JK: [00:00] My mother would say, “Well, who’s their parents? Oh yeah, I was in high school with them; you can go there.” Now, with my children, I finally met a lot of their friends and their parents, but I didn’t have the – I haven’t known them for thirty years like my parents had. So, this community’s changed, and you used to be able to afford a house around here; now you can’t, and it’s a different class of people that are here now. It used to be a working-class town even when I was a kid, and nobody that has a normal job can really afford to live here anymore. So, everyone in my generation now lives in Trenton, Lemoine, or Otis, all the people I grew up with and all the people that grew up in houses in Bar Harbor, whether it was Ledgelawn, Pine Street, Ash Street. That’s all gone now. Also, if you were walking down the street, somebody knew who you were, so if you did something wrong, “There’s that Kane boy, or Pinkham boy,” or whatever. It was a lot closer, and everybody had a position in town. If somebody worked at the bank, that was their job, and they’d been there for twenty-five years. I mean, I’m speaking loosely. It wasn’t all like that, but it was more like that than not. Like I said, my uncles were [in] all the departments, and they were career people, and now it seems like – our bus drivers were career bus drivers. I had a gym teacher who taught my mother and me and wound up teaching my daughter right before he retired. It was all the same, and it was comfortable. It was neat. It was a good way to grow up.

 

GK: [01:38] You were in the school system here.

 

JK: [01:43] All the way up through. From kindergarten right up through high school. I graduated [from] Mt. Desert Island High School.

 

GK: [01:48] Was it the same –? Was it in the same place?

 

JK: [01:51] Yes, everything’s as it was then. Yes. They did some renovations at one point. They added on to the school, put a new gymnasium and stuff, but it was all – my mother went there, and it was the same for her as it was for me and my children.

 

GK: [02:05] That’s cool. What was that decade when you were growing up?

 

JK: [02:11] I was born in ‘84, so probably from ‘90 to 2000 was when we were ramming the roads around Bar Harbor. [laughter]

 

GK: [02:20] Val Peacock was telling me you were down on the town pier a lot, hanging out down there too?

 

JK: [02:26] Yeah, well, my cousin – my uncle was harbormaster too at one point, so we were down there a lot mackerel fishing and everything, but even then, fishing didn’t really appeal to me. I didn’t know that that was what I was going to fall into. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I figured out that it was something that I wanted to do.

 

GK: [02:43] You guys would just go down and hang out?

 

JK: [02:45] Yeah, yeah, piss people off, get in the way, get our lines in the fishermen’s propellers. There was this one old timer that used to fish down there. I can’t remember his name, but he had a big goiter on the back of his head. I mean big, like the size of a softball, and his favorite thing to do was – Austin Walls, I think his name was. He just loved to mackerel fish. Of course, I don’t know how, but I always got my line across him. You could tell he was pissed, but he’d just unwind it. I was scared to death of the guy, but somehow, I’d always get into his gear.

 

GK: [03:17] That’s so funny. Are there still packs of kids running around?

 

JK: [03:27] No, I don’t think so much that it’s unsafe or anything. I think the culture has changed with social media and all that stuff, and kids’ schedules nowadays are so tightly monitored; they go from sports to this to that. We didn’t have all that stuff. We had sports, but it was a lot looser affiliated, and that was what you did. You went outside with your friends. It’s not like that. My kids barely go outside unless I force them. Kenna’s better than Wyatt, but he’d stay on his screens all the time.

 

GK: [04:00] What were the names of some of –? What are the last names of some of that giant family that you’re related to?

 

JK: [04:07] Well, it’s all Kane on my father’s side, and then, my mother was a Smith, but they had more girls. Only one of her brothers had kids, so that name was petering out, at least with our family. Then, my cousins were Pinkhams. Their mom married – he was a local police officer turned into harbormaster/all-around townie. [laughter] Uncle Lobo, they called him. Lobo.

 

GK: [04:36] Uncle Lobo?

 

JK: [04:37] Yeah, he’s got his own bench down at the pier. He always used to sit down there, and after he passed, they put a plaque on it with his photograph. Yeah.

 

GK: [04:44] Wow, that’s cool.

 

JK: [04:46] Yeah, he used to like to hang out and just keep an eye on things. [laughter]

 

GK: [04:51] I don’t feel like I see a lot of people hanging out on the town pier anymore.

 

JK: [04:55] No, no, not really, and we all used to just hang around town. There’d be rows of kids on the benches, and then there was what we’d call Bullshit Rock, which is the rock up at the park, right by the Village Green there. So, that was just filled with all us degenerates, and we looked the part – hacky sacks, wide pants, dreadlocks, and all that good stuff. But in each generation, you could see them, and it was really cool. The older kids would be into their thing, and then the younger kids, and then we’d all intermingle. You knew what you could get away with, and you knew what you couldn’t.

 

GK: [05:34] What brought you into fishing? I mean, how old –? You said you were in your teens.

 

JK: [05:39] Yeah, the chronology – is that the word I’m looking for?

 

GK: [05:44] Yeah, sure.

 

JK: [05:45] Is kind of whack for me. But I believe – I started lobstering at some point in high school, and that was just out of – I needed money. I didn’t really think much of it. Just off and on, I would help people out. Then, eventually, my cousin went – we used to have draggers out of Bar Harbor that went for cod and haddock, and there were three of them. My cousin went on one of them, and I was so jealous that he got to do that that I just asked this guy – I said, “I’ll go for free. Just take me.” His eyes just lit right up. “Oh yeah, free labor. Come along.” And I made my first trip. I was still in high school, but I just skipped school. I think my parents were so relieved that I was going to try something. It wasn’t because I couldn’t graduate. It’s just I wasn’t that into it. I made my first trip, and I think I made three hundred dollars. They gave it to me off – some cash – some fish they sold on the side, and I thought – I think gas was ninety-nine cents or a buck or something, and I was like, “All right. Twenty bucks, fill my tank up,” and I still got a pile of money, so this is what I’m going to do. I stayed full-time on that boat even while I was in school. They had what they called at the time an alternative school, and they would give you your curriculum for the year, and you were tasked with completing it in whatever way, shape, or form you could, but you had to have it done to get your credits by the end of the year. So, I took all this work, and I brought it on the boat with me. I actually did better while I was at work than I ever did when I was sitting in school, and so I wound up getting my diploma. After that, I was like, “Now I can go fish.” And that’s what I’ve done. [laughter]

 

GK: [07:22] So you were working on the dragger at that time?

 

JK: [07:24] Yeah, yeah. It was a blessing and a curse because it was the end of an era. The government – by the time we were down, we only had thirty-five days that we were allotted to go fishing, so that left three hundred and something –

 

GK: [07:35] Of the year?

 

JK: [07:36] Of the year, so we couldn’t make a living anymore. We tried everything we could – scallops, shrimp. We even rigged up to go herring fishing, and it was the last year that it was open, so we got to do it that one summer, and then they closed it. We didn’t have enough history to keep doing it. Eventually, it just got so I couldn’t make a living at it anymore. I wound up going lobstering, but in the interim period of me being on that dragger, I had missed the cutoff to get my lobster license. So, like I said, it was a blessing that I got to go do it because it’s a thing of the past now, really, day fishing and short trips out of a local port. Now it’s big boats out of Portland and stuff. But the curse was that I missed the cutoff to get my lobster license, which put me on back deck for the last fifteen years.

 

GK: [08:20] And you’re still waiting.

 

JK: [08:21] I’m still waiting, yeah. At one point, I was number fifty-two, and it was a five-to-one ratio, which means five people had to retire to get one license issued, and one license was being issued a year. So, theoretically, I was between thirty-five to fifty years away at one point. That was discouraging. Then they made it even stricter, where not only was it five fishermen had to retire, but you had to retire four thousand tags, which is how they measure effort in the fishery, how many trap tags are issued throughout the state. So, if five guys quit fishing, but those guys only had two hundred traps apiece, that’s only a thousand tags. So I would have had to somewhere come up with the other three thousand tags, so that might have taken fifteen fishermen. It was just impossible, but I did it. I got on the list, and I thought, “Well, at least if I get on that list, I can have a position to speak from at these meetings and stuff.” I remember at one meeting, there were five young people there; only two of us were on the list, and these other three guys were talking like they were going to get in the business. It was like, “You don’t even know how far away you are.” And nobody wanted to listen to them because who’s going to listen to a bunch of people that can’t even take the time to fill out the apprenticeship and do the program to get your license? So, it was challenging, challenging mentally, to see kids come up behind me that were younger than me, bypass me, get a license, buy a house, boat, truck. We had some banner years lobstering; it was just amazing fishing. Granted, I made money on back deck, but I would have much rather been in a much better position had I been on my own. So, it was a really frustrating thing to have to go through. I’m seeing light at the end of the tunnel now. I’m number ten, so potentially two years. It’s coming to an end. I got on that list before my son was born, and he can possibly have a license before I have mine.

 

GK: [10:20] Wow. And are your kids –? Are they going fishing?

 

JK: [10:23] Yeah, they will fish. He has 150 tags, and he fishes out of a twenty-foot skiff, and my daughter’s allowed up to fifty traps.

 

GK: [10:34] I just want to go back a little bit and ask you, who were you fishing with when you were on the ground fishing boat?

 

JK: [10:41] Allen Walls. His nickname was Sparky.

 

GK: [10:44] Cool. I might see him tomorrow.

 

JK: [10:46] Yeah, he’s quite a cat. I fished with him for, I think, two and a half, three years, something like that. When I started, we had eighty-eight days we were allowed to go, and you could just make a living on that. Then they actually made it easier so you could lease days. But the permits had to match, and so to find two boats – another one that was leasing days that matched yours was virtually impossible, but we did find it, and I think we got a hundred and twenty days one year. And then after that, just gradually, it was cut to fifty and then thirty-five. They even went to two-to-one in certain areas, so you may have only got twenty-something days to fish, and you can’t maintain a sixty-foot steel boat on twenty fishing days because then they were charging you for steam time, too. So, if it was six hours each way to the grounds, you’ve lost half a day coming and going. So, you do that, and what do you got? Fifteen days or something to go fishing? So, he sold his permit and then wound up selling the boat, too. It’s been a lobster smackdown at [inaudible] for the last, I don’t know, ten years or so.

 

GK: [11:46] Wow. Where were you fishing?

 

JK: [11:50] We were fishing here in Bar Harbor in the summertime, and then in the winter, we would switch over, and we’d go … yeah, we were fishing out of Portland for shrimp in the winters, and then shrimp became unprofitable. They shut it down, and they lost their markets. By the time the shrimp came back and they opened the fishery, the markets were gone, so I think we got like thirty cents a pound for them one year, which wasn’t viable because fuel kept increasing. So, we’d rig back over and go groundfishing, but you had to manage your days because you had so few, and it was just a constant struggle to keep everything going and try to stay on top of it and make money. Then, we’d even go to Gloucester in the spring sometimes because the prices were higher down there, and it was closer to the fishing grounds. We were just constantly traveling around, but we still had infrastructure here in Bar Harbor. We had an ice machine up in Hulls Cove. Vic [Victor] Levesque, who has a farm up in Trenton, would truck the fish for us, and we were partnered up with another boat, the Thunder Bay. We would time our trips together so that we could get ice and fuel and everything, and we could sell our fish at the same time to save on trucking because every little bit at that point counted. So, if you could save a nickel here, a nickel there, it was worth it. It was neat to be out there fishing and having a partner boat. Everybody on the other boat was good friends of mine, so we were all just living this lifestyle that was a culture, and that all got erased overnight. I mean, the government just shut us down, and now there’s a catch-share program; it’s all big boats. They cleaned out all the boats. I don’t think there’s another permit until Port Clyde. There may be one in Rockland. I mean, active permit. I do know several people that still hold the groundfish license, but they don’t employ it.

 

GK: [13:48] Yeah, I’ve never really understood why there aren’t – there’s no ground fishermen in places like this, but there are those – there’s, I don’t know, ten big boats in Portland or something.

 

JK:[13:59] I think that was the way – well, most of the guys on the councils that made the rules were the big boat owners, which I never understood why you would put them on the councils. I mean, it was so apparent to everyone what was happening, but NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] had an idea of what they were looking for, and it wasn’t small boat fishermen. It was too bad because I also groundfish on big boats in the winter sometimes, and what we see in a trip is what me and the other guy used to catch in a season. [laughter] So, I never understood why, if you were trying to maintain a healthy resource, you would commercialize it. The reason our lobster industry works so well is we’re owner-operators. We care about our resources; we know we have to go back there year after year. Who cares about a piece of bottom that they just come plunder and leave? Nobody’s going to maintain that? They can just come back in five years. They can go elsewhere. If we have to go to that resource on a regular basis, we learn how to manage it and take care of it in a healthy, sustainable way. Everybody went to the meetings, everybody vocalized all this, and they don’t listen. It was a front. It was a show. A lot of it’s what’s happening with the whale regulations now. They hold these public forums, but they’ve already got in their mind seventy-five to ninety percent of the way what they’re going to do. A lot of fishermen don’t go anymore. How many times can you go to a meeting and not be heard? I was a very strong advocate for the industry, and I’ve kind of stepped back. I’m not going to waste my time. A lot of the people that are involved in the industry don’t really care about the industry as much as they should; they just want to take from it. It’s more of a business than a lifestyle and a culture. I’m not really into that. I do this because I love it, because I want to be there, because I want something for my kids, and it’s more than just a livelihood to me. It’s more than a paycheck.

 

GK: [15:50] Yeah, have you seen a shift in your lifetime of more people entering who it seems are more for the profit side of things?

 

JK: [16:00] Well, it got so good that it was hard not to be for the profit, but then people expanded so much that instead of having a boat that you might keep for twenty, thirty years like they used to do, these guys upgraded so fast and then it became a business. When I first started fishing, there were probably fifteen of us that would meet at the dock every morning just because we’d all show up; we’d all hang out, shoot the shit. It was a family. It was unity and all that. Now, it’s just more every man for himself, and it’s sad to see. I don’t hang out anywhere near – I mean, that comes with the age, too. You get older, and you don’t have the relationships that you had. I don’t see that that much anymore, that people are just spending time together and talking about fishing and all that type of stuff that we used to do. We were competitive. We competed against each other. A lot of the guys now that hold licenses came up through the student program, which I’m not averse to because that’s how my kids are going to come up, but they never went fishing with anyone else. They’ve been captains since they were eight years old when they’re allowed to get their first traps, and they don’t know a lot. They go, they come, they set all over you, they don’t know what they’re doing, and they don’t know the traditions. I always equate it to the fact that what if the guys that came before we had decided that they didn’t want to V-notch? What if they decided that they didn’t want to put escape vents in their traps or have a measure? They got way less for their lobsters, and they caught a lot less, too. Those guys could have very easily pocketed that money and supported their families – those were tough times – and they didn’t. They gave us a resource, and this generation just rapes, pillages, and plunders. If you so much as mention something that hurts their bottom line but could help the industry, they want no part of it. And that’s so frustrating to me. What have you done for this business? Nothing. What have you given back? Nothing. What are you sacrificing? Nothing. You came up in the best time that we’ve ever had in this business; you took every dollar you could out of it, and you fought every regulation or conservation effort that has been broached or brought up, and it’s sickening, really, because that’s why the fishery will die – greed – not because we don’t have a resource that’s sustainable.

 

GK: [18:23] And do you think there’s a threat of that happening?

 

JK: [18:27] I think, yeah, it’s happening as we speak. It still seems good, but I have seen the downhill trend already from where we were. It’s not alarming yet, and perhaps we’ll taper off. I do expect that to happen short of an ecological disaster. It’s just frustrating for me as somebody who cares about the resource. It stems into the working waterfront issues too that we’re losing all that, and just the whole thing is – and now people are starting to realize it, but it’s all stuff that people have known locally for twenty-five years, at least the fishermen have known, and now people care, and it’s like, there’s no working waterfront left to save. There’s no affordable housing left for anybody that wants to be here anyway. So, it’s already something that’s happened and gone by. People – I appreciate it – are trying to do something about it now, but it’s like the same thing with the groundfish. “How did all these big boats get all the quota? Why are there no little boats?” Well, that was a question that should have been asked twenty-five years ago. That stuff doesn’t come back. That ice machine property is sold now. There’s no ice now, the guy with the trucks passed away, and the infrastructure that went with all that – the guys that did the welding, the guys that maintained the boats – that’s all gone now. So, it’s not something that could be brought back overnight. Nobody seems to, especially in the government, be willing to acknowledge or give credence to anything, so it’s just on with business.

 

GK: [20:01] Did there used to be an infrastructure in the town of Bar Harbor for lobstering that was a little bit more –? Was it easier? Did you not have to go and get your bait in somebody’s yard?

 

JK: [20:12] Perhaps before my time, I guess. Well, we did have a bait delivery guy when I first started, and then there was a local wharf that people would sell to, Young’s Wharf. That was right there where Stewman’s is now. I had heard, and I don’t know if it’s true, that the fishermen wanted to form a co-op, and it got sold out from under them, which wouldn’t surprise me, but that would have been quite an asset to this harbor. It’s harder to work as a fisherman now because so many people are here. We can’t get around. We can’t get our trailers. There’s no parking. You can’t get anything done. You can’t even drive through the pier because they’ve got it blocked off for cruise ships. Why do you think those people come here? To see the boats and all that. No, not the only reason. You made it almost impossible for us to do our job. I remember talking to – I don’t know if he was the public works director at one time or something, but I was complaining about some of the infrastructure that we have in Bar Harbor for fishermen, which is none. All of it is done off our backs. I mean, there’s a simple thing like they have a bait trough, and it goes down your ramp, and you can put a tray in it and just slide it down. It’s little things like that that they have in other harbors. Fishermen had to buy their own (heist?). You know how much taxes for locals fishermen pay? I mean, every one of them owns a house, and there’s not many professions left that people do own a house locally, and they all snowmobile and ride motorcycles and have trucks and trailers, and all they do is pay taxes into the local economy and property taxes and everything else.

 

GK: [21:47] Hold on. Should we pause? … Yeah, the taxes. It’s like, what are your taxes paying for?

 

JK: [22:12] Yeah, exactly. And that goes back to what I was saying; that guy goes, “Oh, you fishermen, all you guys do is complain. There’s nothing wrong down there.” It’s like our ramp where we load our boat just ends. So, if you’re not there at half tide or above, you can’t even load your skiff or anything, and there’s nowhere to tie up our skiffs, but there’s always accommodations for cruise ships and people like that, and most of those people eat onboard, so really they’re only coming to spend money in the shops. So, that doesn’t really benefit any of the locals. A lot of the business owners aren’t from here. There’s not really many locals left anyway. There’s a whole new class of people that, eventually, will be the locals even though they’re not from here. I’m not averse to that, but it’d be nice to have some of the people around that made this place what it was and be able to afford to live here and stuff, but that’s never going to happen. You can’t turn back the clock, and a house is three hundred thousand right now for just a bare-bones house around here. Who can afford that?

 

GK: [23:15] It’s one of those things, too – when I was up in Lubec, Lubec’s had so many changes. A hundred years of sardine factories, and they’re all gone. They’re like, “What do we do now?” They have a working waterfront sort. They’ve got some boats. They’ve got urchin and scallop draggers and stuff, but people always up there are pointing to Bar Harbor saying, “I want to be like them,” or “I don’t want to be like them.” I just think what you said – yeah, you can’t turn back the clock. I don’t know. What do you think Bar Harbor is?

 

JK: [24:00] Well, Bar Harbor was a pretty good little town when a million people used to come here. It sounds like a lot, but it was a manageable number. I mean, there was traffic, but it was reasonable. And now there’s three million. I don’t know when that increase started, but I believe that we’ve jumped up within the last ten years to three million people. We can’t sustain that here. It’s not good for the town. You can’t even go to a grocery store; it’s just lines. That’s from – it used to be maybe June until October; now it’s April until almost December. People don’t leave anymore. Town used to be empty after October, and there’s never a time when town’s quiet anymore. I don’t know what Bar Harbor is anymore; it’s just a tourist mecca, really. It’s not a community in the sense that it was, I don’t think. Maybe I don’t involve myself enough or try to make it that, but it’s not the community that I knew. So, I try to just keep the ones that are in my life close that I want in my community now as opposed to being part of a larger community, which is sad because it was a great place. Like I said, everyone knew everybody. I heard on the radio the other day about this little farming town out in – I think it was Missouri or something, and the guy says, “Well, it’s fifteen hundred people here,” and I thought Bar Harbor used to have a population like that, and it’s all gone. I always say if five of these people a year out of those three million a year come here and purchase a house, you know, after twenty years, now you’ve got a thousand people or whatever that would be – a hundred people that have bought these houses, raised prices, and it’s just probably more like ten, twenty or a hundred move here every year. That’s ripped the fabric right out of the community because it just drove everything right up. The working-class people can’t – it’s the same story all over the coast, so this is nothing new.

 

GK: [25:58] No, it is, but also the same question of what do you do about it. I don’t know. Maybe nothing.

 

JK: [26:06] Yeah, that’s where I’m at, at the point. Give me a battle and a starting point, and I’ll fight it, but you’re never going to lower the prices of the houses anymore. Even fifteen years ago, I could still buy a piece of property up on the Crooked Road or something. Now? A hundred thousand. You could still get a cheap piece of land until, basically, my generation came up. We were financially stable enough to afford it. I just feel like it’s one more nail in the coffin. I couldn’t get my lobster license. Now I can’t afford property. I think my parents paid forty thousand for their house. [laughter] Who knows what it’s worth now, and it’s just a basic three-bedroom family house, four-person house. It’s definitely, I would say, changed a hundred percent.

 

GK: [26:55] Are you able to live –? Are you living in town?

 

JK: [26:58] I live just outside of town. I’m only here just out of pure stubbornness. I refuse to leave. I will not be driven out. [laughter] If I have to fish that much harder, I will buy a house here, and I will stay, but I’m at the point – do I want to stay? Is it the place that –? But I’m tied here due to the ocean, and I still have all that family here. So, I do have some ties, and it’s nice to still have that family around and stuff because that keeps it feeling like maybe there’s a chance. [laughter] But my cousin now lives off-island. My other cousin just bought a place in Otis. Even there, they can’t afford to be here either. We were one of the most local families around, and if we’re not here, who’s left?

 

GK: [27:46] Can I ask –? Who did you learn to lobster with? Who were you on the boats with?

 

JK: [27:53] Well, I had just filled in on lobster boats. A lot of times, when dragging was going bad or we weren’t making money, I’d jump on boats. But when I finally got done dragging, I jumped onboard a boat called the Ocean Breeze with Wayne Gray, and he taught me most of what I know, or I observed and learned. [laughter] You learned quick or you failed. He was very stern, but he was fair, and he made me a good living. I didn’t realize how much I learned from him until I got on another boat. It was one of the things – I didn’t have any comparison. Then, when I went and got my new job after I got done with him, I realized that I had gained a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge, so I was grateful, even though at the time when I was learning it, I wasn’t. He was a very hard guy to fish with. [He] went very hard, all kinds of weather, which I was used to from dragging. But dragging, you get to come in and take a break, and lobstering, for three or four months, you just go almost every day, and that was eye-opening to me. I wound up liking it, and I told the guy that I was with now I’d give him just the fall. I was thinking about maybe doing something different. I dug a few clams, and that was – I don’t know – I think twelve seasons ago, and I’m still with him. [laughter]

 

GK: [29:09] Wow. Where was Wayne Gray? Was he in Bar Harbor?

 

JK: [29:13] Bar Harbor, yeah. Yeah, I stepped right from the dragger in Bar Harbor; basically, one day, I was herring fishing, and the next day, I was going out lobstering.

 

GK: [29:23] He’s passed now?

 

JK: [29:25] No, he’s still here. He’s got a boat called the Ocean Bounty. Yeah, he’s still pretty much going as hard as ever. [laughter] He’s in his sixties now. It was a heck of an experience, and I’m glad I did it. Like I said, even though, at the time, I wasn’t that into it. But there was a lot of money to be made, and like I said, we were all competitive, and most of the sternmen I was related to or went to school with in the harbor at the time, so it was all in the same age class. We were all doing the same thing: comparing numbers, seeing who was best, and arguing all the time. It was neat.

 

GK: [30:01] Were there still some of the old-timers out there, too?

 

JK: [30:06] Yeah, there were still some old-timers. The Bull was around. Old man Phil Corson and then Gary Parsons were still around, and he was kind of a staple in the harbor, one of the fishermen that everyone gravitated towards or away from, one way or the other. [laughter] I grew up right behind him. He had a lobster shop called Parsons’ Lobster, so I was always over there as a kid playing with his grandson. Then, it transitioned into being more around him as I got older and wanted to learn more about fishing and stuff. Then I was grateful that I got to grow up there and see all that stuff because even though I didn’t come from a fishing family, it gave me a little bit of credibility and background.

 

GK: [30:49] Yeah. Every time I talk to those guys from that generation, I always sort of – it’s not to be too nostalgic, but it’s a different way of looking at things; it was a different way of looking at fishing, I think.

 

JK: [31:00] Well, you had to love it because the money wasn’t always there. Those guys did well at certain times, and there were booms and busts, but it was one of those things where he would just have traps out just for the sake of having traps out, just to go haul them even if it was a hundred or something because he didn’t know what else do you do when that’s all you’ve ever done. And you got to uphold your reputation, so you got to go haul them. “Oh, Parsons is out.” And then that would drive me and Wayne out, and of course, Gary would be up inside somewhere tucked under a lee. Wayne would take me offshore twenty miles in the teeth of a gale, and we’d haul all day. “Well, Gary’s out.” “Yeah, Gary’s somewhere where it’s nice. We’re not.”

 

GK: [31:49] That’s funny. You’re not fishing in Bar Harbor now, though. You fish with somebody [inaudible] –

 

JK: [31:56]  I fish out of Little Cranberry Island. Yeah. Islesford Harbor. We sell to the co-op over there. I just stumbled on a boat, and like I said, I didn’t intend to stay, but the co-op was so convenient; there’s fuel, bait, everything’s there. We just dump our lobsters off, and we go home. They’re all quirky. Every lobster captain has his quirks, and you just find the one that you can stand. At least I do. I have a cousin that goes on a different boat every year, and he complains about each boat the same way, so I might as well just complain about the same boat the same way. And then my kids fish out of Bar Harbor because this is where I was born and raised, and fishing is not necessarily a birthright, but you have to establish some credibility and be accepted, and I have that here in Bar Harbor, so this is where I’m going to come back to in a year or two and set my traps. This is where I’ll moor my boat, and this is where their boat is.

 

GK: [32:50] So, you guys have a boat? It’s their boat? How does it work?

 

JK: [32:55] Yeah, my son bought it. As long as they don’t exceed eight hundred traps, they can fish together on that boat because eight hundred is the max limit for one boat.

 

GK: [33:04] Cool. It’s interesting because you’re kind of doom and gloom, but you still want them to do it.

 

JK: [33:11] Yeah, I think that there is a future to be had, and I try to show them the right way, or at least the way that I believe is the right way – to have respect for other fishermen, have respect for the industry and your product, and try to make it better, not just take. You V-notch a lobster if it has eggs on it. You’re not so busy. A lot of these guys are so busy now they won’t even put a V-notch in the tail of a lobster anymore, and it’s like, what good does that do? Now, next year, that lobster comes up with no eggs on her, and somebody can keep her, even though she was a breed lobster. So, they won’t even do that. We have more lobsters punched now than we used to because there are more lobsters around but percentage-wise in the population; it’s not as high. It used to be eighty percent of lobsters were punched from surveys that they did, roughly.

 

GK: [34:04] Punched is a V-notch?

 

JK: [34:05] Yeah, V-notch. And now it’s about sixty percent. So, it’s more in number, but throughout the whole population, it’s less. I know that people are handling these lobsters, and they’re not punching them. I think it’s law. It might be voluntary. But regardless, why wouldn’t you want to do that?

 

GK: [34:25] I think it’s law, yeah. It’s law.

 

JK: [34:26] Is it law? Yeah. So, I punch –

 

GK: [34:29] Yeah, if they were caught, they’d be in deep –

 

JK: [34:34] Yeah. Well, they’re not keeping illegal lobsters; they’re just not punching them, which is kind of a hard thing to enforce unless they were right there. Still, it’s just a matter of general principle. Do you not want a future? With all the stuff coming down that we have, whether it’s ocean acidification, global warming, which is one and the same, or pollution, or overfishing – whatever it is, I want to give our industry the best chance just like our forefathers did. Like I said, the sacrifices they made were a lot harder than the sacrifices – so, we have to get less end lines in the water? Big deal. Is it inconvenient? Yes. Are there other solutions? Yes. Do I think that the right whale people are wrong about a lot of things? Yes. There are ways to do this where we can make sacrifices and appease everybody, but there needs to be common sense on both sides. It’s very black and white right now, and that’s too bad. And fishermen are flexible. I believe that we are more flexible than they are, which is too bad because they’re very rigid. “This is what we need.” And there’s not a lot of evidence to support a lot of the things that they’re saying.

 

GK: [35:49] Yeah, I haven’t been to one of the meetings in a while because I went to the forum. When I was there, they were talking about the remote-control trap, which obviously hasn’t taken off. [laughter]

 

JK: [36:04] No. Well, if this tells you anything about the rope-less traps, they sent me an email the other day, and it’s this guy that’s promoting this type of thing. He says, “Bring a civil attitude, please,” in the email. So, clearly, it’s not being well received, but it’s not that these guys care about these right whales; they’re just trying to sell a product. The old marine control captain is selling the AIS [Automatic Identification System] systems now. He wasn’t doing it when he was in office, but it’s a conflict of interest. I don’t know. These guys are only there to sell their product; they’re not there to help the environment. The product is ridiculous. There’s no way with the way that we fish that we can have rope-less fishing. The whole point of being a fisherman is to have the knowledge that you gain from your own experience, and they want all of us to put everything on a computer now – where our traps are, where we’re fishing. I don’t understand how you could – the whole point of people even going fishing is to get away and be free and be your own person. Now, there’s so much government oversight that it takes the joy out of the business. Hundred percent reporting. Now I got to go fill out a piece of paper every single day when I get in. You already have that stuff. You have my landing slips; it goes to the dealer, and now you want me to have a computer that tells you where I am. Now you want me to put my gear – I mean, it’s just heavy-handed government. And I’m left-leaning. I’m not a hard-right, small-government person. But if these guys admitted that they’d done their job, they’d be out of a job, so they have to keep continuing to make rules and do things so that they stay in their positions. If they said, “Oh, the Magnuson-Stevens Act – we resurrected all the fish stocks, and we’re good,” well then what are they going to do? They were running out of ground fishermen. They ran them out of business, so then they had to come for the lobstermen. They ran the scalloping out of business locally, and they shut down the shrimping. The only thing they have left to do is focus on us lobstermen now. That may be a little bit dramatic, but there is some truth in it.

 

GK: [38:10] Well, I think it’s an interesting – I think it’s also just an interesting idea, the idea that once you put all those plots on a map, who owns that [data] even if it’s not directly connected to your boat?

 

JK: [38:28] Well, no, but it would be because that’s their whole ploy. They need the other guy to see where your traps are so he doesn’t set on you. So now we’re all going to be able to see each other’s locations.

 

GK: [38:38] I can see why that wouldn’t be – you wouldn’t want to do that.

 

JK: [38:39] It’s like my boss said; he goes, “I spent eighteen years trying to find how to fish this bottom,” and now guys just come and just set next to him. And if they can do that by sight, imagine what would happen if the guy from two harbors over could now see where you’re fishing. It’s too bad because I pride myself in going and finding my own product and my own fish wherever I am. I want to do it myself. Even if it’s not as good, at least I did it myself. You can still do it, but it’ll be a thing of the past.

 

GK: [39:15] What’s the compromise that you think would be –? For the gear/right whale compromise?

 

JK: [39:21] I want to see some data before I talk about any real compromises. We’ve done nothing but give and sacrifice – weak links, rope marking, changed our whole style of fishing to the sinking groundlines, and there’s zero data that I’ve seen – or at least show us the data on what we did. Is it working? They just keep asking for more, with no real follow-up to anything. There’s just more, more, and more rules. There are just as many ship strikes, there’s pollution, food sources have been tampered with, and global warming. You’re just coming at us because we’re easy to target, and I really think that there’s some corporations behind this. Spatially, they want the ocean for themselves, and they may be pushing this. Once again, I’m not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I think there is some truth there. There’s some wind power that knows it will be trouble, and there’s this and that. This is just one way to start pushing us out slowly so people can drill for oil, whatever it is they want to do because we’re in the way, because we do kick up a fuss, and we do protect our resources. People will back fishermen when it comes to that. If we do put up a big enough fuss, people will eventually see, but with the right whale thing, I felt we’ve got really no help. I mean, Janet Mills did give her big letter in the paper, but we’ve been on our own. It was all industry-funded, all the stuff that we did to counteract what they were saying. We put all that data together to spatially show where and when we fish, and we did all that ourselves because they didn’t do it in Massachusetts, and they have to fish sinking ground lines all the way to the shore. When was the last time you saw a right whale down off Cape Cod? Well, there are right whales off Cape Cod. That was a bad example, but inshore Massachusetts. [laughter]

 

GK: [41:07] We’ll have to delete that. Yeah, or inshore Maine.

 

JK: [41:11] But you know what I mean. Yeah, I’ve never seen a right whale. I’ve got thirty, forty thousand hours out there.

 

GK: [41:19] Well, that does remind me – just from the perspective of what the story is with that, it reminds me of Inuit – they restricted walrus hunting for native people in Alaska before restricting ships or cruise ships, or also restricting the oil refineries that were causing pollution that was causing the atmosphere to warm, the temperature to rise. Really, there’s no ice. I mean, it is this thing of – there’s been a constant pattern of targeting people who have the least resources to fight back.

 

JK: [42:06] That’s where they start.

 

GK: [42:09] And that would be one.

 

JK: [42:11] If you prove to me that we are entangling and killing these whales, I’ll be more than happy to make some changes and some compromises. But a lot of that gear – as a fisherman, you can look at gear and see where it came from. We have sinking rope, which falls under the water so that the propellers don’t catch it in between our buoys and stuff. Most of that rope that I saw had floating rope right to the buoy, which means it’s at least not Maine gear if not non-American gear. We knew that all along; it was that Canadian snow crab gear and people just thought we were crying wolf – “You guys are trying to pass the blame on.” Well, then it comes to light that a lot of those fatalities were coming from there. We’ve had gear marking on our rope forever. I don’t have the data. I’m sure there is some data out there, but we are not the giant threat. We are a small piece of the puzzle. Are there entanglements? Absolutely. But to the degree to change an entire billion-dollar industry when we’ve made all these dramatic changes to try to accommodate? Like I said, I just want to see some follow-up before you move on to the next thing, and if there is some data there, then we can talk about it. But you can’t just keep shoving stuff down our throat for no logical reason. So, numerous fishermen are out there day after day, and we don’t see hardly any right whales. I’m not going to say they don’t come here because that would be foolish, but percentage-wise – and then for a while there, the population is increasing, which now there’s going to be more entanglements because we’re saving more whales, so it’s kind of a catch-22 for us; the better job we do, the more whales there are, the more entanglements there’ll be. I don’t know.

 

GK: [43:58] Yeah. Can you explain– because I’ve never gotten it just on tape – the gear entanglement? Not the gear entanglement. Gear marking, what is it?

 

JK: [44:11] Well, first we had to put, I think it was a six-inch red mark in our rope or on it so that we knew it was – I don’t know if it was Maine or American gear, and then it went to three twelve inch marks: middle, top, bottom. And now they’ve got it – they want three feet purple marks, I think, middle, top, and bottom. I don’t know if the guy from the tape company is the one making the rules or what because we use tape. It’s such an onerous task every year to have to re-mark your gear for what we feel is almost no reason.

 

GK: [44:50] I was watching a friend – I have a friend on Deer Isle who marks his – he splices the rope in, which is crazy.

 

JK: [44:57] Some people are dedicated. We just put some tape on it and go.

 

GK: [45:00] [laughter] I didn’t know. It was really time-consuming.

 

JK: [45:09] It is.

 

GK: [45:09] And also something he was saying [was], “If this means that I can still have my gear out there, then I’ll do it.” But yeah, there’s a lot of –

 

JK: [45:21] I’d rather have a trap reduction more than endline reductions. If you want less endlines, take traps out of the water. I’d love to go to Six Hundred Traps. It’s two hundred less traps a year to buy, less bait, less time out there. Wherever there’s been a trap limit, those guys always do just as good. If it was universal across the board, it’s not that big a deal, but guys just freak out. It’s change. Oh, we don’t want to – tell them it’s for conservation, and they really don’t want to do it. “I’m not giving up something that I had.” I hear from the old-timers, “I used to fish two thousand traps, and what did that get me?” Well, let’s see, you went to eight hundred, and you had the best fishing you’ve ever had for your entire career. But a lot of these guys barely graduated high school. Not that I’m super educated, but it’s just like there’s no connect between reality. These guys have made up their mind, a lot of fishermen, and that’s the way it is. You will not change their mind, and it doesn’t matter what type of facts you present to them. It’s sad because a lot of fishermen are open-minded and willing to try new things, but a lot of them are very rigid and set in their ways.

 

GK: [46:29] Yeah, yeah. Giulia, were you writing something? Did you have any questions that have come up for you? You’re just hanging out. Giulia’s just hanging out.

 

Guilia Cardoso: [46:39] I was wondering if you think Islesford is similar to what Bar Harbor used to be in terms of community from what you can see.

 

JK: [46:47] Islesford is forced to remain a small community in that sense. But the tourism is ramping up even out there. I mean, there are just boatloads of people coming and going all summer long. Because of the lack of housing out there and just the fact that year-round people are mostly fishermen, it keeps that community the way that it is. What are you going to move there for? You can’t get in on the fishing grounds because they’re taken. Short of schoolteachers and the summer restaurant workers – it’s neat. It’s like Frenchboro; it stays a small – you have to rely on each other on an island, especially in the winter when there’s fifty of you out there. It’s neat. The biggest thing I miss is the big families. That was what kept the schools going and kept things interesting. People could play. The kids could play together, and now that’s – clearly, it’s too hard to raise ten kids now; it’d cost you a fortune. I got two, and that’s plenty. [laughter]

 

GK: [47:47] You’d have to get them all phones.

 

JK: [47:48] Yeah, I used to want to have ten like my grandmother when I was a kid. “I’m going to have ten kids.”

 

GC: [47:52] But you’re not the one who has to be pregnant.

 

JK: [47:55] I’ll get five different girlfriends and have two on each one. [laughter]

 

GK: [47:57] [laughter] That’s what they used to do. There was a guy on Deer Isle who was the local legend. I’m sure he was a horrible guy. He had twenty-seven children –

 

GC: [48:08] Oh my God.

 

GK: [48:09] – all over the place, too. I think he had some in Jonesport and some on Deer Isle. They were all connected to each other.

 

JK: [48:16] That’s funny.

 

GK: [48:17] But I think about it – Stonington’s a funny example because there’s so much money coming in from lobstering that it’s still such a huge component of the infrastructure of the town. Think about a place like that. Yeah, what does the future look like if that drops out?

 

JK: [48:45] Yeah, there is no future. If lobstering goes belly up, there is no coastal future for locals. I don’t know what – we have no backup plan. Some guys hold scallop licenses that would keep them going a little bit, and some of the guys are ready to retire because the median age in the fishing industry is up over the fifties somewhere in there. A lot of these guys have done well and had some good years. But these younger guys with a half-a-million dollar boat payment, it’d be over, and a lot of these guys don’t know anything else. Tomorrow, I could quit lobstering and go make a living in another fishery, in another port, in another state, but a lot of those guys never got the opportunity to go groundfishing or learn anything else, and so that’s it. Some of them I don’t feel bad for. There’s times where they wouldn’t let me in that I wished this whole thing would go belly up. It’s so greedy. I feel like some of them deserved to have a few bad years. A little bit of reality – slap them in the face. Because I haven’t even really seen bad fishing. When I first came into it, it was just the beginning of this upward trend, but my boss has got books where he hauled all day for a scale basket of lobsters, sixty-seventy pounds. The heat of the season, four or five hundred pounds, was a big day. These guys couldn’t buy a new boat on that. Guys had other jobs in the spring; they couldn’t make it lobstering. These guys just sit back, they hire two crew, the crew does everything for them, they buy their million-dollar boat, and they just go home in their big fancy house. I guess I respect them in the sense that they can go do that. But on the other hand, it is what it is.

 

GK: [50:27] Yeah, yeah. I’m thirty, and even the people that I grew up with fishing – even that age, there was still the understanding – there was still a memory, a collective memory of how it was before. I wonder if for you it’s more – is it that age or is it twenties, early twenties? I don’t know. It seems like there’s a switch.

 

JK: [50:55] Yeah, early twenties. Yeah, I’m thirty-five.

 

GK: [50:58] Right? There’s a switch.

 

JK: [50:59] I would say, early to mid-twenties, these guys have no idea. Just no clue. They just stepped into a business.

 

GK: [51:04] They didn’t ever live with it.

 

JK: [51:05] No, and they’re just all entitled. I went. They were holding a legislative scoping session or something of that sort on passing a bill that would have enabled people like me who had been on the apprenticeship list for over ten years to automatically get their license, and the majority of the people in that room opposing me were twenty-something-year-old fishermen, guys that had never worked for anyone else [who] came up during the best times, and they’re just a bunch of, honestly, whiny crybabies, entitled, spoiled. They don’t really know what it means to actually have to go really work. Yeah, they work, but it’s easier to go to work when you’re going to catch a thousand pounds, two thousand pounds. You go out there and grind for a hundred pounds, haul four hundred in March, and then see how many of those guys are super excited to go out there.

 

GK: [51:51] Are those guys mostly fishing all year and offshore?

 

JK: [51:54] Everybody. Most of these young guys are offshore in big boats, taking really part of the resource that used to be almost left alone. There wasn’t a lot of boats out beyond twenty, twenty-five miles. So, we had that – it was a protected area, and now those guys are out there. In the last five years, they’ve all just been hammering them. There’s less lobsters in the spring, and there’s less lobsters in general. They stay out there later and longer, and they just scoop them up before they ever get a chance to come in. It’s more power to them, I guess. If I had the ability, I don’t know if I would or not, plan on fishing inside. They burned me out. I wanted to be a big offshore boy when I was twenty, but I don’t care anymore. I can do the math and what it costs to go out there – yes, you can do better, but I feel like if I keep my expenses down, I can just have a comfortable existence right here, not out there doing – I’ve been out there twenty years on the back of other people’s boats. I know how to do it; I can do it, but if I don’t have to, I don’t want to. [laughter]

 

GK: [53:00] Yeah, so that’s where you’re going now is offshore, and you had planned to stay inshore?

 

JK: [53:05] I do now, yeah. I had always planned to buy a federal permit, which, when I first started, they’d been ten thousand dollars forever. That was within range. Now they’re thirty-five to forty. They are coming back down a little bit, but it’s just one more thing – inflation. I told him when he turned eighteen, I’d buy him a federal permit. Even if I wasn’t my own boss, I would have done it as a deckhand, and now there’s no way I could do that. I could spring ten grand for him if he wanted to become a full-time fisherman because that puts you in the game if you have a federal permit and you want to go out there. But now, there’s no way I could spend forty thousand dollars. I couldn’t even get my own, let alone buy him one. [laughter]

 

GK: [53:43] But your plan is the smaller, more –?

 

JK: [53:51] As of now, I just want to be as fuel-efficient and bait-efficient as I can within reason. I do like to bait my traps. I think bait catches lobsters, but it’s gotten so expensive now that you have to be very careful. I like to keep it about a dollar fifty a trap for bait if I can. I want them well-baited, but I want to be within reason because you can spend so much money on bait right now. You can put yourself out of business at times.

 

GK: [54:14] Are you using other stuff other than herring?

 

JK: [54:17] Yeah, I didn’t use any herring on the kids’ gear this year. Pogies and rockfish mostly, a little bit of pig hide. My boss still uses herring. I don’t think it’s necessary anymore. I don’t think they like it like they used to. I could put a bunch of rockfish on a trap and put a bunch of herring in the trap, and they’re equal, or the rockfish is better at this point.

 

GK: [54:37] Where is rockfish coming from?

 

JK: [54:38] I don’t even know. Iceland, maybe. [laughter] Somewhere in the North Sea, I think. I really don’t know. Norway, maybe.

 

GK: [54:48] I was going to ask you one – I’m almost ready to be done because you’re probably exhausted. What was I going to ask you? Fuel efficiency. What do you mean?

 

JK: [55:02] Well, if I get a medium-sized boat with a low to medium horsepower rating and I don’t go far, I can keep my fuel cost down because running offshore, you can burn upwards of a hundred hundred twenty gallons a day. Well, at 2.50 a gallon, you can do the math. That boat that I’m looking at purchasing right now, that guy burns eight to ten gallons a day. It’s slower, but I’m not going as far. Like I said, I enjoy being out there. I could potentially fish a hundred days and burn, say, three grand worth of fuel all summer. Those guys will burn that in a month, probably more than that. [laughter] If you could stock X amount of money and keep your expenses half of what they’re doing, then if I plan on going on, at least in the beginning, then I want to pay a sternman. That’s another twenty, twenty-five, thirty thousand that I don’t have to pay out. So, if I can keep it comparable to what those guys are making, in the same ratio, with my expenses to what I make, then I think I could do alright. My ego used to tell me I had to go offshore and be a big boy, and now my body’s telling me to just hang out inside and just enjoy yourself because I killed myself for twenty years out there for someone else. I’m tired. I just want to be on my own and do my own thing. There’s a lot of lobsters inside right now. I think I could do alright. I see what my kids catch, and I can extrapolate that.

 

GK: [56:37] Yeah, it’s almost the question of – as you take on more debt, you just need more, right?

 

JK: [56:45] Yeah. You have to go.

 

GK: [56:47] It’s a catch-22.

 

JK: [56:48] Yeah. If me and my boss – let me think. What would we have to catch [inaudible] bait? Say he’s eighteen hundred bucks when he leaves the dock in the morning between me – what he’s going to have to pay me if we have a good day – the other guy, the bait, and the fuel. So, he’s got to catch four or five crates, five, six hundred pounds before he even covers his expenses. Then you’ve got boat upkeep and maintenance. Everyone thinks it’s gravy, but what they don’t realize until this year – the lobster price hadn’t changed for twenty years. In fact, it was lower than when I started until this year. So, bait’s increased two hundred percent. Fuel was a buck, a buck and a quarter when I first started. Now it’s 2.50. For a while, it was four dollars, and the lobster price stayed the same. They stole from us, really. What other business do you have the product that someone else tells you what they’re going to pay? We have a product, then we have to go – it blows my mind that that’s how it still works. We’re all so stubborn and foolish and agree on one goddamn thing. So, there’s no way we’re ever going to get together and really form a real union or co-op of whatever outside of each individual little pocket. Fishermen, like I said, a lot of them are undereducated or super-stubborn or both, and that doesn’t bode well for open-mindedness and new ideas. It’s sad because there are some innovators in the business.

 

GK: [58:19] Yeah. Maybe they’ll be forced to fish like you want to fish.

 

JK: [58:24] No, keep them out of my area. [laughter] I was supposed to say that through fishing, I met a beautiful Italian girl – for posterity. Did you get that on record?

 

GK: [38:38] Yeah, I got that on record. That will be my next interview. I hear at Jordan’s that they call (Julia?) the illegal alien. Did you know that?

 

JK: [58:47] They’re very Republican in some of those areas. There are Republicans that hire immigrants and don’t realize they’re going against their own values.

 

GK: [58:56] That’s a whole other conversation.

 

JK: [58:59] Yeah, it’s pretty funny.

 

GK: [59:00] I know. Well, thank you. I think that there’s more to say, so I’m going to do a follow-up sometime.

 

JK: [59:06] Okay. Well, I’m available.