If anyone mentions something might be beneficial for lobster pounds or the lobster industry in general, Herb Hodgkins’ ears perk up like a fire horse hearing the alarm. He’s off and running, willing to devote oodles of time and energy to whatever it is that might improve the lot of anyone associated with the lobster industry, particularly lobster pounds.
The endeavors have been varied, from founding industry organizations to helping with University of Maine lobster research. He’s conducted field experiments on projects like controlling disease in pounds, using aeration in pounds, determining weight gain of lobsters fed different types of feed and testing artificial lobster bait.
He’s helped with a closed-vent survey to determine lobster populations and most recently, worked to set up and run a project he believes has great potential, a lobster storage inventory system which gathers inventory and sales information from each member pound owner. This confidential data helps members determine the most advantageous time to sell their stock.
Hodgkins’ connection with the maritime industry goes back to his grandfathers, both of whom were captains of sailing vessels that carried Maine products like ice and granite to Southern ports. His father fished for lobster from Hancock Point in Frenchman Bay and operated a marina there, maintaining boats for summer residents. In 1950 the family moved to property at Tidal Falls (named Sullivan Falls in the DeLorme Maine atlas) on Sullivan Harbor. The location, which has produced artifacts of Native American Red Paint people, had been purchased during the mid-1880s by the Maine Central Railroad for the Mt. Desert Ferry Company, but owners found the tide too strong to moor the ferries and moved south to Hancock Marine. New entrepreneurs tried to store lobsters there in lobster cars suspended from a cable, but they also were defeated by the big tides, which flipped the cars upside down.
Hodgkins’ father decided to make use of the strong flushing tide. With Hodgkins’ older brother, he built a tidal dam across the small cove next to the falls, and they opened Tidal Falls Lobster Pound. “I can remember bending over and putting the first lobster in the pound,” Hodgkins says, still looking thrilled to have had the honor.
His mother ran a concession that sold cooked lobster and clams from the fish shack on the pier to picnickers who came from as far as Bangor to enjoy a weekend afternoon beside the falls, the second largest “reversing” falls on the East Coast. Besides impounding lobsters two times a year, the Hodgkins’ bought and sold lobsters, trucked them to Boston and Bridgeport, Connecticut, and sold bait. Herb Hodgkins, then in his teens, did a little bit of everything for the next three years – served food, fed lobsters in the pound, shoveled bait for fishermen, caught alewives for bait, and used his bicycle to deliver lobsters (then 35 cents a pound) to summer residents.
In 1953, he followed in his brother’s footsteps and entered Maine Maritime Academy, graduating in 1956 with a degree in marine engineering. He spent the next three years as third and then second engineer aboard the U.S.S. INDEPENDENCE, a passenger liner operating from New York to the Mediterranean. “In 1959, I came home for a two-week vacation to help out with the pound,” he says, “and I never returned.” From then on, pounds and the lobster industry became his central focus. He invested his savings as part owner with his father and brother, and worked in the family business until 1982, when he sold out to his brother and built another, larger pound with partners in Lamoine. He sold that one in 1994 when, he says, “the offer was good and the check didn’t bounce.”
In 1963, Hodgkins married his wife, Pat, whom he met while taking accounting at Husson College. “After we incorporated the business, I was floored when I came across ‘debits and credits,’ terms I hadn’t met in engineering,” he says. “I went to Husson to learn what it was all about.” Naturally, Pat, who taught business skills at Sumner Memorial High School, got involved with lobster pounds. She has served as treasurer for the Maine Lobster Pound Association since 1986, in addition to numerous other volunteer positions in Hancock.
Hodgkins’ participation in university lobster research evolved from his friendship with David Dow of Cape Rosier, who bought bait at Tidal Falls when he was fishing to earn his tuition at UMO. “When Dave was doing graduate work, he asked me if I’d mind if he brought down a fellow to talk about doing research on disease problems with lobster storage,” Hodgkins says. “The red tail (gaffkemia) was plaguing everybody then. I was glad to help.”
The “fellow” was Robert Bayer, then in the university’s animal veterinary science department, now executive director of the Lobster Institute. Bayer and Hodgkins have worked closely together on numerous projects for the past 27 years. “Herb has been a pillar of the lobster industry forever,” says Bayer. “He’s done more stuff as a volunteer than anyone. All you have to do is go back through all the Lobster Institute bulletins, and you’ll see Herb’s name in just about every one.”
They began with testing vaccinations for gaffkemia. “We inoculated about 23,000 of the 40,000 pounds of lobster at Tidal Falls,” Hodgkins says. Although the vaccine was effective, it was expensive and inconvenient to administer. University researchers began to work on medicated feed that can be used if tests show gaffkemia is present in a pound. Hodgkins ran all the necessary trials at Tidal Falls with Bayer and graduate students to get FDA approval for the feed. Ultimately, the formula developed at the university was adopted by Zeigler Brothers, Inc. in Pennsylvania, and when Hodgkins sold his Lamoine pound, he became sole distributor in the area of both medicated and non-medicated feed for Zeigler.
According to Hodgkins, before medicated feed was developed, the average shrinkage of pound inventories in Maine and Canada was about ten percent, sometimes much higher. “That dropped by five percent,” he says, “which is a lot of money saved when you’re talking about the average Maine pound containing 70,000 pounds of lobster, or look at the maximum holding capacity of Maine pounds, which is about five and one-half million pounds.”
Acting as distributor for the feeds put Hodgkins in touch with nearly all the pound owners in Maine. It wasn’t long before he realized it would be helpful if pound owners would get together to exchange information about problems they encountered and solutions they had worked out. He organized the first meeting, and after that, the Maine Lobster Pound Association was formed in 1984.
A short while later, he, Bayer, Dow, pound owner Basil Heanssler of Sunshine, Bob Brown, president of the Maine Import/Export Dealers Association and Eddie Blackmore, executive director of Maine Lobstermen’s Association, organized the Lobster Institute to bring together representatives from all sectors of the lobster industry from Newfoundland to New York.
Hodgkins served as president of the MLPA until he sold his pound in 1994, then became executive secretary. He has been on the board of MLI since its inception. He has served on the board of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council, and helped organize numerous workshops, seminars and conventions for pound owners and lobster dealers. Last year, he also began to attend the monthly meetings of the Council of Farming, Fishing and Forestry organized by the Maine State Chamber.
For him, the real fun has been the research. “If I’d known I was going to be doing so much of it,” he says, “I would have gone to the university instead of Maine Maritime Academy.”
When he proudly displays his latest design for a “fisherman friendly” container for a soybean-based bait being developed by university researcher Dr. Juan Carlos Rodriguez-Souza (WWF Apr. 2002), it is easy to see that he is an ingenious tinkerer. He demonstrates how fishermen, by using thin ropes attached to the bottom of the polyurethane bait bag, can turn it inside out, empty leftover bait and then refill the newly formed bag.
The shack on the wharf where his mother used to cook for picnickers holds numerous evolutions of bags and containers and some of the paraphernalia he has used to fashion them and conduct various experiments for the university. When he pulls three crab traps hanging from the wharf, he finds that two are teeming with green crabs that have been attracted by the latest soybean formula and bag, but to his puzzlement, one has none. He’ll ponder that during the next few days, he says.
At present, Hodgkins believes one of the most serious problems facing the industry is an Atlantic States Fisheries Management Council proposal to increase the allowable size for lobsters in areas two and three. This would make smaller Maine and Canadian lobsters illegal in these areas, which include New York City, drastically limiting a necessary market.
He also believes it is vital to determine why “vibrio,” caused by gram-negative rod bacteria, began to show up in pounds about seven years ago, raising shrinkage back up to as much as 12 percent on average impoundments. “The question is whether vibrio is the primary or the secondary cause,” he says. He believes the latter, that something is affecting lobsters’ immune system, making it susceptible to this bacteria. “There are a lot of things it could be,” he says, citing spraying for browntail moth in particular, and in general, the vast array of chemicals that seep from watersheds into the bays. He believes people are not looking enough at the effects of these chemicals on lobsters and crabs, and hopes that the lobster research facility being developed by the Lobster Institute in conjunction with the Brunton family at Bunker’s Harbor will be in operation soon and able to address problems like this.
Now 68, although he is dismantling the decaying dam at Tidal Falls and the property has been bought by the Frenchman Bay Conservancy, Hodgkins remains devoted to research and uses the wharf for his tests. If things go well with the soybean lobster bait, he may consider producing it himself and becoming the area distributor. “I love being involved in anything that advances the research, being one who does the testing in actual useable natural conditions,” he says. “Once in awhile, like the medication in lobster feed, it has turned into a business which benefits the industry.”