Pulling lobster traps on Casco Bay, Portland, Maine (September 25, 2021)

When we were out on the water, we passed Fort Gorges, a former United States military fort built on Hog Island Ledge in Casco Bay. Built from 1858 to 1864, no battles were fought there and no troops were stationed there. Advancing military technology, including iron clad ships and long range guns, made the fort obsolete before it could be used.

On the tourist version of a lobster boat, in a protective apron against sea water and what???

We pulled up a trap with lobsters in it.  Captain Brian showed us how to measure a lobster to determine if it's of legal size to keep. The minimum legal size lobster must measure at least 3¼” from the eye socket to the back of the carapace where the tail joins the body. The measure was increased twice in the last ten years, and allows more females to extrude eggs and reproduce before reaching legal size.

Any lobster with a greater than 5” carapace must be returned to the sea. This law exists to protect the “breeders”. Larger lobsters are capable of reproducing greater and healthier numbers of offspring and Maine lobster harvesters feel very strongly about protecting this brood stock.

Also, females carrying eggs must be returned to the sea. After the tail has been marked with a v-notch in the right flipper next to the middle flipper. This ensures that the viably reproductive female will continue to produce young lobsters until she outgrows the notch in her tail, which may take up to two molting (shedding) cycles or approximately two years. The practice of notching and returning females provides a 10-30% return to the brood stock, a significant contribution to protect the resource.

These two Maine laws (maximum size and notching females) in effect since the 1930s have been recently adopted in federal waters. Lobster harvesters may voluntarily re-notch females to provide the resource with an ongoing brood stock.

We mostly caught crabs.

Cut up fish used as bait in the traps are thrown out and replaced with new bait.  Guess who's interested in the old bait?

Cheryl is about to throw back a lobster that is too small to keep.  

We boated past the Spring Point Ledge lighthouse.  Before the lighthouse was built in the 1890s, numerous ships ran aground on Spring Point Ledge, which extends into the main shipping channel into Portland Harbor. In 1832, the lime coaster Nancy hit the reef. Water and lime make a volatile mixture, and the seawater entering the hold combined with the lime to start a fire that was difficult to extinguish. The inhabitants of Portland helplessly watched as the ship burned to the waterline.

After this spectacular disaster, an outraged public demanded a warning system on the reef, but government officials insisted that a light on the planned breakwater at Portland, over a mile away, would be sufficient for the entire harbor. Finally, a huge spar buoy was anchored at the edge of the main channel where the reef began, but it did little good at night or in times of fog, and the shipwrecks continued.

The wreck of the newly commissioned 393-ton bark Harriet S. Jackson proved to be the final straw. During a fierce storm, which caused damage all along the New England coast in 1876, the ship ran hard aground on Spring Point Ledge in the middle of the night. The crew hung on until dawn, when they were astonished to find that they were so close to the beach at Fort Preble that they laid down a plank and simply walked ashore.

Eventually a 900-foot breakwater was built out to the lighthouse.  Thousands of visitors from all over the world walk out to the lighthouse every year.