Lobsters are America’s most valuable seafood. But climate change has the species in its crosshairs. In this episode we’ll look at the many challenges confronting lobstermen and try to track a course through warming waters.
Special Guests
Evan Mallett
Evan Mallett is the chef and co-owner of Black Trumpet in Portsmouth, NH, a restaurant dedicated to building a resilient community around local food, sustainability, and social justice. Evan is a six-time James Beard semi-finalist for Best Chef, Northeast. He has logged over a decade sitting on the boards of Chef’s Collaborative, Slow Food Seacoast, and the Heirloom Harvest Project, an initiative that brings together farmers, chefs, and educators to identify and restore a food system native to the greater New England Seacoast region. In 2016, he published the award-winning book, Black Trumpet: A Chef’s Journey through Eight New England Seasons. In 2017, Evan partnered with farmer Josh Jennings to create Abundance, a company that produces and packages soups and sauces from surplus and/or ugly farm produce. During the pandemic, Evan converted his kitchen two days a week to a production facility for meals that feed food insecure families in Southern New Hampshire and Maine.
John DeBellas
Fishing has been John DeBellas’s obsession since he was a child. He lived his dream as a full-time commercial lobsterman in Long Island from 1976 until 2002, when most of the lobsters disappeared. His next chapter brought him off the boats and into the hospitals as a critical care RN from 2004 to 2020. He is currently retired and still enjoys sportfishing, gardening, and talking all-things lobster.
Carla Guenther
Carla Guenther is Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries’ Chief Scientist, but she first got started studying lobster behavior at Woods Hole, MA, which then led to Baja California, Mexico, where she learned about a special form of community-based co-management. Inspired by the fishermen’s level of organization and management structure, Carla earned her PhD in Marine Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In that time, she became ingrained in the Santa Barbara commercial lobster fleet while conducting interviews for her doctoral research on socio-economics, reef ecology, and fishing behavior. Educated in oceanography, ecology, and anthropology, Carla approaches fisheries management with a focus on fishing communities. In Maine, Carla collaborates with researchers throughout New England studying changes in food webs after dam removal and social resilience in Maine’s lobster fishery and coastal communities.
John Jordan
John Jordan is the captain of a 40-ft lobster boat named Storm Walker and has been fishing for lobster off of the coast of Maine for the last 30 years. Along with fishing, this father of five from Yarmouth, ME, has marketed Maine lobster both domestically and globally and been involved in industry groups dedicated to the responsible management of the fishery. Captain Jordan remains a passionate advocate for an industry he considers the life blood of Maine.
Show Notes
Earlier this summer, a lobster fisherman was nearly swallowed by a humpback whale; after the ordeal, he commented that he felt like he’d been hit by a truck. It seems that many lobstermen today feel this way, as the industry has been shaken up in recent years. Debate over cooking methods and realities of climate change are only two of the factors at play, and as the episode begins, Nic and Paul address the first of these. While different people offer different takes on whether or not lobsters can feel pain, Nic and Paul ultimately conclude that the most ethically sound approach is to avoid putting a lobster straight into boiling water. Rather, as they demonstrate, it’s best to freeze the lobster before dispatching it humanely with a knife before boiling it.
Paul, almost burning his eyebrows off lighting a flambé.
After the lobster cooking has started, in keeping with the recipe of chef Evan Mallett of Black Trumpet restaurant in Portsmouth, NH, we look beyond the Maine lobsters in the pots to the waters of Long Island. There, guest John believed that his approximately twenty-year career as a lobster fisherman would be his sole career. However, around the turn of the millennium, he had the blindsighting experience of finding the lobster population to have dried up. A number of factors played into this environmental shift, such as anoxic populations and disease, and at the end of the day, John had to enter a new career in healthcare until he reached retirement.
We hear next from Carla Guenther, Chief Scientist at the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries. Carla shares about the state of lobster fishing and lobster populations in Maine, explaining that the state is, indeed, relatively lobster-heavy. While cod used to be the main fish harvested from Maine’s waters, water warming caused by global warming has made the waters less suited to cod, but more suited to lobster. The warming process will eventually make the water too hot for lobster to thrive as they currently do, but this shift will be slow and progress in stages. Other than the issue of warming, lobster fishing in Maine faces regulatory issues because of implications of lobster fishing on whale populations. As far as the future of Maine fishermen is concerned, Carla is hopeful that the industry will broaden as populations within Maine’s waters also continue to diversify.
As if warming waters and issues with whales were not enough, Maine fishermen also have to contend with wind. More specifically, as Storm Walker captain John Jordan explains, there is a recent push to develop a green energy infrastructure in Maine centered on floating wind turbines in the Gulf of Maine. Many considerations come into play, from the needs of whales, to the desire for clean energy, to the livelihood of fishermen. However, at this point, there is no way to fully understand the ramifications this infrastructure would bear. Floating turbines would definitely take territory away from fishermen and impact migratory patterns, but there is no way to know precisely what these migration changes would look like. The fishing industry of Maine has taken generations to build, and fishermen won’t let it go easily. Many questions remain about the future of the industry, alternatives to floating turbines, and best steps to take.
Ultimately, it’s clear that it is very hard to break down the lobster problem. Turning back to the kitchen, we see that Nic has diverted from chef Evan’s recipe into a Midwest-style grilled lobster dish. Paul, on the other hand, follows Evan’s lead; he is joined by Katie Baldwin, who brings her own views on best cooking methods to the table. Paul and Nic have been insistent on using every part of their lobsters, and this is arguably a responsible approach to take in the days ahead. As Evan explains, 50 years down the line, there’s a good chance we won’t be eating a whole lot of lobster. We’ll want our lobster purchasing to be thoughtful and more occasional, and our meal plans to incorporate all parts of the lobster. Further, we can make fish species that are thriving the focal points of our dishes, with lobster as a flavor accent.
With a final tip on accessing the meat on lobster walking legs, and a plug to view Last Man Fishing, Nic and Paul conclude the episode. Thank you for listening and see you next time!
Key Ideas:
0:00 – Hosts Paul and Nic introduce the podcast series.
1:15 – Preface for today’s episode.
7:02 – We meet a former Long Island lobsterman named John.
14:52 – The next guest is Carla Guenther of the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries.
26:35 – As John Jordan shares, wind is also a concern.
32:59 – Back to the kitchen for a taste test and concluding thoughts.
42:11 – A final fish tip.
Links:
Paul Greenberg and his books Four Fish and American Catch.
Nic Mink and the company he co-founded Sitka Salmon Shares.
Evan Mallett and his restaurant Black Trumpet.
Carla Guenther and the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries.
Episode produced by Alana McKeever
