September 24, 2015 — Only about four percent of the 5,000 lobster licences granted by the state of Maine are currently owned by women. Of the 205 women who make up that four percent, 73 of them are under the age of 35.
“It’s frustrating, but I don’t care,” Samuels said. “The more I do it, the more people get it. The guys at the harbor are really nice. It’s mostly older men, yacht people and people at the farmer’s market where I sell on Fridays who are surprised that I’m a woman running my own boat.”
Samuels’ father, Matt, has fished out of Rockport for nearly 40 years. Samuels was born at a hospital down the road, and before she ever went home, Matt brought her down to the wharf. By the time she was seven years old, she had her student lobster fishing license. By 13, she’d fished the 200 hours necessary to get her commercial licence. A year later, at 14, she got her first boat.
“I called it the Miss Understood,” she said. “I thought I was really clever.”
Samuels is still living with her father in Searsmont, a town about 17 miles inland from Rockport Harbor, while she saves money to buy land and build her own place.
“I always knew I wanted to fish,” she said. “Though I went through a phase at 15 or 16 where I was like, ‘This is so much work, I don’t understand why I do this.’ It was one of those things where everyone would come back to school after the summer and talk about going to water parks and stuff and I’d be like, ‘I baited bags.’”
Lobstering is hard, physical work, and requires at least two people. The sternman baits the traps and measures the lobsters as the captain drives the boat and pulls up the buoys. Sadie’s sister, Molly, is her sternman—woman, rather—during the summer when she’s not at college.
Read the full story at the Boston Globe