The last half of October was much windier than the first half. Both Islesford and Great Cranberry experienced power outages in two different storms. It helps to have a generator during these outages, but when electric and telephone poles came down across the bridge between Trenton and Mount Desert Island, even a generator could not compensate for lost phone service. Cell phone reception on Islesford is spotty, at best. So far, November has been windy and rainy, but not very cold. Dip of the Month Club members have been reluctant to take a November dip, only because of the large amounts of seaweed in the water. The dipper’s bane is the gardener’s boon with readily available seaweed for nourishing island gardens over the winter. A few of the local lobstermen took to their surfboards when it was too rough to haul traps.
On one of the calmer November mornings, I heard the following statement from our VHF radio in the kitchen: “The station was on the elephant’s trunk and Rich’s head was inside of Little Duck.” Was it a riddle? The punch line to a bad joke? A description from someone’s dream? No. As the fisherman start shifting their gear to follow the seasonal migration of lobsters, they keep an eye out for each other’s missed traps and call on the radio when they see a stray buoy. The cryptic sounding statement describes the visible landmarks for an ocean location which can also be given as LORAN numbers, or coordinates from a GPS. After his father told him the location of a missing pair of traps, I heard a younger fishermen request the numbers; he did not know or use the landmarks. Most of the fishermen use numbers; a universal language. Will locating gear by landmarks at sea become a thing of the past?
Bright yellow polypropylene netting, gathered at one end with an orange plastic fastener and strung through the top with green poly twine are the machine-knit bait bags that Bruce Fernald buys to use in his traps. He muttered about the difficulty in finding a decent bait bag while putting a bundle by the door to take on the boat the following day. The crabs will start biting holes through the new bags in as little as two weeks. If made out of good twine, a hand knit bag will last much longer. Wesley Bracy used to knit Bruce’s bait bags; Julie Alley used to knit them for his father, Warren. “I wish I could still find someone to knit them for me,” Bruce said. He guessed that a handful of the island fishermen still knew how.
Fishermen no longer cut spruce branches to bend into bows for wooden traps. In building and repairing lobster traps, oak laths, hammers and nails have been replaced by wire mesh, staple guns, clip guns and air compressors. There is no need to carve oak cleats to fasten the door of a trap and no need know where to find the flattest rocks for ballast. Richard Alley’s father, Andrew, was one of the last people who carved wooden lobster pegs. Machine-made pegs were used until the early 1980’s. Now rubber bands, which advertise “Maine Wild-caught Lobsters,” keep claws closed.
For the most part, new lobster fishing techniques are safer, easier on the back, and time saving. No one misses having to take extra crates of bricks or sinking rocks on the boat to use when setting dry wooden traps. A few months ago, Ted Spurling sold Pandora, the last active wooden lobster boat in the Islesford Harbor. Fiberglass is the hull of choice. At the Cranberry Isles Fishermen’s Co-op, and plastic crates have replaced the old wooden ones that were constantly needing repair. Where large wooden bait bins once stood there are square plastic containers. The lobster bait arrives by truck, on a barge, to be unloaded into these totes and then moved with a forklift. Gone are the days of wearing hip boots to help shovel out the sardine carrier; the herring sometimes so fresh you could take a dozen fish home to fry up for supper.
The holiday season is barreling down upon us. The days are shorter and the fishermen will be busy getting traps ashore to repair during winter. Aaron and Erin Gray, who did such a terrific job, have had to close their store on Islesford. We will have to learn, again, to budget extra time for a stop at the grocery store before catching the last boat back to the island at 3:30 p.m. I have a suggestion to reawaken your knowledge and interest in island history, ease your holiday shopping rush, and support a worthy community cause. Simply go to the cranberryisles.com web site on your computer to buy holiday gifts of publications from our local historical societies. If you click on the link for the Great Cranberry Island Historical Society, you will find a long list of publications, videos, and DVDs for sale. On the same web site, click on the link for the Islesford Historical Society to find an order form for publications pertaining to Islesford. The forms can be printed from the Web site, but shop early because the orders can only be sent by mail — the old fashioned way!
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year from the Cranberry Isles.
Islesford, Nov. 15, 2006