A Company Job

So it recently occurred to me that lobster fishing is a bizarre job in that many people actively want to go to work with you.  Volunteer job shadowing!  How much fun is it to go out and help someone do their work- for free!

We bring folks out on the boat at least a few times a season, and Dave does actually do a couple of charter trips a year, when he is paid to bring people to work with him.  He's also brought out school trips, and we've often brought out cast and crew members from the Opera House's Shakespeare shows.  Friends, family- all aboard.

That's how I started- over coffee at the cafe on Isle au Haut, I wrangled an invitation to go out and fish.  Poor Dave was just never able to politely make me leave the boat.  I am pretty sure he finally married me to make sure he'd be the beneficiary if (while distracted by making up stories, monologues, songs, and essays- or gazing at the water for porpoises) I ever went overboard.

So what is the lure of lobster fishing?  Getting up close and personal with large quantities of herring?

The sound of the diesel engine?  Rope sweeping by your feet as it is pulled overboard?


No- perhaps the super early wake-up?  Who doesn't like setting their alarm for 3:30am, and then actually getting up for it?

The more I think about it, the more I think the truth is age-old.  Some percentage of us feel the call to the ocean.  It doesn't necessarily fit into the everyday lifestyle of the modern American, but it is there- funding cruise lines, underwriting research vessels, paying for pleasure craft.  And while many people make their living in salaried, scheduled jobs, (and for most of my life this has been the case), they fantasize on occasion about chucking at all and running away to sea.  Every day I have spent on the water- from when I was a little kid in a row boat, to when I was in my early 20s, getting in my once-a-year-day on a power boat for the lobster boat races- I have stoppered up the experience in my mind, each day bottled up and stored as a day I felt like I really lived.  People come out to experience one of those days.  We are happy to give them that- the work can be long, monotonous- company keeps it fresh.

Incidentally, company will come from in the water as well- the fleet has more or less adopted this half-blind gray seal... or has she adopted us?  BTW, she's gotten picky about bait, and will only continue to beg if we've got the good stuff.