A breeze rippled the shimmering sea; a seal poked his head through gold and silver waves and Erica Davis headed out to haul her traps.
“I love seals,” she announced, grinning as she gunned her outboard runabout until it planed.
It’s sunny and warm enough this particular afternoon that Erica’s father, Scott, is shirtless and barefoot. A cooler of soda sits beside him. He can relax, having already worked his day job, while Erica tends her traps. The father often accompanies his daughter, partly to make sure she is safe but mostly because he loves being on the water, where his own father, grandfather and great-grandfather made their living the same way, catching lobsters.
Wearing waterproof overalls, Erica is almost 20 and seems confident at the helm. Soon she will haul her gear home and head for her junior year in college. She is proud of being a fifth generation lobsterman, setting traps that belonged to grandfather Syd, who fished all his life from Port Clyde. Erica fishes from Sabino, which lies along the tidal New Meadows River in West Bath. “I like the family aspect of it,’ she said, joking “it forces me to spend time with Dad.”
For his part, Scott is proud of Erica and her determination to learn the business.
She buys her bait, often herring that ripens quickly, and sells her lobsters at the same place: Watson’s Lobsters in Cundy’s Harbor. That’s where transactions are jotted down on scraps of paper by people who know you by your first name — and by your boat.
“It’s so different than any other job, it’s so individual, and not very common for a girl in college to be doing it,” Erica said. “It’s Maine,” she said, taking note of a tradition that connects to her past even as she majors in history at Eckerd College in St.Petersburg, Florida.
It’s a sheltered area with good fishing grounds, judging by the number of lobster buoys decorating the estuary. Erica’s aren’t hard to spot. They’re painted hot pink.
Her sister Kelly, 18, thought Erica wouldn’t last a day at lobstering, given stinky bait and the slippery slime that coats boat and clothes and, well, everything on board. But it all washes down.
Erica took to lobstering like a seal. “I like being outside,” she said. “If the weather’s bad, I just go the next day.” She also works as a summer lifeguard, aerobics instructor, fitness gym center monitor and church nursery school teacher.
Erica runs the electric trap hauler like a pro, and carefully measures lobsters to see if they are keepers or go back over the side. Most go overboard, including ones that would be keepers except that they have V-notched tails, meaning they were marked by a fisherman as being egg-bearing females.
This is her second summer hauling, and her student lobstering license limits her to 175 traps. She sets out about 50, minus one that she lost that afternoon when the pot warp (rope) parted. Due to a late start and very poor lobstering last August, she had far from a lucrative first season, but it wasn’t entirely about money, and Erica was eager to lobster again this summer.
She wanted to do something her late grandfather did, something her father still does in his spare time, with a recreational license allowing him five traps. Lobstering was so much part of Syd Davis that when his health became so he couldn’t haul by himself, Scott commuted to Port Clyde several times a week and they fished from a small boat together — one final year when Syd was 83.
When Syd’s father, also named Syd, was working the sea, lobstering was done from dories, skiffs and under sail, from Friendship Sloops. The elder Syd had the first power dory in Port Clyde, powered by a one-lung engine.
In those days, anyone could fish for lobster. But as restrictions tighten amid efforts to conserve the fishery, getting a license to go lobstering has become a job in itself.
First, you must apprentice to a licensed lobsterman, your sponsor, logging at least 200 days of fishing over a minimum of two years. The coast is zoned for managing the resource, and rules vary. In West Bath, in an effort to reduce the impact of lobstering, you’d have to get on a waiting list. Five licenses would have to lapse before a new one could be approved.
So it could be a long wait. Scott Davis fished 150 traps in the 1970s, before trying other jobs. He now heads code enforcement for the City of Bath, while his wife, Sally, is self-employed as a paralegal. in deed research. Although she currently has no plans on lobstering for a living, Erica is filling out her log sheets and sending them into the state, because “You never know where life’s going to take you.”
As we headed ashore at sunset, Scott talked about how lobstering teaches things with broader applications. “Things like keep your head up, always know where you are and how to get home. Know which way the wind and tide are pushing you.”
“Know how and when to call for help. See trouble before it gets to you, and know what to do if you encounter it.”
Back ashore, freshly showered, Erica joined the family at dinner and then hurried off to one of her land-based jobs.