Researchers working in Vinalhaven’s Carver’s Harbor last year were interested in learning more about how lobsters travel. They tagged thousands of lobsters, released them and waited for fishermen to re-catch them and call in their new coordinates. Although most of the lobsters reported didn’t make it far, a couple went as much as ten miles. One particularly ambitious bug, however, was called in from a Wal-Mart in Wisconsin.
Obviously, the lobster had been caught, sold and was well on its way to the dinner plate by the time the young boy dialed an 800 number on its claw band to report it. While this piece of data turned out to be irrelevant to the scientists’ research, it was to be the inspiration for another project: tracking the lobsters caught in small communities as they move through market and are bought in stores around the world. Eight lobstermen from Vinalhaven are testing the project, called Lobster Tales, before it is expanded to include other small lobster-dependent communities.
Each lobsterman bands the entirety of his catch with claw bands printed with the message “Who Caught Me? WWW.LOBSTERTALES.ORG” and a boat-identification number.
By going to the website and entering their zip code and the boat identification number, consumers will be able to learn about the fisherman who caught the lobster and the community their purchase is helping to support. Meanwhile, lobstermen are able to see where their lobsters have traveled, and maybe receive a post-card from the person who bought them.
Lobster Tales was developed by the Island Institute in coordination with the Vinalhaven School, the Vinalhaven Fishermen’s Co-op and Penobscot Bay Media. The project was started in the winter when lobstering is slower to allow for practice and technical problems, but already 14 lobster ‘hits’ have been recorded, from as far away as New Mexico and Florida. Once a good set of locations is built up on the website map, students at Vinalhaven School will be able to use the data – where the lobsters go and when – for educational projects. Such projects could include, for example, using U.S. Census data to examine the relationship between demographics and lobster purchases, or using shipping and routing data from FedEx and other major shipping companies, as well as data from supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart to examine and predict the likely path for a lobster between Maine and its final destination.