December 14, 2021 — For the better part of a half century, the waters of Long Island Sound allowed Michael Grimshaw a good living. Now, he’s holding fast to a dwindling hope that the ocean’s bottom still has something — anything — to give.
Grimshaw is believed to be the last full-time commercial lobsterman in Connecticut — still plying a fishery that was once thick with boats and rich with opportunity.
His youngest son preparing bait and his elderly, former mother-in-law readying claw bands, Grimshaw, 65, prodded his aging boat into the choppy harbor late one summer morning, well after most fishermen have put to sea.
Suited up in his wet gear, he was soon hauling up traps from the dark waters, one after another. Out of 10 traps, he snared some spider crabs and a few pogies. None contained a lobster.
“It’s embarrassing — terrible, really,” said Grimshaw, who continues to raise hundreds of traps a week, even though he claims to have retired. “I used to be the big dog; now, I’m the puppy.”
During his glory days in the late 1990s, when he competed with hundreds of other commercial lobstermen in the area for a multimillion-dollar annual catch, his traps used to bring up as much as a few thousand pounds a day of the coveted crustaceans. A good day now amounts to maybe 50 pounds.
The main culprit? Climate change.
Read the full story at the Boston Globe