Hi fellow Hiveians,
Today I wanted to share the fun lobster tour we went on recently!
Maine Lobster Tour
With our plans of moving away from the area, we know that we've been looking to do all of the stuff that is typical New England that we haven't already done. What is more New England than lobsters?! I don't know of many things that's for sure! LOL
We booked a slot on this great lobster tour that was only an hour and it ended up being a really fun day full of adventures!
The marina or bay, whatever this is called, that it was located in was beautiful! It had all kinds of great looking boats and stuff but the important thing is that this was completely sheltered by the land around it so the water was incredibly calm. We even saw a striped bass! One time we were itching for our fishing poles to be with us that's for sure lol.
This is in Ogunquit, Maine. One of the more upscale and expensive towns in southern Maine along the coast but this one is definitely one that's got loads of charm. The streets are small, parking is kind of limited and you are able to spend a decent amount of time going around exploring which is nice.
One of the things that the towns along the coast are doing is trying to make it affordable and reasonable for their most important industry: lobstering. The lobster fishermen get special privileges like parking spots and all that which I think is great because they are a crucial part of the economy here. We need to make sure that they are able to get to work and actually make some money!
The boat we are going to be traveling on arrived and it wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be. I was picturing more of a rugged lobster boat but this was a lobster tour after all, so it makes sense.
When we were out on the bay though! Holy crap the coast line was beautiful indeed. Lots of incredible mansions and hotels dotting the coastline here. The sad part is most of these houses and mansions are summer homes for the super wealthy! I'd love to live in that thing all year round, to hell with the cold weather LOL
We learned some crazy history about this massive hotel stretch here. During the Great Depression, the owners of this property tried to sell it in the Wall Street Journal for 5,000! No one bought it and the family kept it until I think 2018 or something fairly recent where they sold it for a meager 80 million dollars LOL A pretty good difference in price I'd say!
To the important part of the journey though! The lobstering! We didn't research much into the boat or anything when we booked it, figuring we'd learn as we were on there. It turns out that this boat here only has a license for 50 traps and only in the summer months. Typical commercial fishermen have a license for up to 800 traps! That's wild! The license this boat has is an "educational" license so they allow them 50 traps for these types of tours and stuff which is cool. There is also a hobby license I think it's called, where you get to set out 5 or 10 traps so this guy and some of his buddies do that when they aren't working which is nice.
We didn't get many lobsters and in fact, out of the three traps they pulled up, only 1 of them, the last one, had any lobsters in it! It was cool to see them haul the trap though and re-bait it. They use oily fish for bait and typically put the scraps into the trap that smell really strongly. This attracts the lobsters so they are easier to get into the trap. They were using the heads and spines of the fish to bait the traps. It sure smelled strongly let me tell ya!
Overall we ended up catching 4 lobsters. Two of them were really small juveniles like this fella here. One of them was a pregnant female! That was great because they showed us that for the females, what they do is notch their tail a bit on one side and that lets any other lobstermen know that it is a female that is able to lay eggs. Not all of the females are able to lay eggs so the ones that do are called "breeders" and are identified with the permanent notch taken out of their tale. If any lobstermen keeps a pregnant female or a female that has been notched they can get fined, jailed and even lose their license! They take this stuff very seriously and for good reason too. This is their livelihood at stake!
We had a lot of fun on the tour and we learned some interesting information on the life and routine of the lobstermen. It's definitely something we have a new appreciation for and are glad that we spent the time to go and do this type of thing. With the focus on people going to college and all that so strong in the media and everything, it's good to get exposed to and help these lobstermen share their stories and hopefully steer people into their career choice so we don't lose it entirely. These jobs are just as important, if not more important than the office and other "college" type jobs. These bring food to the table, literally!
Connect with me!
Do you want to get paid, in crypto, for searching the internet? Try using and signing up for Presearch to earn some great crypto! I've currently got 2,720 PRE tokens, with a market value of $380.27. It doesn't sound like a lot but when you search using sites like Google you get paid $0! Join Presearch to break Google's stranglehold on the internet searches. If you'd like to sign up, use my referral link below and spread the word!
https://www.presearch.org/signup?rid=513043
