He’s actually a sweetheart.  His name is Troy, and he’s clamming right now.

Q: [11:50] Great.  Do you have any children?

A: [11:52] No children.  I got fur babies.

Q: [11:54] So, coming back to rockweed, how would you describe what you do right now?  Then, I would love if you could take me through all of the different things that you’ve done because I know you’ve done a lot of different fisheries-related things.

A: [12:10] What direction are you’re trying to go with that?

F1: [12:16] Just start from the beginning.

Q: [12:17] Yeah, just start from the beginning.

A: [12:18] You want a chronological –?

F1: [12:19] How old were you (inaudible) rockweed?

A: [12:20] OK.  Let’s see.  It was 2008, so I was 20, 21 when I got into rockweed, and it was literally me and one of my other roommates paired up in a boat in the middle of July in Cobscook.  Never been on a boat in Cobscook in my life, and I was handed a map that was pretty much a cartoon drawing (laughter) with sector numbers and told to have at it.  I mean, they gave a little bit of an educational thing on what the laws were at that point in time, and it was very vague.

Then, the following summer, it rained a lot.  I didn’t harvest.  I ended up working at the Downeast Institute for the summer.  I worked mostly in the algae room.  I was pretty much in charge of growing the major drums of algae and feeding the clams.  And then, when I had time, I helped with other tasks, but that was the algae room.  That was my thing.

Then, I went back to rockweeding.  It wasn’t in Cobscook.  It was actually in Jonesport.  Actually, out of all the sites, Jonesport was probably my favorite.  That was because there was always harvesters.  There was always people around.  Unloading was so much easier because you would park the boats up.  There would be one person running the hoist, one person that swung the boom, one person in the truck, and two people in the boat.  It took five of us to unload, but it wasn’t super exhausting because we all had our own task.  It was really nice.  I picked it up.  It swung right over the back of an 18-wheeler.  I always got stuck in the 18-wheeler because I was able to climb the seaweed, run from one side to the other.  I mean, I was 21, 22, 23 years old.  I had energy for days. (laughter) That was great.  I was there for – I don’t know – four years.  Got “harvester of the year” a couple times.

Then I moved to – they moved me to Roque Island, and I became a site manager there.  I fluctuated between two and eight people.  I did a lot of training and teaching people the area.  I got sent to Gouldsboro for a few weeks to train a new crew there.  Then, my last two years, I spent in Cobscook, and that was where I started getting into my late 20s, and I started overlapping with wormweed.  So, I was actually doing two fisheries because I was trying to get myself established in another fishery because it’s a very limited market.  I couldn’t let go of one until I was set in the other because rockweeding – I still made 20-30 grand in the summer doing rockweeding.  So, unless I was making that much, I couldn’t.  Now, I make more than that. (laughter)

Then I switched to wormweed.  That was about – I think this is my ninth season doing wormweed, so I probably about 27-ish, 28, something like that.  I started up with Gay Crowley on Beals Island and did not know – that’s actually a funny story, how I actually got that job.  She was complaining to her worm buyer down in Connecticut that she was worried about whether or not she was going to be able to get the worms because she could get the worms, but she couldn’t get the packing material to ship the worms.  So, the guy is like, “I don’t know.”  Well, this bait shop was down the street from the boat club, the boat marina that I grew up at.  I literally grew up in this bait shop, and one of the guys overheard.  He’s like, “You know, Bob Butler’s daughter does seaweeding, and she’s up in Maine.  She might be in that area.”  He got my number from my dad, gave it to the buyer, the buyer gave it to her, and she called me, and she’s like, “So, where are you located?”

At that point in time – no, I didn’t move to Lubec at that point in time.  I was here in Lubec, and she’s like, “Well, that’s not too far.  I was thinking that you were down somewhere in Portland or something.”  I’m like, “No, I’m Downeast.”  She’s like, “Well, come by the shop.  I’ll show you what I’m looking for.”  That’s how it started.  Her picker wasn’t being reliable.  Half the time, they would go for enough to get beer money and then not want to go for the next two, three days.  She’s like, “I need somebody reliable.”  I ended up picking up her market, and then eventually, I ended up taking their other market from another buyer.  So, I had two buyers, and then, about last year, I picked up two more buyers.  So, between the four buyers that I do, I pick enough seaweed to employ about 80 to 100 diggers, and between my buyers, they send out, all together, probably close to three-quarters of a million worms a week.

Q: [18:22] Wow.

A: [18:23] (laughter)

Q: [18:24] So, you started wormweeding.  Have you been doing that consistently since you started?

A: [18:28] Every summer.  Every summer, I do it.  I get paid anywhere from eight to nine dollars a bag, depending on where I sell it.  Peak of the season, I could be doing anywhere from six to 800 bags a week.  My price only goes up.  It never goes down.  It doesn’t fluctuate like other markets.

Q: [18:52] Wow.  Do you participate in any other fisheries?

A: [18:55] I do soft shell clamming, wrinkling – I’m getting my halibut tags this year.  I’m working on getting into seaweed kelp aquaculture, and I also harvest probably six or seven other edible seaweeds that I do for small orders here and there.  So, if I can make money and I can get the license, I’ll do it.

Q: [19:29] That’s amazing.  I know you were the chair of the clam committee for some time.  Can you talk a little bit about that?

A: [19:35] Me and that thing has a love-hate relationship.  I love it, but I hate it, and it hates me sometimes.  When I first started doing it, it got plopped in my lap.  They were just looking for committee members at that point in time because we had to have so many members on our clam committee.  I hopped on to it, and then people got off, and people got on, and then somehow I got unanimously voted as chairman at a meeting I wasn’t even there for. (laughter)

Then, I took on that.  It was also because I was really good at filling out the paperwork.  That’s what most of it is.  Was filling out paperwork.  If you wanted to do a closure or an opening, you had to submit the form to DMR.  If you wanted to do a seed transplant, you had to submit the permit.  If you wanted to do brushing, you had to get an Army Corps permit, and I was able to always keep it straight, which is the reason why now I’m trying to get rid of it, and I can’t seem to. (laughter)

Licensing time is always a nightmare.  Conservation time is very time-consuming, especially since the diggers are like, “Well, it’s in the middle of our tide.”  Well, that’s where the clams are.  And they’re like, “Well, we don’t want to do it.”  And I’m like, “Well, fine, don’t.”  We have a tier system.  So, you could either buy out of conservation or you could do the conservation for a discounted rate.  But now, I’m pulling back a little bit.  I am no longer on the committee.  I am no longer the shellfish warden.  I am now just the deputy warden who is supposed to just fill in when the warden goes on vacation. (laughter) But last night, guess what?  I got roped into doing conservation closure paperwork. (laughter)

Q: [21:50] With all of those different things that you have hands in, can you list all of the fishing licenses that you hold?

A: [21:57] It’s easier said than done because the seaweed license covers a wide range of everything, but if I did seaweed kelp aquaculture, I would actually have to get a seaweed aquaculture license.  The wrinkle license is under the commercial license, but my halibut is an endorsement underneath that because you just buy the tags, and they tack it onto that license.  Then, you have the shellfish license, and then you have the town shellfish license.  I also do worming sometimes.  So that’s about six licenses just fishing.  Those are all the licenses that don’t have moratoriums on them, that anybody’s allowed to get.  Then, I have my oil license, my propane license, and let’s not even get into fishing, hunting, archery – all that stuff.  The state makes quite a bit of money off of me every year. (laughter)

Q: [23:11] Can I ask, what is the course of your calendar year like?  Can you talk a little –?

A: [23:19] Usually, April 1st to Labor Day is most of my fishing time.  I’ll have a little overlap.  I’ve had a couple weeks of seaweeding already start, but it’s one order here, two orders there.  It’s not really full-blown.  Then, we’ll start trickling into it.  Usually, by Memorial Day weekend is when I start really picking up the pace.  By Fourth of July, I’m full bore, and that will stay steady until Labor Day.  Wormweeding really doesn’t end until almost Halloween, but it trickles back out.  Most of my fishing stuff is from April to Labor Day, and then from Labor Day to the first of the year, I am usually back at my heating job, and that’s usually all boiler and furnace cleanings.  Then, if I’m lucky and I take care of most of the problems, by January to back to April, I’m just doing repairs and installs for heating systems.  So, it’s kind of like I have a winter job, I have a summer job, and I’m always doing something different because I’m wicked ADHD, and I get wicked bored. (laughter)

Q: [24:34] Do you own a boat?

A: [24:39] I have three skiffs, five canoes, and I am in the process of talking to a guy to build me just the raw hull of something that’s about 20 feet long, eight feet wide.  He’s like, “You want a raw hull?”  I’m like, “Yes, I want you to pop it out of the form and deliver it to my dooryard.  That’s it.  I don’t want paint, I don’t want sanding, I don’t want gunnels – I don’t want nothing.  I want you to pop it out and deliver.”  He’s like, “OK, I could do that.” (laughter) I’m going to eventually make that into a boat of some shape because I’m looking for the open hull, and I’m going to put an Aire (sp?) bladder floor in it so I could actually have more buoyancy and be able to carry more weight because that’s what I need.  I need to be able to carry weight.

It’s not felt safe because I’ve rounded – rockweeding – my seaweed boat five and a half ton – come in with a three-inch freeboard, and get pulled over by Coast Guard with marine patrol laughing at me up on the pier because they’re trying to measure my free board, because commercially, you’re supposed to have seven inches of freeboard, and I’m shifting my weight to the other side so that I get my seven inches while I’m up – gunnel touching the water on the other side, and Marine Patrol’s laughing.  Coast Guard is none the wiser. (laughter) So, I’ve built some pretty good relationships with Marine Patrol over the years.  I’m the least of their worries.

Q: [26:15] Sure.  Can you talk a little bit about experience you have beyond directly fishing and harvesting – I have a list here, this might help you go off – in bookkeeping, bait, or gear preparation?

A: [26:26] I don’t really do bait.  I’ve worked on a couple lobster boats, but I don’t really do much of that.  As far as gear, my gear is usually pretty simple.  I have canoes.  I have to go hunt down a whole bunch of wrinkle sacks, preferably the used ones, so I can put the wormweed in and wash, and I reuse my bags until they fall apart.  But most of my gear is pretty basic.

I mean, my prized possession is my clam fork.  That’s probably the only piece of gear that I’m really picky about, and that’s because that’s the tool that a lot of people use.  That’s all they use, especially when they’re clamming.  It has to be comfortable.  It has to be profitable to them.  That is their pride and joy.  It’s at the right angle.  The tines are the right length.  There’s different kinds of tines, different force with different amounts of tines, where you want your ring.  I mean, it looks so simple until you actually go and dig with it, and it has to be comfortable in your hand.

Of course, even though I’m right-handed, I dig like a left-handed person, so everything is backward for me, and trying to get my welder to put stuff where I want it to be – because also my hands are smaller, so I got to be able to – I have a hard time holding on to the clam fork.  I actually have my ring hooked to the top of my clam fork so I can hook my thumb actually right in the loop.

Q: [28:05] Great.  Can you talk a little bit about any experience you might have in processing, marketing, or trade?

A: [28:18] That’s a very open, broad thing.  I really don’t deal very much, as far as that goes, for the simple reason – yeah, you harvest it, you bring it to the dealer, to the dealer that has the license to either buy that product.  I also do small orders.  I’ll have somebody – “Hey, can you go find me 10 pounds of clams?”  That’s the closest I get to actually selling anything.

I looked into trying to find a green crab market, and I had a lot of opportunity, but the problem is transport.  They don’t really want to pay for it, or at least not a price that you can profit or even break even on, so it all stalled because unless you can do green crab in a tier product capacity, you can’t make any money off of it.  You need your soft shell for your high-end market.  Then you get down into bait, and then you get into specialized fertilizers, and then you get into restaurant stock.  Everybody was like, “Oh, restaurant stock is going to turn around and save it.”  But the problem is if they’re only looking to pay 15, 20 cents a pound, I can get more selling it as bait. (laughter)

Q: [29:48] Yeah.  I think I want to come back to green crabs in a little bit, but just continuing on this, do you have any experience in advocacy or other community-based organization related to fisheries?

A: [30:00] Now that I can talk about.  I’m on the Shellfish Advisory Council for the state.  I’m also on Maine Sea Grant’s Policy Advisory Council – committee/council.  I don’t remember what their C stands for anymore. (laughter) I am always going to Fishermen’s Forum.  I’m always doing stuff like this, talking to people.  I actually had some people down from the southern part of the state that are looking into the odd fisheries, like clamming, like wormweeding, the fisheries that you don’t see because everybody sees the lobster boats.  Everybody sees the big boats going out and dragging.  No one turns around and sees the person walking down a path with a bent clam fork and what looks like a vegetable basket. (laughter)

I’ve helped with regulation ideas.  Right now, we’re working on a subcommittee working on retail for harvesters.  So, say, for instance, I have somebody of the public comes up to me on the beach.  “Hey, can I buy some clams off of you?”  I would actually be legally able to do it because, as of right now, you’re not allowed.  I would have to bring my clams here to my house, and they would have to meet me at my house to buy those clams.

So, we’re trying to change it to allow more flexibility.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I break the rules all the time.  I do follow the rules.  This is the one rule I hate.  I have told the people that made this rule that I break it.  So, I’m not afraid to say it.  They already know. (laughter) But legally, I can’t sell clams off the back of my truck.  They were talking about this rule and that rule, and there should be some HASSA training and some inspection on your truck.  I’m like, “But you don’t go to their house and inspect their house, but that’s OK.  But you want to inspect the back of my truck.”  The customer turns around and walks up to my truck and sees gas cans and trash and all kinds of stuff on the back of my truck.  Do you really think they’re going to buy those clams from me?  It’s the same exact thing as going to the house.  You’re just putting more added stipulations to it to make it harder, which I understand because if you open it up, you can risk more illness because there will be people that will mishandle it.

But at a certain point in time, the more hoops you make them jump through, it ain’t going to change the fact – they’re going to do it anyway.  So, you could either work with them, make it legal, make it work for everybody, or they’re just going to do it anyway.  Make your choice.  Does the state want to make money, or does the state not want to make money?  Because that’s really the only difference at this point in time because Marine Patrol isn’t going to enforce it. They’re not going to turn around and tell a clam digger that he can’t make an extra dollar a pound for the five pounds that he’s going to sell that person off the back of the track.  It’s not worth it.

Q: [33:40] Balancing all these different things that you have hands in, what does an average day look like for you in the season?  What are all the different things you’re doing in a day?

A: [33:52] I am up and out the door by 4:00.  I’m usually passing out on my couch by 7:00 (laughter), and that’s if my day is done.  I’ve had days that I went wormweeding, and I was up at four, picked until it was high tide, and then got all it back to my truck, loaded it out of my canoe, into my truck, brought it down to the ramp, had to wash the bags.  Then I had to drive all the way to Jonesport to make one delivery, Beals Island to another delivery, and then go to the Harrington-Addison-Columbia Falls line, and make another delivery, to then drive all the way back.  I ate, and I went back out on the water.  I had another big order that I had to do, so I picked nearly all the way up to midnight, which was about high water.  I mean, it was like mid-tide, and I was getting exhausted, but I was 45 minutes from home, so I had to make a choice. OK?  Drive the 45 minutes, try to wind down, get to bed, then drive 45 minutes back in my four-hour window or to sleep in my truck.

I spend more nights in my truck in the middle of summer than I do at my own house.  Me and my husband, we’ll go four days without seeing each other living in the same house. (laughter) Every day, it’s different.  I could be doing it out in the sun.  I can be out there doing it while we’re getting three inches of rain.  Wind is usually my biggest barrier, and that’s because I do most of it out of a canoe.  But I’ve also gotten to the point – I’ll half-load my boat, and I’ll walk it around a long way if I have to.  No matter what, they need the wormweed, and I have to go pick it because I do it primarily by myself.  So, it’s me, myself, and the beach. (laughter_

Q: [36:13] Wow, that is such an insane amount of –

A: [36:16] Yeah.  So, you’re either eating food on the go, or you’re packing a lunch, and what foods you do bring with you is important because you need protein and readily available calories and carbs.  When I do fisheries, I have a lunch box.  I have crackers.  I have anything with bread.  My diet during the summer is actually horrible, absolutely horrible.  Chicken and carbs is my whole entire diet during the summer.  Unless I was rockweeding, hot dogs was another big thing, just fat, quick, easy because you can’t have anything heavy on your stomach.  I used to drink an ungodly amount of milk because – I couldn’t do whole milk because it would sour your stomach in the sun.  But if you did one or 2% it was ready calories right there, quick, easy to burn.  It was enough that you could take a couple swigs and trick your stomach into thinking you weren’t hungry to get through the next half hour.

Because when you’re based on the tide, five minutes in this area is a lot because when you’re rockweeding – when I pick in a canoe, I’m racing the tide.  I’m picking my seaweed as the tide is going out.  I’m maintaining pushing my canoe out as I’m loading it, and if it gets stuck, I’m stuck until the tide comes back in.  So, turning around and taking a five-minute break is not always an option, and that’s why when I was rockweeding, I was always dragging people off of rocks.  Because in this area, a big drainer, our tides can be upwards of 30 feet on a big drainer.  If you break that down into a six-hour tide, you are literally gaining or losing an inch a minute.  Fifteen minutes, you’re a foot and a few inches out of the water, which, in a lot of areas, they don’t realize that.

I was talking to this guy in Louisiana.  We were talking about tides.  He’s like, “Do you mean swells?”  I’m like, “No, I’m not talking about swells.  I’m talking high tide, low tide.”  I’m like, “Where you are, you got a three-foot tide.”  If you were down at the Keys, you would have three inches.  They’re like, “Nah, it can’t be like that.”  I’m like, “Dude, I’m a two-hour boat ride from the biggest tides in the world.”  We are literally second in the US.  We are literally second to only Alaska, and Alaska only got us beat by a couple feet.

Q: [39:18] Wow.  Yeah.  How do you feel like your background or identity shapes the work you do in the fisheries?

A: [39:25] I think it makes me more conservative for the simple reason – I went through enough schooling, and I went through – I took marine ecology and all those classes, and so, really, it’s given me a different perspective on what’s going on on that beach.  I was talking to somebody that works for the Department of Marine Resources, and the point that I made to her was you are used to reading numbers about a beach.  I am used to going down to the beach and reading the beach.  I turned around to her.  I’m like, “You can spend all these hours doing your bio assessments and all that.  You can give me a clam fork and an hour and a half, and I can tell you more about that beach than the six tides you spent here.”  That’s just because I’ve had so much experience.  I can walk.  I know that hole is different than that hole.  I know that this seaweed is different than that seaweed.  I know this seaweed will grow better on that side of the cove because of the way it faces the sun, and you’re not going to find it on the other side of the cove.  So, I ain’t going to go there looking for it while you need your data to tell you that it’s not on that side of the cove.

So, it gets me into looking at the different processes, and I like to then figure out how to use those processes to benefit that beach.  For an example, my wormweeding.  I have areas that are very prone to getting sunburnt and rot because the marsh grass only grows about this tall, so it doesn’t provide the shade that a three-foot marsh grass blade is going to do.  So, I’ll take some of that rotten stuff, I’ll package up, I’ll bring it to a different beach, and I’ll spread it out in grass that’s higher, and what survives will then be transplanted there, and I start adding new beaches.

Also, one great thing about the rot is I’ll go wrinkling, and I will take all my coals, all my small snails that I couldn’t sell, and I’ll go back to those rotted areas, and I’ll sprinkle them right on top of it because the rotten seaweed is on a lower edible scale than the actual living plant.  So, the wrinkles will actually target it because it’s easier to eat.  So, like rockweed – I can’t remember the scale.  It’s like a one-to-seven scale.  Rockweed, I think, is a five or a six on that scale.  I’m trying to remember.  I can’t remember the name.  Gayle Kraus pounded it into our brain.  But the point I’m getting to is, on the rot version of it, it would only be a two.

So, it’s really easy, high-nutrient, and wrinkles always go for decaying, decomposing stuff and also your fine seaweeds.  That’s a biological process that you can actually take and use to benefit the wormweed because what happens is rot is contagious.  So, when it lays and pancakes on top of it, it will actually spread to healthy cells and kill the healthy cells.  So, when you put the wrinkles on the dead rot, they eat all the dead stuff, kind of like leeches trying to fix big wounds.  It will eat all the dead skin so that it can actually – same exact concept, just using two different species.

Q: [43:06] Do you feel like your – sort of the same question, but do you feel like your gender affects your work in fishing at all?

A: [43:14] It used to.  Now, not anymore.  Back then, I didn’t have a name.  No one really knew me from a hole in the ground.  Oh, there’s Danny.  We know everybody.  What I found was when I was working in Jonesport – it was definitely more prominent – was I was the only girl on the crew for the first few years.  When you came in with a rounded boat and a ponytail flapping in the wind, people start taking notice.  Then, you go into the gas station and grab my hot dog and whatever.  Actually, at that point in time, I drank a lot of vitamin water.  Should have had a scholarship or a subscription or something, but that’s how they got to know me.

And then I became the seaweed girl, and then I got into wormweeding.  It got to the point that if I wanted to, on any given day, I could pack my lunch and my rain gear and go down to Jonesport, stand on the wharf, and end up on the back of the boat like that.  I would have never been able to do it back then.  I tried it.  Didn’t work.  Because all they saw was this little five-foot-six.  At that point in time, I was 110 pounds.  I weighed absolutely nothing.  So, getting on a boat, as I said, if you weren’t the wife, the daughter, or a sister of a fisherman, the odds of you getting on a boat was really slim to none unless you turn around and got the licenses and you got your own boat, which I did about eight times over. (laughter)

Q: [45:05] Do you feel like fishing works with any family or caregiving responsibilities you might have?

A: [45:14] Not really.  I mean, other than paying the bills.  I guess either A, I don’t understand the question, or B, literally just pay the bills, is the answer.

Q: [45:26] Sure.  So, we’re going to transition now into environmental change.  Can you describe any changes in the marine environment that you’ve noticed while you’ve been working on the water?

A: [45:37] Temperature.  Storms have been a little bit crazier.  I think the biggest thing I’ve noticed – I’m not sure if anybody else noticed, or I’m just crazy –it almost feels like all the seasons shifted a month, and it’s been like that for like four or five years.  Our falls are going later into the year.  Our springs are taking a little bit longer to come on.  Then, here we are in Maine.  For the longest time, we would be like 65, 70, 75 degrees for most of the summer.  We hit 80 for like two weeks in August.  Now, we’ve been like 80, 90 degrees for most of the summer, which is extremely abnormal.  I don’t know.  Something screwy is happening, but I’m also the type of person – can it be global warming?  Yes, but everything also has a cycle too.  So, we could be overlapping multiple things.

One thing I can say is with seas rising – I’m noticing it more with the salt marsh grass – I’m slowly losing my lower part of the marsh grass.  Some of it is to erosion.  Some of it is just the stalks aren’t coming back up.  Some areas, I know it’s green crabs because you can go to an area, and they all have the same cut right on the top – nice, straight, smooth.  It’s not like it’s jagged.  It looks like somebody went in with a pair of scissors.  That’s green crabs.  If you got green crabs eating marsh grass, there are no clams there.  There are no shrimp there.  There are no other thing that they’re eating that they have to resort to marsh grass that are in the top two hours of the tide.

So, it’s a lot of different things.  Green crabs love our weather.  We haven’t had enough harsh winters to really keep the numbers down, and it’s going to get to a point – I’m a little curious to see how this summer is going to be because we didn’t have –  this is probably the mildest winter we’ve had in at least my 18 years of being up here.

Q: [48:16] Yeah.  How are these changes you’re seeing impacting what you do?

A: [48:21] It’s killing me with wormweeding because I work in a very narrow strip.  When I’m wormweeding, I need to have marsh grass.  I need to have a rockweed source, and I need to have a freshwater source.  If I don’t have those three, odds of me finding it slim to none.  Then you compound that with some areas, the banks are just straight up eroding away and dropping off and taking chunks of marsh grass right with it.  Then, you have the green slime has been really bad the last couple of years, and that’s because we’ve been having such rainy springs.  It’s dumping so much nutrients while we have the cold water that the green slime is taking hold very quick.  It creates a mat that can be upwards of a quarter to a half-inch thick.  It just smothers everything underneath it.

So, when you have your little stalks of marsh grass trying to re-emerge come spring, it hits that barrier, and they die.  You can pull that off and see all the grass that’s just curled over because they couldn’t make it up through.  When I get into areas that I know that that’s bad, I’ll take my fingers, and I’ll run it through the marsh grass and try to break it apart a little bit.  Unless there’s marsh grass, I don’t have a job because it doesn’t collect it.

To explain why that is, is wormweed is ascophyllum nodosum.  It actually is rockweed.  What happens is little fragments break off and get caught up in the marsh grass.  It never puts down a hold fast.  So, if you were to compare it to the Ross versus Acadian Seaplant lawsuit – that lawsuit forced DMR to distinguish between the two, so it made wormweed have a really gray zone, but it’s detached.  What happens is, when it’s detached, gets caught up in the marsh grass, it starts growing into a mat rather than the typical growing up like a tree.  After about three years, if it’s not picked or thinned out, it will actually convert back to rockweed and then get pulled out and float somewhere else.  So, that’s how wormweed grows. (laughter)

Q: [51:03] Sure.  Is there anything that you’ve tried to kind of adapt to the changes that you’re seeing?

A: [51:10] Other than transplant to new beaches, it’s kind of – I do a lot of rotation.  I have some beaches that I can harvest two, three times a year.  I have some beaches I can only harvest every other year or every third year.  Every beach is different.  So, when I go, and I approach a beach, I will walk it first before I dive into just picking it because I make the decision – OK.  If it’s this long, which – that’s about – what – inch and a half, two inches.  If I wait a month and a half, it will be four inches long, and I can actually harvest twice the amount.

It’s not as much an adaptation as it is treating it like farming.  Is this ready to harvest?  Would I be better off leaving it?  Am I going to be able to make it back here at a certain point in time?  Do I know that there’s a big storm that might be coming, but the dead marsh grass is gone, and this new stuff isn’t tall enough to leave it there?  Maybe I should pick it now, or a storm is just going to pile it up at the high tide mark, where it’s going to rot.  Every beach, you just got to handle it as the beach.  Yeah, more like farming.  More like aquaculture without a permit. (laughter)

Q: [52:38] How do you feel like – what allows you to know that so well?  How have you come to those understandings?

A: [52:48] School helped a lot.  School definitely helped a lot, especially when it got into reading scientific papers because it takes finesse.  You don’t turn around and pick up your first scientific paper, read it, and understand it.  I remember my first paper was the easiest, stupidest one that you could possibly read, and I had to read it four times before I figured out what they were trying to talk about.  Because it’s like, yeah, I could read it, but did I understand it?  Did I actually get out of it what they got out of it?

I have a filing cabinet in there of all kinds of scientific papers – different fisheries – and just looking at relationships between things.  After a very long time staring at beaches, it kind of becomes second nature because – when I was applying for a job, I had to go figure – it was in the marine sciences, so I was trying to figure out my resume and what fisheries I was doing.  I had to go through my tax returns to figure out it all.  I kind of had to go and explain that – wait, I just lost my train of thought.  Where was I going?

Q: [54:14] You were talking about your background making it possible to understand the ways that –

A: [54:22] Yeah, but there was a very specific route I was going.

Q: [54:25] Scientific papers, thinking about applying to work at DEI, I think.

A: [54:29] Nope, it was DMR.

Q: [54:30] DMR.

F2: [54:32] Filing cabinet. (inaudible).

A: [52:34] You guys want a bottle of water to take?

F2: [54:37] Yeah.

A: [54:38] Yeah.  I’ll go grab water.  Give me a second.  I’m sure it’ll pop in my head.

Q: [54:42] So, what has made it possible for you to, in your specific case, understand how to interact with beaches?  For example, are there any resources, relationships, trainings, or organizations that you drew on to be able to assess and –?

A: [54:59] Oh, no, I made it up all as I went along.  That’s what most of us fishermen do, is we just literally make it up as we go along.  I mean, education really helped, but – I may remember my point.  I was figuring out all my jobs and all my fisheries, and for shits and giggles, me and my husband started figuring out how many hours I have worked on the beach.  OK?  We gave up counting at 27,000 hours. (laughter) That was the point I was trying to get to.  After tens of thousands of hours, at a certain point in time, I could tell you more about certain species than probably most people can.  They might have their fancy little experiment that they ran for a few months or six months or maybe a year, but I have stared at the same exact plant for eight, nine years, and compile that with education and scientific papers.  It allows me to pool from different things, even sometimes minute detail that might be relevant, that somebody else would get lost because they needed a scientific paper to tell them that it exists.

When I was rockweed harvesting, when I was training, I had a very specific rule.  I did what we call the half rule.  Legally, you have to leave 16 inches.  Well, no one is going, measuring 16 inches and cutting it above the 16-inch mark.  It’s kind of hard to just – it was a horribly designed rule for the simple reason it’s damn near impossible to actually do it.  But the half rule made it easier.  If I knew I was in four feet of water, I dropped my rake right below the water surface, and I started pulling in, I knew I was cutting at three feet.  If I was up at the high tide mark, the whole entire plant was submerged.  I would take half the plant.  If it was an eight-foot plant, I would leave four feet of it.  This way, I never got anywhere near the 16-inch rule.

The following year, I was able to go back and harvest the same area because I left plant behind do it.  Now, the way ascophyllum is grown – it’s kind of like a cone shape.  The further down you cut, you’re only gaining ounces when you’re being paid by the ton.  So, where are you going to target? You’re going to target the top of the cone, or at least that’s where you should be targeting is the top of the cone.  That is the issue that we’ve had with a lot of activism, is that you get a whole bunch of people in there that are new.  They don’t know anything.  They don’t have a couple years under the belt that tells them, “Hey, I should be harvesting up higher on the plant for the pounds rather than the ounces.”  It just completely works into their narrative, and it got to the point that they started driving out the harvesters that actually knew what they were doing and created this high overturn of rookies that literally just fed the activism even further.

It was actually the activism that is fucking up the activism (laughter), which is kind of hard to explain to people because I had – like, with the lawsuit, now the landowner decides whether or not they can harvest.  You want to know what it costs?  It’s causing over-harvesting in other areas because they can’t spread out their harvest.  So, the activists have literally caused the problem, but we’re the innocent ones trying to save the environment.

To be completely honest, being on the beach would show you the difference, not the scientific paper about a bird that, as of right now, is only spreading parasites to other fisheries, especially because it builds up – this parasite that this bird – if you actually really pay attention to the Rockweed Coalition, and the bird she’s specifically talking about that she wants to protect – in its poop, there’s a parasite that floats around in the water and gets caught on the green crab grill gills.  So, as they start eating the green crabs, the amount of parasites increase.  If you go to turn around and use green crabs as bait for lobster, you could give lobster zombie disease, which is this exact parasite that’s coming from this bird.  Ain’t that screwed up?

When you start really getting into the papers and trying to actually follow the chain of everything, it’s amazing how you can make an argument for something so small that’s so devastating to other things.  Seaweed is the only thing her and I can’t talk about. (laughter) You’ll know exactly – if you looked them up, you’ll know exactly who I’m talking about. Unfortunately, if you met her 15 years ago, she was actually a real fantastic person.  She was actually a scientist I would have trusted, especially when it comes to rockweed, one very controversial industry in Maine is that this fishery has literally turned activism into a mental health illness, which is pretty scary that the human population could be that vulnerable.

Q: [1:01:25] Can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by that?

A: [1:01:29] This woman I am talking – I’m not going to name her because I’m not – but this woman has gone from being an activist to downright stalking harvesters.  Last year, she called Marine Patrol on me seven times.  I didn’t get a summons out of any of those seven times.  She even tried to call Coast Guard because I didn’t have seven inches of freeboard in my canoe. (laughter) She even put an article in the Quoddy Tides about a month ago, talking about how it’s the environment and this and that, and then she had a clam chairman talk about how rockweeding is harmful to clamming.  Here’s the thing.  I know that chairman.  I know him very well, dealt with them many times, and seaweed is also another thing him and I can’t talk about.  But his town has five clam diggers, and they haven’t harvested a single clam in 10 years.  So, I’m trying to figure out how the hell does he know that rockweed harvesting is bad if he has not had any rockweed harvested in this town and has no clams.  I am taught – things like that – that is a biased remark.  Biased is what gets scientists in trouble, which is why I can’t talk about that. (laughter)

Q: [1:03:19] I’ll change the subject.  I’m curious if there are any – as you sort of look towards the future, you’ve mentioned the possibility of aquaculture.  I’m curious what moves or changes, or if there’s anything you want to do as you look towards your future of involvement with fisheries.

A: [1:03:38] I want to get into seaweed aquaculture because, the fact of the matter is, once the vertebrates and the invertebrates can’t handle our increasing water temperatures and stuff like that, the seaweed is what’s going to be left.  So, instead of going multiple avenues just to end up at that point anyway, might as well – because, honestly, 25 years now, your aquaculture is going to be seaweed and fish.  That’s what it’s going to be.

Oysters are going to be certain point because they’re seeing it down south.  I mean, yes, we have vibrio.  Vibrio isn’t going to be what kills the oysters.  Maine hasn’t seen dermo or MSX or the other parasites that actually wipe out oyster, especially the American oyster.  That’s why they’re doing more of the European oysters, for the simple reason, they’re more resistant to those different kind of parasites and also can handle the colder waters.

Eventually, their range is going to shift, too.  Eventually, it’s either going to shift out, or it’s going to die.  I just don’t think it’s something that’s going to be really there for the long term.  So, kelp is where I’m going to put my money, especially since it’s a multi-billion-dollar worldwide industry.  There’s never a surplus.  There’s always more demand and more demand.  So why not get a piece of the pie?

Q: [1:05:23] Sure.  As you look towards the future, what is your biggest concern about the marine environment for Maine’s fisheries and aquaculture?

A: [1:05:35] Whether or not we can adapt fast enough.  Because the fact of the matter is we’re not going to be able to create enough change to actually stop this.  We can go with all the wind turbines and all the solar panels and all the electric cars that you can possibly imagine – if we can flip a switch and turn around and get rid of the need for all petroleum base in a single instant, we are still not going to fix it.  We’re already there.  So, at this point in time, it’s either you deal or adapt, and where you fall in that line is whether or not you’re going to survive.

Q: [1:06:20] What do you think those adaptations will look like?  You mentioned kelp aquacultures.  Do you have any more thoughts?

A: [1:06:27] Actually, I think kelp aquaculture is probably going to be the closest way to even solving a problem for the simple reason – kelp can actually absorb more carbon than nearly any species on the planet.  If we were to flip that switch and get rid of all our carbon producers, we would need kelp just to take the edge off.  So, seaweed is still where I’m putting my money.

Q: [1:06:58] If you could tell policymakers what their biggest priority should be to help people adapt or as they look forward, what would you tell them?

A: [1:07:07] Stop killing the fucking whales. (laughter) No.  They’re all trying.  But the problem is we need to stop listening to the people with the money, and the ones with the money sometimes are wolves in sheep’s clothing.  There are plenty of organizations that tried to kill our lobster industry.  Doesn’t necessarily mean that their policies were correct, but they obviously had money to do something and create a problem.  It’s not as much as what I would tell the policymakers and stuff.  It would be more about telling the people that vote them in.

Q: [1:08:06] What would you tell those people, if you don’t mind me asking?

A: [1:08:11] Just to be cautious.  I mean, there are people that – I don’t know how to explain it the best way without getting myself in trouble. (laughter)

Q: [1:08:24] We can also move on if you’d rather.

A: [1:08:27] It’s more along the lines of take things more of a grain of salt because you’re going to have – “Oh, you should be listening to the science.”  “Oh, the science isn’t reliable.”  “Oh, we should be listening to the people with money because they’re the ones that made the money, so obviously they had to do something right,” which does not necessarily mean that it is right.  If it makes you scratch your head and wonder, then it’s probably not a good idea.

Look at the last two presidential elections.  We’ve had three candidates, and as far as I’m concerned, all three of them made me scratch my head.  We have 321 million people, and Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Biden was the best we could come up with.  There’s a reason for it.  The problem is, you just think you’re voting for somebody into an office when reality is it is the couple thousand people that are behind them that you’re actually voting into that office.  They’re just puppets.  They’re just a face.  One was supposed to – “Yes, let’s reduce taxes.  Let’s make everything better.”  One, “Let’s fold on just about everything.”  And another one, “Oh, I’m a woman.”  But I can’t say anything.  I voted for Trump (laughter) both times.

Q: [1:10:05] Transitioning into resilience as you look towards the future, I’m curious, have you ever participated in any kind of resilience or training program, maybe related to climate or just like any other kind of adaptation?

A: [1:10:18] I’m working on some stuff now, but it’s such beginning stages, I can’t really talk about it because we got – one group I’m working with got funding from NOAA to work on resilience and set up a working waterfront climate plan, but it’s so beginning stages that we haven’t even started interviews yet.  We’re literally still coming up with the questions. But the problem is – like, at a clam meeting last night, I am trying to work on a project to build an access up Federal Harbor.  Well, the cement pier, which is a commercial pier down in Lubec, over the last few storms, took a bunch of damage.  Well, guess what? They want to put a squash on my access project up here because they want the money to do the commercial pier.  But the way that I found the money to do that is because it has to also be accessed to recreational, so they can’t use my money.

Now they want to squash that, to shift priority to that.  But fact of the matter is, the town has taken no responsibility in preparing to ever have to fix that thing since it was installed 50, 60 years ago.  As far as I’m concerned, their ill-planning is not my problem.  Their ill-planning should not be on the taxpayers now because they ill-planned.

We know that weather is getting way worse.  We know that storms are becoming more intense and more frequent, and you want to wait until it’s actually damaged to have done something about it when fact on the matter is you knew about the problems three years ago.  Why weren’t you working on it three years ago?  Why weren’t you turning around and deciding to take $10,000 out of the general fund and put it in a kitty and save up the money until you had chance to actually replace it?  No, they didn’t want to do that, and now they’re in the tough position that they’re trying to figure out a way of fixing it without it being a cost to the taxpayers.  But where they close it down for recreational use, they took their funding pool from being this big, a big ocean to a puddle, and now they’re mad because I used avenues to get access for commercial harvesters by also allowing access for recreational harvesting or other activities because the clam diggers are going to be out there at low tide, the recreational users are going to be up there at high tide, so they’re not even going to conflict.  But I’m using recreation to get the money to support the commercial.

Q: [1:13:45] Yeah.  Speaking of being really smart about other avenues or looking towards that, what other strategies do you think would be really effective, looking towards the future, for promoting resilience?

A: [1:13:57] Giving an incentive.  Half of my clam diggers don’t even have boats, so they either have to get on a boat with somebody or they have to get permission by some gracious landowner.  Now, the Municipal Association are working on putting a bill in to allow a tax credit for walking paths for commercial harvesting.  So, there are things in the works right now, and finding unique ways – we had a property that – the town owned one path, but we needed a path right across the high tide mark because it was steep and not safe right there.  If we were able to go across even just 100 feet, there was a smoother way down.  What we ended up doing was talking to the property owner.  They ended up donating that walking path right at the high tide mark and exchanged – their tax property moved from being waterfront to water view, giving them almost a $1,800 tax break on their property.  That’s a big deal to somebody, especially if it’s a lot of elderly in this area who really can’t afford their taxes, which I think it’s retarded that they even pay taxes after 65, but that’s another story.

There’s plenty of creative ways to come up with getting everybody to get along.  That’s what you need to do.  Everybody has to get along.  But the problem is, the getting along usually gets divided once money becomes a conversation.  There’s a house that right now is up for sale in South Lubec, and us clam diggers were talking about whether or not we would still have access after it sold.  I turned around to him, like, I highly doubt we’ll have access, especially since that’s a $1.2 million house.  They’re not going to give us permission to walk across their property to go to work.  When the original guy bought it, he bought it for literally $350,000.  He gave us permission to walk across that property.  It turns around and goes up four times in price.  It’s not going to happen.

Q: [1:16:50] To the point of shore access, are there any other changes that are maybe not environmental that you’re seeing that are impacting your work?

A: [1:16:57] The fluctuation of people moving in.  Honestly that right now is one of our biggest problems.  During the pandemic – and it’s slowed down since, but there was a two-year span that over 100 houses changed hands.  Now, a lot of people won’t think 100 houses is a lot, but when there’s only 1200 houses in the town – that’s one in 12 changed hands in two years.  That is a pretty massive percentage.  Some of them have been great.  Some of them have not been very great.  Some of them have heard stories from their neighbors that were horror stories about people that they’ve had to deal with from 10, 15 years ago.  The stories never die.  And then, on top of it, some of those stories are so irrelevant to the point that the person that actually did them is not even alive anymore.  So, it becomes this vicious cycle.

All you can do is try to get as much information out, educate people, and talk to people.  We do clambakes.  We did a clambake last year, our first one, and we were taught – gave us a chance for landowners and harvesters to talk.  We worked on – instead of putting up “No Trespassing” signs, put up “No Trespassing without Permission” signs because that then tells the harvester, “OK, I got to go talk to this person if I want permission.”  Half of the time, they won’t turn around and say, “No.”  They just want to know who’s on their property.  They want to know how you’re going to treat their property.  They want to know, are you going to be out there at 2:00 in the morning or at 10:00 at night, or you’re going to be there during the day.  I have a few landowners that have conditions, and if you’re willing to do the conditions, then you get to keep your access.

But the problem is – I’m worried about a place like Lubec turning into a place like Wells, where for the last 10 years, they’ve been fighting over who owns the intertidal when the fact of the matter is, the state just has to fucking grow a set and say, “We own the intertidal.” (laughter) Like with me with sea weeding, I spent a lot of time looking at deeds, because technically, only the colonial deeds are the ones that own to the low tide mark.  Well, if you go back and look at some of these places – some of them, the low tide mark got magically added in the ’80s.  Now, you’re actually looking at – is their deed actually valid?  So, if I turn around and harvest an area that Marine Patrol says it’s in the deed, I can’t do it.  I’m going to go back 100 years.  I’m going to go back to as far as I can find it, and then I’m going challenge the validity of their deed because – make them prove that their deed is valid because if they can’t prove their deed is valid, I can’t be charged with anything and (inaudible) not only be dropped but completely stricken from my record.

Deeds are a real messed up thing in Maine because some of them – they just bought the house, and literally, when they wrote the deed, just magically added it.  There’s no reason – I couldn’t find any law that gave them the right to even add it to their deed.  There’s places that the towns are not even taxing them for their intertidal space, and yet they think they have a claim to it.  Then, pay the taxes.  You want to have a claim to it, pay the taxes.  You don’t want to have – you don’t want to see somebody else taking a stroll on your beach, pay the goddamn taxes.  But access is a very touchy, touchy subject.

Q: [1:21:51] Do you think that the clam bakes and education and talking to landowners, do you think that’s helping?

A: [1:21:57] It is helping.  Right now, we are in a dispute with Coffins Neck.  They formulated a road owners’ association.  Yeah, you’re allowed to do that in Maine.  It’s kind of like an HOA version for a road.  They’re trying to keep out all commercial fisheries and stuff like that.  It’s really boiling over at this point because they’re having people arrested.  The people that are getting arrested are instead putting stuff in the roads, popped tires – right now, it’s a full-blown out war.  The thing is, they started it because their bylaws are actually messed up.  You have to have 20% of the agreement of the 73 properties, or you have to have 60% of the agreement of the board.  Well, there’s only five people on the board, so you only have to have three out of the five.  That’s when they turn around and submit the change to keep commercial fishermen out of there – they use the three people on the board to do it.

A lot of the people didn’t get the emails to actually vote within the certain amount of time–  the people that actually live there – so it got back-doored in.  Right now, even their own people are fighting amongst each other because – there’s one person up there.  He’s like, “I live all the way to the end of the road.”  He’s the last house on that road.  He’s like, “As far as I’m concerned, you all have permission.  You want it in writing?  You come see me.”  So he just turned around and over ranked everybody by giving permission to the whole entire fucking road, to the whole entire town.  So, it’s been a battle right now.  The thing is, this could have been talked out and solved six months ago.

Q: [1:24:17] I’m curious, have you seen any real positive change, not just related to this, but just in everything you do?  Are there any things you’ve seen that have been really positive or opportunities (inaudible)?

A: [1:24:27] Honestly, since we started putting more stuff on Facebook and being more transparent about what we’re doing as shellfish harvesters, it really helped.  I’m always posting the rain closures and our explaining why we do conservation closures, why we’re doing conservation days, and why are we turning around and doing this clam bake and this and that.  We get actually a lot of good support from the town.  The town is really good at being supportive, especially you are throwing an event because there’s nothing else to do other than hang out and drink. (laughter)

That’s why with this group that I was talking about doing the resilience and wanting to do surveys and talk to people, they’re like, “When’s the best time?”  I’m like, “The best time is for us to set up a clam bake, bring your own beer, and you just wander around and talk to people.”  Because it is a whole lot easier to turn around and answer questions about the environment with a beer in your hand. (laughter) There might be a whole lot more willing to be like, “Hey, they seem chill.  Let’s have a little bit more of a conversation rather than thinking somebody who’s coming in asking questions in a lab coat or something, which is what they picture in their head.  They have this image of a scientist, and if it’s easier to break down that image, it’s actually easier to get more answers and actually work with one another.  We do a lot of discussing over beer, usually at the only bar in town. (laughter)

Q: [1:26:10] As you’re looking towards this future, what is your hopeful vision for what fisheries could be for Maine?

A: [1:26:17] That they’ll still be there when the next generation gets there, and that is concerning because the way I see it is if we, the fishery, don’t ruin it, the lawmakers will ruin it, or the activists will ruin it.  Let’s not even get into the groups that just buy up land.

Q: [1:26:48] So, I asked what is your hopeful vision.  Do you think that that’s the realistic vision?

A: [1:27:01] No, I think we’re just going to keep diluting it for every generation coming after because that’s the human way.

Q: [1:27:14] In your time, I think you’ve already mentioned this, but I’m curious – you mentioned a real difference in perception from when you started to now.  Have you seen that on the whole for women in the fishery?  Have you seen more women get involved?  What is your perception of that?

A: [1:27:27] Honestly, women getting involved is so much easier now than it was for me 15, 16 years ago.  Actually, what I’m finding now that it’s easier for women to get into the fisheries – it was actually easier for me to get into the fisheries than it was for me to become a heat technician.  The dynamic, the perception, is very different.  They look at a female fisherman now, and they’re like, “Yeah.”  A female heat technician – they’re very skeptical because we hear about women in the fisheries.  We don’t hear about a lot of women in the trades, especially in Maine.  I am the only master oil burner technician in Washington County that’s a female.  I’m the only one with my propane licenses that is female.  Actually, you have to go past Bangor in order to find a woman that does heat.  There’s only six of us in the state. (laughter) So, number even smaller than the amount of women in the fisheries.

I did one cleaning for a guy, and he was an old guy.  Of course, he was deaf, so when he was on the phone, he had to have it on speakerphone.  I’m working on his furnace, and he goes upstairs, and he calls up my boss – turns around to my boss, is like, “Eric (sp?), you know how I’m supposed to have a cleaning on my furnace today?”  And Eric’s like, “Yeah.”  “Do you know you sent me a woman?” (laughter) Of course, my boss is laughing on the other end.  “Dude, she’s good.  She’s been doing this for years.  She does so many cleanings.  She’s better at it than I am at this point.  She will be fine.”  “But she’s a woman.”  I’m like, “Last time I checked, even though I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty sure she does.” (laughter) Because when I got hired, he’s like, “I am foolish to not hire a woman.  But I’m going to tell you one piece of advice.  Don’t take shit from anybody,” which is why him and I – we had this love-hate relationship.  He’s fired me four times and hired me back in the same day. (laughter) He’s like, “You know, you’re lucky you’re a woman.”  I’m like, “No.  Me, being a woman just limits your options.” (laughter)

Q: [1:30:13] You do feel that there are opportunities for women (inaudible)?

A: [1:30:16] There’s opportunities, but you got to have the mindset of – you can’t change everybody’s opinion.  You’re going to have some that are just – that’s just the way they are.  It’s not just from men, either.  I had a woman.  I did her cleaning.  She called up the shop.  “Amanda did a fantastic job.  But next time, can you send me a man?  I really don’t think women should be doing this kind of work.”  You can’t change that.  She knows I did a good job.  She told my boss that I did a good job, but I wasn’t going to change her mind.  And it’s one of those – you win some battles, you lose some battles, and you got to play the long game.  You can’t turn around and take it personally.  You got to just move on to the next one.  Because with heat, I deal with over 1000 customers in the course of a season.  I only have problems with maybe five or six of them.  So, I’m not going to harp on those five or six.  I’m going to move on and do my thing.  They like me.  They hate me.  I don’t give two flying fucks.  Sorry.  I’m probably not supposed to swear.

Q: [1:31:33] No, it’s totally OK.

A: [1:31:37] Just make sure you give them a warning label. (laughter)

Q: [1:31:40] (laughter) We’re reaching the end of the interview, but before we start closing, I’m curious if there’s anything else you want to mention that we haven’t brought up in the process.

A: [1:31:49] No, I think we covered a lot, and I know I tangent a whole bunch of times.

Q: [1:31:52] No, it’s been so great.  I’m curious.  Jess and Hillary, do you have any questions?

F1: [1:31:56] Yeah, I wanted to ask you – you talked about the impact of green crabs on the salt marshes, which impacts your seaweed harvest, which is really interesting.  I hadn’t heard that.  I’m more familiar with the impacts of green crabs on clams –

A: [1:32:08] Yeah, because that’s all that gets –

F1: [1:32:09] – and shellfish.  Yeah.  So, I just wanted to ask if you wanted to say anything about that as a clammer or just anything else about their impacts on your various fisheries activities.

A: [1:32:19] Green crabs impact everything.  The problem is green crabs is not a “us” problem or “them” problem.  It affects us all.  It affects the lobster fishermen.  It affects all the groundfish.  It affects scalloping and clamming and seaweed and marsh – they’ll eat anything.  They are literally the pigs of the ocean.  The problem is we’ve always tackled it as a “us” and “them” problem rather than all of us.

F1: [1:33:00] Meaning divisions among the fisheries in terms of –

A: [1:33:03] Yes.

F1: [1:33:04] Yeah. (inaudible)

A: [1:33:05] Because they only want to take care of their problem, but they’re not solving the problem.  They’re fixing a little blurp of their area.  We were talking about green crab trapping last night, and I turned around to him, and I’m like – because they want to work on West Lubec.  But the problem is, unless we get (inaudible) or whiting on board, we’re just going to get their green crabs, and we can’t fish enough to get their green crabs and our green crabs.  So, until they get off their asses, we’re never going to solve the problem.

It’s not even just in the fishery.  It’s division among towns and communities.  Green crab is a “all of us” problem, and if we want to solve green crabs, it’s going to take all of us to do it.  There’s a bunch of different studies that are coming out on trying to tackle and reduce population.  But the problem is all the ones that are having success is because they’re using cannibalism to solve the problem because all their clams and all their beds that they’re trying to protect are already gone, so there’s no food source for the green crabs.  Then, the green crabs are choosing to eat themselves.

There’s right now an experiment going on the West Coast.  They are trapping them and are only taking the females and releasing the males back because the females control the population.  What they’re finding is when there’s no food source for the green crabs, these bigger, larger male ones will eat the smaller ones that are also eating the smaller females that aren’t getting trapped.  They’re literally reducing their own numbers on their own.  But the problem – what they’re finding is now their populations are coming back, and if they slow down their initiative, they’re going to be back to square one because what they found when they were taking them – both genders – was that they were just reducing the stress on the food source so they weren’t tapping into the cannibalism, and then the populations were just skyrocketing.

F1: [1:35:44] I’ve seen the science on that.  It’s fascinating.

A: [1:35:45] Yeah.

F1: [1:35:46] It’s sad.  All this effort led to actual population booms.

A: [1:35:49] Yes.  But the thing is, that also made – they’ve changed their design about three, four different times already, which is – that’s how science should work.

F1: [1:36:01] It’s really interesting and cool your perspective of both somebody who reads the science and who feels the effects and sees it and was working on the ground.  I’m interested.  You talked about – for a little while, you were targeting green crab as a fishery and mentioned soft shell and selling for bait and fertilizer and different stuff.  I’m just curious.  When was that, that you were doing that, and what made you get into that?

A: [1:36:25] It’s been one of those things that keeps on coming back up. (laughter) I really started, really heavily looking into trying to do something about it about three years ago.  So it wasn’t really all that long ago.  I talked about – I used to do recreational fishing.  Well, green crabs is used as bait for tautogs down in Connecticut. But the season is very short, and they don’t really want to pay a whole hell of a lot.  That started with that.  But they want to pay  $15 for a 50-pound bag, and you have to, bare minimum, get it to the Maine-New Hampshire border, if not down to Boston to the actual market.  So, unless you have a couple 100 bags, you’re breaking even, barely breaking even.

F1: [1:37:28] You said transportation was (inaudible) –

A: [1:37:31] Transportation is the most – is the worst thing.  Then, I started looking at either getting more for the green crabs or finding more local markets.  Getting more for the green crabs – over in Italy, they’ll actually pay $26 a pound for soft-shell green crabs, and all they do is fry them up and sell them like chicken nuggets with dipping sauce.  $26 a pound.  That’s crazy.  But the problem is, as soon as they molt, you have to have them straight on ice.  You got to get them to the market.  You have to get them over to Europe.  Even the Asian market has a strong green crab market.  The problem is, they’re very messy to move, messy to deal with.  You got to have constant ice on them all the time, or you would have to probably either go the route of dry freezing or some other preservative process to be able to get them over to Italy within a reasonable amount of time frame.  So it gets very, very complicated because I even looked into – with the Asian market, urchin is a very strong agent market and also is wrinkling.

So, was there a way that we can harvest green crabs and somehow piggyback off of those transporting methods because they already have to get there anyway?  But I didn’t find really any interest.  Then I started switching to local, of which I was doing more of the specialized compost, of which I’m sure you might have heard of Maine Coast Fertilizers.  They produce, right over in Marion, which is like 20 minutes from us, is one of their packaging plant.  I was trying to talk to them, but they only want to pay seven dollars a yard for green crabs, and we would have to pay for half the cost of the dumpster.  They would come and do all the transport costs.  But you turn around and fill a 30-yard dumpster – you want to know how much you make off of it after everything is paid?  $15.  That doesn’t even cover bait.  That’s just covering me putting them in that container, and them coming and getting it.

F1: [1:40:11] Were you ever able to get or find local market for the soft-shell crab where there’s not enough –?  That connection wasn’t made.

A: [1:40:18] It’s also so short-term.  The biggest issue is that we have tourism for a couple months out of the year.  Then those places either shut down or stay open to locals, and locals are not going to eat green crabs. (laughter) They’ll eat their halibut.  They’ll eat their lobster.  But the thing is, they have seen 20 million green crabs pile onto a dead fish or whatever, and they aren’t eating that.  Just like most locals don’t eat wrinkles either.  They know what it is.  They’re not interested.  I had one restaurant, but she only wanted a couple pounds a week because – and I wasn’t going to turn around and charge her $26 a pound for a couple pounds.  The problem is, they’re so hard to, one, find when they’re soft shell or you have to harvest them before they start turning soft shell and maintain them until they actually do molt.  And then you have a very limited amount of time of getting – they’re a huge pain in the ass to do soft shell.  It’s not like green crab, where there’s established processes.  They could even be tricked with temperature to force molting.

F1: [1:41:50] Which crab is that (inaudible)?

A: [1:41:52] The blue claw crab.  There’s just not enough – we know a lot, but we don’t know enough about green crab.  I eventually want – I’m right now working on a project on my own to try to figure out a way to use green crab biomass assessments to make decisions on the adjacent clam flats.  For instance, if you know that you have a green crab, that they range from this size to this size, but we know that this size green crab can’t eat anything bigger than this size clam, then maybe when we do our seeding and our transplants, the clams that we should be putting on that beach is bigger than the clams that could be eaten by those green crabs.  I’m kind of like working on –

F1: [1:42:47] Through your role on the committee and your –

A: [1:42:49] No, I’m doing this completely on my own for shits and giggles.  Actually, what I was trying to do – the state has a program that does biomass assessments for the actual beaches.  You punch it in, and it regurgitates numbers.  Well, I’m trying to make something similar to that, but on steroids.  There will be a set of four or five different experiments that you can do.  When you punch in the data, it automatically does all the statistical work so that a clam committee doesn’t have to hire a scientist or a statistician to turn around and analyze their stuff.  They can turn around, follow the directions, input it, get the result, and then make their own decisions.

F1: [1:43:55] That’s cool.

A: [1:43:57] I’m trying to put it on steroids with no funding. (laughter)

F1: [1:44:00] It’s an innovative idea.

A: [1:44:02] Yeah, I think it would be so much fun.  If you know it’s a predator, and we know it’s the number one primary predator, then let’s learn more about the predator because we’re not going to affect – we’re not going to be able to change that the ocean is getting more acidic, other than there are studies that – closely growing kelp to clam flats – because a lot of the nutrients they absorb are acidic nutrients.  They’ve actually found that it could actually locally reduce the pH and makes it better for mussels.  It’s experiments with mussels right now.  I read a lot.  Most people read books or their Kindle before they go to bed.  I read scientific papers about everything. (inaudible)

F1: [1:44:59] (laughter)

Q: [1:45:00] That’s amazing.  Super cool.  Jess, do you have any questions before we end the interview?

F2:       [1:45:10] No, I think you guys got it all.

Q: [1:45:12] Great.  Well, then, I’m going to stop this.