The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier

by Colin Woodard

Book Overview

For more than four hundred years the people of coastal Maine have clung to their rocky, wind-swept lands, resisting outsiders? attempts to control them while harvesting the astonishing bounty of the Gulf of Maine. Today?s independent, self-sufficient lobstermen belong to the communities imbued with a European sense of ties between land and people, but threatened by the forces of homogenization spreading up the eastern seaboard.In the tradition of...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670033243
• ISBN13: 9780670033249
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 372 Pages
• Weight: 1.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Maine History

This book is a page turner I couldn't put down. Beautifully written, it does a thorough job of concisely telling the history of coastal Maine and, by so doing, gives us a start on the history of New England. It takes us from the earliest settlers to today, and even if one has, as I have, lived on the coast of Maine for close to 40 years, one can learn from the book. Put it together with "Islanders" by Virginia Thorndike, and you have a picture of one of the last best places on earth. Please don't let these books persuade you to move here!

The Lobster Coast....

is a all encompassing look at mid coast Maine, both present day and historically. It took me back to High School US history and made the French Indian wars come alive. Hear about modern day lobster pirates from of all places, "Friendship" invading a small island's lobster fields. Look ahead for what is in store for a severely depleted fishery then chuckle when a hidden camera reveals the secret life of lobster and captor. Great read, it belongs in your Maine libary.

The Maine Coast like you've never experienced it before

A book both entertaining and educational - ranging from lobster fishing to the history of Maine - which puts 'Vactionland' in a whole new light. While the history is clearly presented from a Maine-centric perspective, putting some otherwise well-regarded historical figures (like Revolutionay War General Henry Knox, famous for hauling the captured cannons of Ticonderoga overland to Boston in the middle of winter) in far from flattering light, it is a perspective that isn't often - if ever - told. And it's these stories which put a far more complex backstory into what so many (myself included) have long regarded as a summer vacation sanctuary, but not much more. This book is a great summer read, a great fall read - whatever season, enjoy it with some lobster, and gain a new appreciation for 'Downeast' and all the way down the Maine coast.

Absolutely fascinating and extremely well written book

Despite having grown up in midcoast Maine, the focus of this book, and having had Maine history in school, I learned so much from this book! I had no idea how fascinating the history of coastal Maine was---perhaps because much of it is rather disturbing---not something they wanted to teach us in 6th grade! I also now understand much more about the attitudes I grew up with regarding those "from away". I learned that I was part of a huge migration into Maine in the early 70s---I had always known that most anyone in my class that was not native had moved to Maine the very same summer we did (summer of '72) but I never really realized why. I've been away from Maine for a while now, and this book opened my eyes to some of the recent changes there---how many now are moving to Maine that have no interest in really becoming part of the culture they find there. And of course, I also learned a great deal about lobstering. Growing up, about half the kids in my class had fathers who were lobstermen, but this book greatly increased my knowledge of their culture and of lobsters themselves. I can't recommend this book highly enough!!

The sky is falling, but not on lobsters

The sky is truly falling on many fish species. Nets come up empty, and fish-based economies collapse. But the Maine lobster seems almost immune to such disaster; a growing number of Maine lobstermen continue to haul in a grand 20 million pounds a year of delectable crustacean with no shortage looming on the horizon. Why? The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier by Colin Woodard explains how Maine lobstermen voluntarily conserve their lobster population and keep the industry sustainable. The stereotype of the Maine fisherman as stoic, independent and not easily impressed is apparently well deserved. Woodard suggests that Maine's lobsters benefit from small, traditional, often ancient, fishing communities that jealously guard their resource. Though anyone can theoretically obtain a license to fish for lobster in Maine, the pros protect their harbors from interlopers, snubbing neophytes with no ancestral ties to the community, and even vandalizing their traps. Maine lobstermen have also protected their lobster population by making the breeding female lobster almost sacred. Woodard lauds the lobstermen's practice of "V-notching" egg-bearing females-punching a small hole in their tail fins before releasing them back into the ocean. Notching is code for "Cherished breeder-not for sale." Lobstermen have agreed among themselves to throw back the V-notched lobsters-even when they are eggless. Maine's lobstering community also tosses back outsized male lobsters-a practice unique among fishing industries. Woodard writes ambitiously about the whole state of Maine and its history, starting with its pre-Pilgrim inhabitation by Europeans. Throughout his book, he keeps an eye on lobstering, the industry that has been the backbone of Maine's economy, the ever-present default option as other industries, such as ice and granite, failed. Woodard reports not only on the conflict between lobstermen and government scientists, but also on the friction between ancient lobster communities and encroaching suburbia-what he calls the "Massification" of southern Maine, i.e. the tendency of Boston professionals to sprawl northward, driving lobstermen out of their ancestral homes with tax increases, beach access restrictions and noise ordinances. Woodard's chapter, "The Triumph of the Commons," is, itself, a triumph. Science has declared that, by and large, shared natural resources are doomed to overharvesting, but Woodard shows how Maine's lobster community has defied that trend through religious self-regulation. Woodard takes as his focal point the beautiful and largely undeveloped Monhegan Island. On Monhegan, lobstermen have taken resource conservation a quantum step further: they only fish for lobsters December through June. Monhegan is not only a model of conservation; for Woodard, it is also a symbol of Maine and lobstering culture at its very best. Monhegan, he writes, is "an ancient, self-governing village, e