((PKG))  MAINE LOBSTERMAN    
((Banner:  Saving the Lobsters)) 
((Reporter:  Julia Taboh)) 
((Camera:  Adam Greenbaum))  
((Adapted by:  Martin Secrest)) 
((Map:  Portland, Maine)) 
 
((NATS:  waterfront)) 
((Popup Banner:  Lobsters have been fished since the 
1800s in Maine, the leading US lobster state)) 
((Tom Martin, Lobsterman)) 
Well, I started lobstering as a summer job as a kid when I 
was 14 and then lobstered every summer until I went to 
college for about a year and then dropped out and started 
lobstering year round.  So, I've been lobstering for 35 years 
in total.  
((NATS:  boat)) 
((Tom Martin, Lobsterman)) 
Alright, so that is a beauty.  
((NATS:  boat))  
((Tom Martin, Lobsterman)) 
So, every lobster has to be at least three and a quarter 
inches [8.2cm] to keep it across his back.  So, what we do is 
we hook this right behind the lobster’s eye, back corner of 
his eye socket and then we watch carefully to see where this 
point touches.  If that lands on the lobster’s back, he’s big 
enough.  If it touches beneath the back, he's too short.  You 
can see that one easily touches on the back.  This one we 
can keep.   
Every time we get a ‘keeper’ lobster, we have to check the 
sex.  So, on the females, we're always looking for eggs.  And 
when a female is carrying her eggs, the entire bottom of her 
tail will be covered with thousands and thousands of little 
black dots.  So, if we catch one of those inside the trap, 
we're going to set her free.  But before we do, we're going to 
mark her as a breeding female.  So, what the lobsterman 
does is we take something sharp and we leave a scar on the 
second tail flipper from the right.  We actually mark it with a 
scar, so that scar indicates that she's a breeding female.  So, 
even after she's thrown back and the eggs are released into 
the sea, we're always checking the sex and we're always 
checking females for a mark.  If the female has a mark, she 
gets thrown back for the rest of her life.  The Maine 
fishermen thought this law up and had it passed in the 1930s 
to protect the breeding females.  And it's not a perfect 
system because it is possible for a female to carry eggs but 
never happen to walk in a trap and get the mark.  But we're 
saving the majority and certainly enough to keep our lobster 
population very healthy in the state of Maine. 
((NATS:  boat)) 
((Tom Martin, Lobsterman)) 
Let’s go through the measuring process.  A little bit too short. 
((NATS:  boat)) 
((Tom Martin, Lobsterman)) 
So, you can imagine that once we mark a female, she's 
going to get thrown back from the trap, year after year after 
year.  So eventually, we have a lot of very large breeding 
females in our population.  Those large females need a 
similar sized male to mate with.  So, we also need to protect 
some big males to mate with the big females.  So, we've 
already used the short side of the measure of three-and-a-
quarter inches [8.2cm], but the back of the measure is five 
inches [12.7cm] and that's a maximum size limit.  
In the state of Maine, you can't keep a lobster that's over five 
inches on the carapace.  To that guarantees that we 
preserve some big males to keep mating with the big 
females that we've saved by notching their tails.  But this is 
one of the primary reasons why our lobster population in the 
state of Maine is still so high.  We're doing such a good job 
to conserve the breeding females. 
((NATS:  boat)) 
((Tom Martin, Lobsterman)) 
I really enjoy doing it.  It's a lot of hard work, but I think the 
reward can be there and every year is different.  I mean, 
some years you catch a lot of lobsters, some years you 
don't.  So, you can never really rely on the income entirely, 
but you just work as hard as you can and then let the chips 
fall where they may. 
((NATS:  boat))