Leslie and David's Wanderings: 8 August 2022 Cruising Acadia

We decided we needed to see Acadia from the sea and took a tour boat (Sea Princess) out of Northeast Harbor. The cruise was about 3 hours long and was narrated by Winston a retired biologist from the Acadia Park Rangers. They took us past Sutton Island and the Light House on top of the cliff, then on to the Eat Bunker Ledge to see the harbor seals before heading to the small town of Islesford on Little Cranberry Island. There we were able to get off the boat and wander through the historic small fishing village. We made our way through town to the historic church built by shipwrights. The wood working was amazing. We also visited the small museum on the island run by the park service. Little Cranberry Island is one of the few islands still occupied year-round. They get their water from deep wells on the islands, but the power comes through under water cables. Back on board, we were given a lesson on lobster fishing. licenses are hard to come by for commercial fishing of lobster. The licenses tend to be passed down through the families. To even qualify for a license you have to put in over 1000 hours on a commercial lobster boat. Each licensee can deploy up to 800 lobster traps. But on a typical day, they can only service 200-250 traps. Each trap has to be brought up, emptied of the lobster, new bait of dead fish put in the “kitchen” and then lowered back down. You can only keep a lobster that has a cephalothorax shell longer than 3 ¼ inches from the eyes to the start of the tail, but no longer than 5 ½ inches. If you get one larger than 5 ½ inches you have to throw it back because it is a breeder. If you catch a female with eggs on her legs you have to notch her tail and throw her back, or if you find a female with a notched tail you also through her back. These rules are observed voluntarily by the lobster fisherman to avoid over harvesting like the cod decades ago. When you see the thousands of lobster buoys floating in the bay, you can understand how important the rules are to follow. Each lobsterman had their own distinct paint pattern on their buoys that are also passed down through the families. Lobsters can live up to a hundred years old and grow to more than 4 feet long. Another thing we did not know was the lobsters migrate between shallow water in the summer and deeper water in the winter. If you are a Maine resident you can obtain a license to run up to five lobster traps for your personal consumption. During the height of the Cod fishing period, lobsters were considered trash fish and were only served to prisoners. It was considered cruel to serve lobster to a prisoner more than twice a week. Thus, educated in the ways of the lobster, we headed into Somes Sound, the only fiord on the Atlantic coast of North America. The sound was carved by glaciers into a lake that later eroded to connect with the ocean. Acadia NP butts up against the sound on one side and huge 100+ room “cottages” of the rich and famous line the other side of the sound. Overall, it was a fun voyage. After we returned to dock, we drove around Somes Sound to Southwest harbor and stopped for an early dinner at Beal’s Lobster Pier. We decided to split a lobster dinner again, and Leslie had to pick which lobster she wanted out of the tank of live lobsters. We paid $19 a pound. While waiting for our cooked lobster to be brought to us, we watched the lobster boats unloading the day’s catch at the docks. Most were immediately loaded into waiting refrigerator trucks but we also saw people coming to the boats and buying the lobster right from the fishermen. It doesn’t get any fresher than that! Our fresh lobster was delicious!