Hey, that’s Elvers, not Elvis. Still, there’s just about as much excitement this spring caused by the baby eels as The King caused back in the ’70s. What is this all about?

Elver is a name given to a small baby eel (American eel, Anguilla rostrata) which is craved by the Japanese. The local sources of their version of the snake-like sea creatures (Anguilla japonica) have all but disappeared. They like to get them from nature and raise them in captivity and then eat them. What makes everyone excited these days is that the price per pound has now exceeded $2,000, so those lucky 400 with licenses to catch eel babies in Maine can often make their entire year’s income in a few days.

from BoatingLocal by Tom Richardson

Catching elvers consists of staking out a good spot on a riverbank at night. You need a small dipnet, a 5 gallon bucket and a Colman lantern. Besides the license, that’s it. The other trick is to get your catch to a broker while they’re still alive and healthy. Once you get to know your buyer however, he can arrange to come to you. The translucent, pencil-like eels squirm like a young Elvis on stage, but each one is worth $5. Our preference in food may be more like Elvis’s fried peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwiches, but eel is quite a delicacy in the Orient, and some Mainers are very happy about that.

The American eel starts its life in the Sargasso Sea, that huge swath of the mid-Atlantic east of the Bahamas and south of Bermuda. It also returns there to spawn and die in the fall. In between, it lives in fresh water, but it takes a year before the tiny larvae become elvers, also known as glass eels. It is these glass eels which are sought after now, and which the Japanese, Koreans  and Chinese raise to adulthood for the dish pictured on the top right. I have also had smoked eel from Larsen’s fish market in Menemsha, Martha’s Vineyard, MA., but I’m pretty sure it was caught at sea. It was boney, but good. A quick check of Larson’s webpage showed no smoked eels for sale now. So it’s off to the nearest Japanese restaurant if you want some. Otherwise it’s Heartbreak Hotel.

Dear MLA,

I just wanted to voice a concern about an advertisement of Maine Lobster. I again just saw the Red Lobster commercial depicting them as selling Maine lobster. The most recent commercial even portrays Maine lobstermen on it.

I have boycotted this business for the past few years after eating at two separate Red Lobsters while on vacation in Florida because every lobster I saw there had “product of Canada” bands on the claws…..

Mike Drake

Cuddy’s Harbor

Reprinted in shortened form from the Maine Lobstermen’s Association newsletter, April 2012.

Another letter in the same issue is from Mainers who took a Carnival cruise out of Florida and were served “Maine lobsters” without claws! Clawless lobster species are from warmer waters and could be a number of other lobster species, but not Homarus americanus, our north American lobster. Why should we care about whether a lobster is from Maine or not?

First, let’s hear from Red Lobster’s parent company, Darden Corporation:

….we are also the largest buyer and promoter of North American lobster in the world.In order to meet our annual usage needs, we must source North American lobster from both the United States and Canada. The term “Maine lobster” is commonly used interchangeably with North American lobster and Atlantic lobster. The USFDA also refers to the Homarus americanus species as “Maine Lobster”. Given that “Maine Lobster” is the most recognized and accepted term among consumers, that is the term we use.

Rich Jeffers

Directer of Communications

Darden Corporation, Orlando, FL

Also reprinted in shortened form from the Maine Lobstermen’s Association newsletter, April 2012.

The industrious journalists at MLA did some research and found Mr. Jeffer’s claim to be wanting; the FDA uses the word “lobster” as the “Acceptable Market Name” and “American lobster” as the Scientific common name. In fact, according to the FDA you can legally use the word “lobster” to describe Homarus gammarus, the European lobster. The word “Maine” was not mentioned anywhere. When Melissa Waterman from MLA wrote back to Mr. Jeffers with these observations, she got no response by press time.

So why should we care about this? After all, New Brunswick lobster is every bit as good as Maine lobster…probably. Why then would Red Lobster find it necessary to attach the Maine brand to Canadian lobster? Why would Carnival try to pass off spiny lobster as Homarus americanus? Could it be our reputation for clean cool waters? Our remarkable sustainable fishery? Or maybe they just want to evoke happy memories of that last time you came to Maine. I’m not advocating a boycott of anyone, no one wants a collapse of the lobster market, but a few words to the manager of your favorite lobster restaurant might be in order.

Excuse me, I need to go dig in my garden for a few Idaho potatoes and stop in my greenhouse to water my Florida oranges and prune my Georgia peach tree.

We anticipate a busy summer of providing an affordable Maine seaside apartment to our guests. We have made a few improvements since last year, the most important of which is a second well. This was a tough decision since we had to weigh the very existence of the apartment against the substantial cost of the new well. Our own needs were met by the old well, but on a few aggravating and embarrassing occasions we ran out of water during the height of tourist season.  Now that has changed. We no longer need to wring our hands, forgo showers or flushing when we have guests.

We added a little button for guests to push when they are disturbed by activity above their heads. It is basically a doorbell which we hear in our kitchen and tells us to tone down our activity. We don’t get a lot of complaints (actually, only one so far) so it’s more for our peace of mind. Occasionally we have guests who need to catch an early morning flight, so with this little button we will know without the guest having to bother with a phone call or personal visit.

AT&T coverage here is excellent

Since we started the apartment rental, we have included a land line phone. This phone costs us around $20/month and we were under the suspicion that just about nobody used it. Recently, Lamoine got a new cell tower, and it seems every guest uses their cell phone. We can reconnect at any time, but for this year, we are going to wait until we get a request for reconnection from one of our guests. Even with a seasonal connection, we are ahead of the game compared to year-round, so we consider it an important cost savings. Cell coverage remains less than ideal (you may have to stand outside) but that varies by your cell company.  Our US Cellular phone gets only one bar inside and two outside, but our tracfone gets four bars in and out. A Verizon phone will do fine since it’s a Verizon tower. According to company reception maps, t-moble’s reception here is “moderate” (outdoor only), Sprint’s is “off network roaming”, Nextel’s is zero, AT&T’s is excellent. Since we have very good broadband, skype is another possibility.

Digging the soft shell clam

Much of the exciting changes have to do with the shore. First, with the new local law about licensing clamming, the clam population has rebounded. This is great for guests who wish to try their hand at digging clams for a $12 recreational license (from the town office).  Concurrently I have become a much better clam digger, so I am happy to offer free lessons and equipment (you may want to bring your own rubber gloves and boots, but we have some).

The other big news is, of course, my lobster license, boat and traps. I can’t claim to offer the full-blown Maine lobster fishing experience, since at this point I still don’t quite know what I’m doing, but by mid-summer of 2012 I should know more. I will have to check my 5 traps at least every other day, so guests could arrange to come along. Laws forbid any active participation; trap handling, baiting or boat steering, so guests can observe only.

Being involved in providing vacation accommodations is like skipping over all of the stress in most people’s lives. I get to be the one to bring you relaxation and fun and sometimes, show you how to have more. It’s what I want to be when I grow up!

No, it doesn't taste salty because it's near the ocean!

I like to tap our maple trees when I have the time. This year I scaled back to four trees so I wouldn’t have to handle so much sap. Our trees are not sugar maple (Acer saccharum) but red maple (Acer rubrum), considered the second most desirable maple species for syrup. The taste of the syrup is a little different, less “mapley” but still good.

Maple syrup is expensive because its production requires so much fuel. A gallon of syrup comes from 40 gallons of sap, and all that extra water has to be boiled away. This boiling traditionally happens in a sugar shack over a wood fire. Indoor boiling is avoided due to the volume of moisture evolved. The boiling vessel is a large shallow pan with baffles so that sap entering at one end moves slowly through the maze-like pan to where it emerges with most of its water removed. That was the old way. Nowadays boiling is reduced by using reverse osmosis or applying a vacuum by the big producers. They also tap their trees using tubing instead of buckets and applying vacuum to suck the sap out of the trees.

My method is to boil the sap on the kitchen stove with the vent hood going full blast, which is another reason to keep my production low. Each day I dump another four gallons of sap into the pot and boil all day until the level is around 1/2 gallon. With each day of boiling the amount remaining gets sweeter. The smell is intoxicating, and is the real reason I like the process. The memory of a smell is especially evocative.

Today the weather is amazing, with temperatures approaching 60°F, light wind and full sun. The sap is dripping rapidly and I have to assume we are in peak season. The first buckets started appearing on Lamoine’s trees about two weeks ago when we had a warm spell. The next week or so was colder and the flow stopped. The conventional wisdom is that freezing nights need to be followed by warm days, but the warm days can’t just be in the mid 30′s, good flow seems to require days in the high 40′s or more.

Red maple is the first to flower, and the swelling of the buds leading up to that event changes the quality of the sap for the worse, so red maple must be tapped early and ended before the flavor gets bad. With any luck I’ll have a pint or two of syrup for the rest of the year. Good thing we don’t eat a lot of pancakes.

Maine Maple Sunday will be on March 25 this year. This is the day when the public is invited to drop in on any of the many Maine maple syrup producers. Free samples are offered and the process is explained. More info here. Locally, organic farmer Chuck Weber produces enough syrup to offer quarts for sale until it’s gone. If you stay at SeaCat’s Rest, ask me to connect you with Chuck.

One of the nice things about living in Maine is that you can often get given stuff for free just by asking. This predates craigslist by several hundred years and is still going strong. All you need to do is be in contact with the right people and be willing to trade work or favors in return when needed. In most cases, the person to be in contact with is not necessarily the owner of what you need, rather the town extrovert, the person who likes to talk and talks to a lot of people, usually in the course of business or volunteer work.  Just mention, “I need some good used lobster traps,” and for a favor, a bottle of wine or the promise of a few lobsters next summer (and the required few months of waiting while your request makes the rounds) you will hit paydirt.

I hit paydirt yesterday when my friend Chuck called to say he negotiated a deal for me. These traps look like they’ve been barely used and if I were to go out and buy new ones, they’d be close to $100 each. They even come with buoys and line. Count me one step closer to pulling in dozens of lobster dinners this summer! In addition, they lend a certain Downeast ambiance to my yard in the off season.

I’ve been reassured by several people that my gear will not be molested by other fishers, which is a big relief. Apparently a local state cop also puts out traps, and in an incident involving underwater cameras, the sole bad boy was caught and will not be re-offending. This is coupled with the growing awareness that traps are lobster feeding stations and more traps means more lobsters. Undersized lobsters come and go for free meals and notched or egg-bearing females and all under- or over-sized lobsters are let go when traps are hauled.

This means I need bait. At least two pounds per pound of legal lobster, at least according to what I’ve heard. Currently in the Maine Legislature there is a bill which will outlaw any bait which “is not part of the lobster’s natural diet”. This limits my bait choices to over-fished herring, which is the usual commercial bait, or whatever I can catch myself. Herring as bait is not willingly sold to 5-trap people like me, so if this bill passes I may be opening tins of tuna or frantically fishing for mackerel. Whatever happens, I’m one step closer now!

Bar Harbor from the Cadillac summit

Vacation season is almost here! The sunny weather and warm late winter temperatures remind us that Acadia adventure awaits. This is one of those posts I’ve been meaning to write for a long time since it is an attempt to answer the question I hear most often from our guests here at SeaCat’s Rest.  I will try to list the Top Ten in reverse priority (#10 first) and give alternatives when possible. Some choices are weather-related and so should be shuffled in the priority as necessary.

10.  A visit off island. It’s important to see the “real” Maine, away from the remarkable beauty of Mt. Desert Island. Two of my recommended off-island trips are to Stonington on Deer Isle (1-1/2 hours, 58 miles), a real fishing village and former granite quarry. Stonington is Maine’s most valuable lobster fishing port. The 2010 lobster landings figure released by the DMR for Stonington is 13,785,437 pounds of lobster valued at $44,259,982.  Also, see Kathleen’s post about the Settlement Quarry and the Crockett Cove Woods. The second choice is Castine (1-1/2 hours, 53 miles). Castine is great for history buffs. You can see remains of old Fort George built by the Brits. Castine is interesting because it was claimed at various time by the  French, British, Dutch and finally the Americans. There is also a lighthouse and the Mane Maritime Academy.

9.   Shopping, Brewery, Museums. I would love to claim we have perfect weather in the summer, but if you find the outdoors soggy, you should have some indoor options. Go here to see museums associated with College of the Atlantic. Try the Abbe Museum, 26 Mt. Desert, open 10 AM to 4 PM, Thursday to Saturday from late May through early November for Maine’s Native American story.  Southwest Harbor’s Oceanarium is a hit with kids.  A brewery tour is on tap at Atlantic Brewing at Town Hill while shopping is always an option in downtown Bar Harbor.

8.   Beach Time. Finding a place to stretch out in the sand or swim is not that easy on the rocky shore. There are two great options. The first is Sand Beach, the first  stop on the Park Loop Road after the pay gate  ($20 per week per vehicle). This is on the ocean so taking a dip may involve pain. For a warmer option try Echo Lake Beach on Rt. 102 just north of Southwest Harbor. This is a great place for kids. For a walk on a stony ocean shore, try Seawall, on Rt 102A just south of Southwest Harbor.

7.   Explore Anenome Cave. This is a little known place and you need me to tell  you where it is.  It is also a little dangerous; the rocks are slippery and it is possible to get trapped in the cave if the tide is on the move or the waves are high. Visit at low tide in calm seas. Drive to the Schooner Head parking lot, the last stop before the pay gate on the Park Loop Road.  The trail will lead to the shore and the cave is ten minutes or so away along the shore (follow the shore south, to the right). Inside are tide pools with pink anenomes and other interesting sea creatures and plants, some which seem to be adapted to low light conditions. Please be gentle with this fragile and rare environment. There’s a reason it is not a popular spot.

6. Dinner at a Lobster Pound. Our two favorites are at Beal’s Pier at the end of Clark Point Rd in Southwest Harbor and Abel’s Lobster Pound on Abel’s Lane off Rt. 198 on the way to Northeast Harbor at the top of Somes Sound.   Any place can boil a lobster. What you want is the real Maine experience that goes with it. Don’t expect elegance. An occasional whiff of bait may be in the air, but the views are awesome.

5.  Hike, hike, hike. You need to work off the lobster, right? What better place than Acadia National Park. There are so many to choose from and the right one can be found for all fitness levels. Try to pick one with a mountain top like Bubble Rock so you can be rewarded with a stunning view. South Bubble is pretty easy (400 feet). Read about hiking preparations here.

4.  Get out on the water! This can range a bit in expense. At the low end you can borrow our kayaks when you stay at SeaCat’s Rest. Our water is fairly protected, at the sheltered end of Frenchman Bay. There are also guided kayak trips leaving from Bar Harbor. If I were to recommend a more expensive outing I would include a whale watch trip. You will see a fair amount of open ocean and be rewarded with a close encounter with ocean leviathans! For even more options go here.

3.  Luncheon at Jordan Pond House. This is just mandatory, that’s all there is to it.  Read all about it here.

2. Bike, walk or (horseback) ride the carriage trails. This is the Rockefeller family’s  gift to America representing an ideal of pre-automobile road and stone craft set in the beauty of Acadia. Don’t miss it. More here.

1. Drive the Park Loop Road and to the top of Cadillac Mountain. This is how most people start their trip here and it is a good way. Pick a clear day for the Cadillac summit and take your camera. Don’t forget the free Island Explorer bus which can take you just about anywhere. Try to time your Thunder Hole visit to middle to high tide and good waves are a plus. This is a good time to buy your week-long park pass.

The North Atlantic is behind you

It’s the middle of February and our calendar is filling up! Amazingly, most reservations seem to be in non-peak times of the year. This is great for us and you too because it leaves much of July and August open. We have recently had some great reviews at our homeaway site. These reviews are an honest deal, homeaway cannot refuse a negative review and the best they can offer the owners is a chance for rebuttal.  So far our reviews have not needed any rebuttal. Our strategy is to make sure your visit is perfect in every way and we keep making improvements to this end. Last summer we ran the well dry once, and in the fall we spent $6,000 on a new well. It will be a huge relief to not worry about water!

our calendar as of Feb 12, 2012

We also have an ongoing goal of reducing our carbon footprint. We use solar water heaters and are slowly replacing all our lighting with LEDs. These and other measures have won us the State of Maine’s Environmental Leader in Hospitality program with a score of 172. One hundred points were required for approval, so we’ve managed to exceed this requirement by a wide margin.

My winter project is to build a “dodger” or roof for Eleccentricity, my electric lobster boat. Ultimately it will have solar panels on it, helping to charge the batteries. This summer I’m going to have it again moored out front. If all goes well I may find myself with too many lobsters, but at this point that’s wishful thinking. I need to find out first if the local lobstermen will accept my 5 traps. I have my recreational license but….

The Maine coast, especially the Acadia region continues to be a top choice for affordable vacations. The environment is pristine, the beauty is intense and the opportunities for exercise and dining are second to none. If you need more convincing, look for things to do in the area here. Our spot on the shore, SeaCat’s Rest is proving to be ever more popular as time goes on, so give us a chance. I can’t imagine a better “job” than being a part of someone’s happy vacation memory!

Simply stated, “Why do Maine lobster landings keep going up?” The shaky economy and the high cost of fuel have failed to make lobster fishers into millionaires, but  lack of lobster is not an issue. In 1994 we thought the record-breaking 39 million pound harvest, exceeding the previous record by 26%, was a fluke. By 2009 the harvest soared to 78 million pounds, in 2010 93 million pounds, and some predict even higher numbers for 2011. What is going on?

A while back I summarized the prevailing theories about why landings continue to increase. Reduction of predators (the cod fishery collapse), increase of kelp beds due to sea urchin fishing (kelp beds protect young lobsters) and finally, the inspired way lobster harvesting is managed by our Maine laws and fishermen. This last reason is kind of self-serving; after all, you don’t create an historic population boom by eating less of something.

Meanwhile, the scientists were baffled. For many years they warned that the fishery was on the verge of collapse, calling it “overfished” (Stock Assessment Review Committee Document 93; 18 July, 1993) . It’s easy to see how they would think this. For about a century, data suggested that a healthy harvest level was somewhere in the 20 million pound range. But a publication written in 1996 and available at the Maine Government website here proposes an interesting theory. While mentioning the usual reasons, lower predation, increased minimum size as amended in 1988,  and warmer water temperatures, it also presents a unique calculation. In 1994 lobster fishers raised their traps 39 million times:

If we assume each newly set trap contains on average about 2 pounds of bait, we can then calculate that Maine fishers used about 78 million pounds of bait in 1994.

In 1994 the lobster harvest was 39 million pounds, so that’s two pounds of bait per pound of lobster. The lobsters know how to work a handout. They enter the traps (underwater videos show them doing this with little difficulty) and unless they are big enough to not fit through the escape vent, they will not stick around until the trap is hauled. If they are too big, a notched female or an unnotched egg bearing female, they will be returned to the water. The few whose carapace measure from 3-1/4″ to 5″ are retained.

from Maine lobsterguide.pdf

So if this theory is correct, what we have here in Maine is a semi-domesticated fishery! They come into shallow waters in the spring, eat “our” food, mate, shed and grow. Without the artificial food input would there be nearly 100 million pounds of lobster? Think of it this way: a quick and dirty google search (USA Today) brought up a ratio of 5 pounds of feed for one pound of chicken and two pounds per pound of catfish, so it’s not unreasonable to think that bait is a significant factor in the increase. More landings result in more traps. More traps mean more feeding stations, and so more lobsters. In Nova Scotia traps are limited by law, and the harvest has leveled off.

While it’s hubris to suggest that our fishing methods are so well designed that we are able to produce more lobster than we can harvest, it does appear that an unintended byproduct of this fishing method (the bait) could be doing just that. So keep eating lobster. There are hungry mandibles to feed.

Late Word: The Ellsworth American reported on Feb 1, 2012 that the 2011 lobster harvest was 100 million pounds! Wow! The same article also reported that the 2010 total just for our Hancock county was 31.1 million pounds. Compare this to 11.6 million pounds caught in Massachusetts  waters in 2009. For our part of Maine, that’s 576 pounds of lobster for every resident!

Amelia made this for Christmas 2010

Get Ready Lobsters, ‘Cause Here I Come

(apologies to Smokey Robinson)

I never met a clam who makes me feel the way that you do. (You’re alright)

Whenever I’m asked what makes my meals real, I say crustaceans do. (They’re outta sight)

So, fee-fi-fo-fum
Look out lobsters, ’cause here I come.

And I’m bringing you some fish that smell.

So get ready, so get ready.

You’re gonna love it in my wire hotel.

So get ready, so get ready ’cause here I come.

(Get ready ’cause here I come) I’m on my way. (Get ready ’cause here I come)

If you wanna play hide and seek with me, let me remind you (It’s alright) The meal is free if you’re too big or small, I just release you (It’s outta sight)

So, Fiddley-dee, Fiddley-dum Look out lobsters, ’cause here I come.

I’m bringing you a life with no risk.

So get ready, so get ready.

I’ll make your friends into a lobster bisque.

So get ready, so get ready ’cause here I come.

(Get ready ’cause here I come) I’m on my way. (Get ready ’cause here I come) (Get ready)

[Instrumental]

If all my friends should want you too, I’ll understand it. (Be alright)

I hope to trap enough for them, the way I planned it. (Be outta sight)

So twiddley-dee, twiddley-dum Look out lobsters, ’cause here I come.

And if you’re a lady that’s just full of roe.

So get ready, so get ready.

I’ll notch your flipper and just let you go.

So get ready, so get ready ’cause here I come.
(Get ready ’cause here I come) I’m on my way. (Get ready ’cause here I come) (Get ready ’cause here I come) (Get ready)

Everybody knows the one about the  old Mainer sitting on the porch of the general store who, when asked by the tourist if he can take the road to Bar Harbor says, “I wouldn’t bothah, they got plenty theyah already”. Other variations: “How far to Bar Harbor?”, “About 24,000 miles the way you’re headed” or “You cahn’t get theyah from heah”. Mainers are known for their dry humor and clever witticisms. Being isolated helps to sharpen the tongue. We’re not at the end of the earth, but you can see it from here.

Photo by George French, courtesy Maine State Archives

The jokes tend to fall into four categories: the weather, tourists, “people from away” (who now live here) and quirky Mainers themselves. Tim Sample is the father of Maine humorists. In this video clip he explains the difference between a native Mainer and someone from away:

But if Tim Sample is the father, Marshall Dodge and Bob Ryan are the grandfathers. As Yale University students in the 1950s they put together an album of Maine humor and called themselves “Bert and I”. They practically invented the genre with their slow storytelling, dry humor and sound effects. Their albums sold over a million copies:

Bill Sawyer wrote a pamphlet in 1982  called, “A Collection of Maine Humor” which I was lucky enough to find at our Lamoine dump’s swap shop. In it he tells a story about an encounter with a tourist:

Some years back Ben Prichard, driving his old pickup truck, went clean through a stoplight and smacked real hard, broadside, into a big Cadillac with New York plates. He really whaled it. The fellow from New York was some upset, got out, walked over to Ben, yelled and hollered, and gave him a real hard time.

When the New Yorker had finally blown off most of his steam, Ben said, “Now young fella, there ain’t no sense in you carryin’ on like this. It ain’t so bad!” He then opened the glove compartment, drew out a pint of whiskey he always kept there, and said, “Now try a pull of this and calm down a bit.” The fellow from New York took a long draw of the whiskey and handed it back to Ben, who promptly put the cork back in the pint and started to put it back in the glove compartment.

“Aren’t you going to have some?” asked the New Yorker.

“Nope, ” says Ben, “I’ll wait till after the police come.”