Secrets Haunt the Lobsters' Sea

by Charlene D'Avanzo

  Feeling like a coed who’d forgotten to call her mother, I said, “Oh Abby, I am so sorry.”

  “You’re safe an’ that’s what matters. Let’s get this boat up, then we’ll have some lunch. You can tell me about it.”

  We reached the high tide line, lowered the kayak together, and started up the path to the house. I wasn’t sure if Abby knew about Buddy and was trying to decide if I should ask when she saved me the trouble.

  “Lester called with the awful news. I know you heard all about it,” she said over her shoulder. From behind, I couldn’t see her face. The catch in her voice said enough.

  “I didn’t know Buddy, but I can’t imagine what Lester’s going through,” I said.

  The stoic islander shook her head but didn’t add anything.

  I downed one grilled cheese and picked up my second. “Abby, this is perfect. I didn’t realize how hungry I was.”

  “You’ve had quite a mornin’ deah, with the puffins, gale, an’ all.”

  Nodding, I looked for a napkin before wiping my fingers on my jeans. “Lester seems like a really great guy. You must’ve known him for a long time.”

  Seated across from me, she ran a hand across the table. “More years then I want to let on. He moved heah when he married an island girl. She died young a long time ago. Cancer.”

  “But they had a son,” I said.

  “Jus’ the one. Todd’s a nice young man who left the island a good while back. He’s a lawyer out in Augusta. Not sure what kind.”

  “And Buddy is, was, Lester’s grandson.”

  “Buddy’s real name is Lester. Callin’ the boy Buddy made knowin’  who was who easiah.”

  “So Buddy was Lester’s only grandson, and they shared the same first name. Buddy also carried on the family fishing tradition. It’s all so incredibly sad.”

  “I recall when Buddy said he wanted to lobstah with Lester. Lord, he was so proud. Now this. The man’s had more than his share o’ grief.”

  Her gaze shifted to the window and we sat there in silence until someone knocked on the door. We turned to see Gordy step in.

  “Mara, I jus’ heard you were out in that blow. Damnation, you could’ve gone ovah and that ocean’s frigid cold. Jus’  learned two kayakers got caught in the same gale off Acadia. One capsized an’  from what I heard on the radio they might’ve died.”

  I jumped up from my chair. “You’re kidding. Paddlers dead off the National Park?”

  He shook his head. “It was one hellish blow. Where were you? What happened?”

  I described “Puffin Island,” my fight with the gale, and Lester leading me to safety.

  “You an’ your birds,” he said. “Well, now you’ve met Buddy’s granddad.”

  “Gordy, how did you know who was under your mussel raft days before Lester found out?” I asked

  He looked down at Abby. “Would you rathah not heah ’bout Tyler again?”

  “It’s all right. I’ll clean up the kitchen while you talk with Mara. Take my seat.”

  Gordy pulled back Abby’s chair as I fell into mine. He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “’Couple reasons. First off, Patty’s sistah Angel’s been givin’ Patty an earful ’bout Tyler bad mouthin’ Buddy. I can’t repeat all the exact words, but you can guess.”

  “Did Tyler say he actually wanted to kill Buddy?”

  “Said ‘kill,’ ‘drown,’ ‘wipe out.’”

  “Not too smart.”

  “Well, like we said, Mara, Tyler’s a druggie. He fried his brain. Then Buddy goes missin’. Two an’ two.”

  “I see,” I said, “Is Tyler still on the island?”

  “Ayuh. Sleeps on his boat.”

  “So does this drug addict who threatens to kill people really think I’m a narc trying to put him away?”

  “You scarin’ Tyler off the island, that’s jus’ an idea. If his boat’s still heah tomorrow, we’re callin’ Marine Patrol.”

  “And you’ll go talk to them yourself, right?”

  He pushed back the chair and stood. “Jus’ like I said.”

  After lunch, I walked down to the harbor to meet Malicite Dupris. Shielding my eyes against the sun, I squinted at his boat. A voice said, “Down heah!”

  Seated in a white dinghy thirty feet below, Malicite grinned up at me, oars in hand. “Take the ladder down.”

  Given my lack of enthusiasm for heights, I made slow, hand-over-hand progress down a wooden ladder that had seen better days. Malicite reached up to help me step into the little boat.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  The twinkle in his dark eyes told me he’d guessed my fear.

  Rowing across the harbor, his black curls bobbing, Dupris bubbled with enthusiasm for the eLobster project. “It’s amazin’ what they do. Lobstahmen from all ovah workin’ side by side with ocean scientists. An’  I mean with. Those guys, they listen to us, really want our help.”

  “It’s NOAA, right? What do they get out of it?”

  The dinghy approached the stern of his boat. “We’ll talk about that. Step aboard right heah. I’ll keep the dinghy steady.”

  Look to the Future was one of the tidiest lobster boats I’d ever seen. Everything was in its place. Since Malicite was right-handed, the steering wheel and electronics were rigged on the starboard side just inside the open wheelhouse. Hanging from a hook, his thick orange oil gear—venerable bib pants and jacket for protection against wind and rain—looked brand-new clean. The hydraulic pot hauler was poised for action. Most of the deck was taken up with essential lobstering gear—bait bags, brass measuring gauge, banding pliers, thick claw bands, heavy-duty bright blue gloves, and picking box that would hold lobsters waiting to be measured. The gear would all be methodically arranged and within easy reach as traps were hauled aboard.

  Inside the wheelhouse, a small wooden table held a portable computer. A lobster trap lay on the deck.

  Malicite brought the computer to life. “These pictures’ll give ya an idea about the project. The first one heah, that’s a meetin’ we had down in Woods Hole.”

  The Massachusetts village of Woods Hole, I knew, was home to NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. Right down the street, hundreds of marine scientists and technicians worked at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). I assumed that engineers from WHOI and NOAA’s fisheries biologists had teamed up to develop the unique program Malicite described.

  I leaned in to look at his photograph. It showed twenty-odd guys in jeans and flannel shirts with white nametags stuck to them. Most looked to be thirty to fifty, although there were a few older men as well.

  “No women,” I said.

  “Not that day. But there’s a few in the program.”

  “So tell me all about it. The instruments, what data you get, how it all works,” I said.

  He knelt down and cradled a round device about three inches across strapped to the top of the trap with a black plastic tie. I squatted next to him.

  “This here’s the temperature sensor. I attach it to the trap. When I haul ’er up, I can see the temperature right away on that little computah up theah.” He nodded to a micro-computer with a half-foot screen mounted next to the wheel.

  The sensor fit in the palm of my hand. “You can look at your own temperature numbers on your computer, but how does it get transmitted back to the eLobster people?”

  He pointed toward the roof. “There’s a satellite transmittah mounted on top of the wheelhouse that sends it.”

  I pictured a cartoon of a lobster boat sending data to a satellite circling the earth, which in turn passed the numbers along to a NOAA server somewhere. “Amazing,” I said. “There’s a wireless temperature sensor on your trap and the data is transmitted when you pull it up. You don’t have to do a thing.”

  “Nope,” he said. “Nothin’ changes for us. We jus’ do what we do. No buttons to push or whatevah. Those NOAA guys, they know how busy it gets when we’re out workin’. Aftahwards, we give ’em the
location and trap depth for each sensor.”

  “I’d imagine when you’re in the middle of hauling traps you don’t have time to look at the data at all.”

  He laughed. “You know it. Traps coming up, keepers flying into the pickin’  box, rejects ovahboard, sternman shovin’ traps off the stern. It’s crazy out theah.”

  “Can I see some of your temperature data?”

  He got to his feet and fiddled with the computer until a graph appeared on the screen. “This here’s spring through fall.” He ran his forefinger up the scale on the left side of the graph. “That’s temperature in Fahrenheit.” He moved his finger to the right side. “’N here it’s Celsius.” Turning toward me he said, “’Course you know all this.”

  I nodded. “Sure, but I love being on the receiving side of this lesson,”

  He positively beamed.

  I leaned in and traced my finger along the graph’s black line. “Okay, for this trap the temperature on the bottom started out about forty degrees Fahrenheit in June. Then it climbed steadily and got up to something like fifty-five in September.”

  He squinted at the screen. “Ayuh.”

  “What does that tell you? I mean, what do you learn from these numbers that’s useful?”

  “We spent lots ’o time at those meetings in Woods Hole figurin’ out what it means. Lobster scientists gave little talks ’bout highah temperature and lobsters. Then some of us sat in front along a table an’  said what we knew.”

  “A panel?” I asked

  He nodded. “That’s what they called it, a panel.”

  I tapped the computer screen. “So in the end, does knowing the temperature where you trap make a difference?”

  “’Couple things. First off, there was that awful shell disease that killed off lobsterin’ south of here.”

  “The shell disease that caused the collapse of the industry in Long Island Sound and Massachusetts,” I said.

  He nodded. “Some NOAA scientists did a study showin’ that bottom temperature in the low fifties was one reason why the disease happened.”

  “But not the only reason,” I said. “Chemical contamination of the water could’ve also contributed to the collapse south of here.”

  He nodded. “No chemicals up heah, thank goodness. But I sure don’t want to find out that warm watah by itself causes shell disease in Maine lobstahs.”

  “Right.” I studied the graph on his screen. “For this trap anyway, bottom water reached fifty Fahrenheit in August and climbed up to fifty-five through September.”

  “Which is why I’m might be puttin’ those traps deepah.”

  I leaned back against the wheelhouse window. “Does going deeper take more work?”

  “It does. I gotta go out farthah an’ it takes longah for the traps to come up. Adds up. If that’s how I avoid that shell disease, hell it’ll be worth it. But I got to think on it more.”

  Malicite showed me a few more graphs and reached around the back of the computer to shut it down. In the process, he slid a notebook aside.

  I pointed at the notebook. “Is that some kind of journal?”

  He held up the half-foot tall brown booklet. “This heah is gold. It’s where I write down important things I can’t keep in my head. Things like how many lobstah I get where an’ when. What the weathah was like. Now I add eLobstah data.”

  I completely understood how critically important it was to store data safely. Any scientist I knew had multiple data backups. “Your notebook is super valuable.”

  “Yeah. Every lobstahman I know keeps one. We all hide it in our cabin where nobody’s gonna mess with it.” Malicite pointed over his shoulder. “Why don’t we go outside an’ enjoy the sun.”

  On the stern deck he turned over a bucket, sat on it, and motioned to a wooden box. “Pull that out. Bes’ seat in the house.”

  I lowered myself onto the box and asked, “Will access to bottom water temperature data where you trap help you catch more lobsters?”

  He shrugged. “There’s a whole lot to catchin’ bugs. You might put traps near ledges where lobstahs like to hide. There’s special spots we call honey holes we put to memory. There’s bait—why kind, how long it lasts. We fuss with traps. It goes on an’ on. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “For eLobstah, temperature is the million dollah question. An’  jus’  like you eggheads, my answer is, ‘It’s complicated.’”

  I laughed. “Good answer. Complicated because of lobster biology, economics, or what?”

  “Both and how lobstahmen think ’bout climate change.”

  I settled down for a lobster lesson. “Go with the biology stuff first.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You know Maine lobstahs move from offshore to inshore in midsummah, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Here’s what we talked ’bout at those meetin’s. In twenty-twelve, spring was warmah than usual an’ bugs moved inshore early.  Surprised us. Our big catch shifted to June an’  July. Usually it’s July to August or Septembah. Messed us all up.”

  “So if you had good data on bottom temperatures—what it starts at and how fast it rises—maybe you could better anticipate where to put your strings when and also what months your big hauls would be,” I said.

  “Right, but there’s more.”

  Loving this, I nodded again.

  “The market also depends on how fast lobstahs grow an’ that depends on sheddin’ rates. So twenty-twelve was double trouble ’cause warm watah meant more bugs moltin’. We had lobstahs way early an’  tons of  ’em ta boot.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Yes, I remember now. We had a picnic with steamed lobsters, and they were incredibly cheap that year. It was because lobsters flooded the market and prices plummeted.”

  “Ayuh. Lobstermen were getting’ somethin’ like half the usual price. The weird thing is down south, like in Long Island, the lobstah industry collapsed with the disease an’  all. So there we were swimmin’ in bugs, an’ all they had was dead ones. Twenty-twelve, that was grim. The Woods Hole scientists, they called it the yeah that drove climate change home for the industry.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Everythin’ is changin’ with this climate thing. We gotta expect the unexpected.”

  “That’s a pretty scary proposition,” I said. “With the collapse of cod and the rest of the ground fisheries, coastal communities up and down the Maine coast depend on lobstering. It brings in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. That’s huge.”

  He got up off the bucket and arched his back to stretch. “It’s a savage problem. What you’re dependin’ on isn’t dependable no mattah how much you want it to be.”

  I stood as well, which made my sore butt muscles happy. “That was super interesting.”

  He shrugged. Well, this eLobstah, it’s ’cause of you eggheads.”

  “How about the other lobstermen out here. What do they think of your working with scientists?”

  “’Many of ’em them say if there’s warmin’ it will change, so who cares ’bout temperature. But they might know what’s goin’ on an’ not want to admit it.”

  “Because they’re worried warming is for real, and if they say it out loud it’s more likely to happen?”

  He shrugged. “Somethin’ like that. Guys who work the watah, they’re superstitious.”

  “Are there any Macomek lobstermen who were interested in the eLobster project?”

  “Buddy Crawford.”

  I waited for Malicite to say add something such as how much he missed Buddy or that Buddy was a great guy. But he just crossed his arms over his chest and looked to the side.

  “Um, was Calvin Ives interested in the project too?”

  “Calvin’s smart, so you think he’d get it. But he said it was stupidest thing he ever heard.”

  “One last question before I go, Malicite. Maine lobstering is good now, but that’s not going to last forever. Given what you know about warming out here,
what’re your plans for the future?”

  He rubbed his chin. “We’re pullin’ in bugs like there’s no tomorrah now. There’s what, five thousand licensed lobstahmen in Maine? Most I talk to say it’s gonna last for a good long time. I think they’re wrong. This happened before, then it crashed.” He looked over the stern of the boat and stared at the water. “I’m studyin’ NOAA charts for the Gulf of Maine to see where the watah’s deepest. Maybe that’s where the bugs’ll go. I need to see what it’s like workin’ out theah. I could put down a string or two. Ya know, to have a claim.” He laughed. “May have to steam all the way up to Canada. Wouldn’t that be a pissah?”

  When I described Alise’s Sea Grant “eLobster town hall” idea, Malicite said it might work and offered to be a presenter. I couldn’t wait to tell Alise.

  As I pulled my hair into a tighter ponytail, the sun glinted off the steel trap hauler. “Before we go,” I said, “Could you explain how the hauler works and what lobstermen used to do?”

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t been out on a lobstahboat,” he said.

  I shrugged. “When I was a kid. But that was a long time ago.”

  Malicite walked up to the pot hauler. “Okay. When I come up alongside one of my buoys, I cut the engine an’ gaff the line below the float.” He pointed to the good-sized metal pulley hanging off the water. “Then I run the line up ovah this snatch block an’ down around the pot hauler in the wheelhouse.”

  “So how does the pot hauler work?”

  “It’s a hydraulic winch with a rotatin’ disk that pinches the line an’ pulls it through.”

  I winced. “Damn. With everything happening so fast, I’d imagine that spinning disk can just as easily pinch your finger.” I didn’t articulate the dreadful image that came to mind.

  “Ayuh. I’ve seen guys who lost fingers or got the tips pulled off. Where was I? Um, aftah the line goes through the spinnin’ hauler, it drops down on the deck an’ sends slime an’ watah all ovah. All that happenin’ so fast makes for dangerous work.”

  “Before haulers, what did lobstermen do?”

  “They pulled ’em up by hand. Imagine how hard it’d be. They reeled ’em up hand ovah hand. Bringin’ those heavy wet traps ovah the side of the boat must’ve been brutal. Haulers came about in the nineteen-fifties. That’s when strings of traps an’ open sterns on lobstah boats got popular. The traps in a string could jus’ slide off the stern into the watah one aftah the othah.”