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Matinicus and Tenant’s Harbor Lobstermen Join Forces to Clean
Island Beaches

by Eva Murray

Jarod Bray’s FV The Volition loaded with beach debris. Eva Murray photo.

For the past four or five years lobsterman Tad Miller, who fishes from Matinicus Island and sells his catch in Tenant’s Harbor, and a group of other Tenant’s Harbor area fishermen have undertaken what they could call an annual service project. In mind to make some effort to care for the ocean which is their livelihood, they volunteer their boats and their time to clean up some of the more remote beaches. In the past, they’ve worked on uninhabited islands off Port Clyde and Spruce Head, although these days not all private island owners welcome outsiders (worry about liability, perhaps) and last year the fishermen spend a day at Criehaven, teaming up with a large group from that island. This year, on the 23rd of June, a few lobstermen and visitors from the mainland joined roughly 40 men, women, and children from Matinicus Island--a healthy turnout of fishermen including most of the younger guys-- other working islanders full and part-time, and some visiting friends and relatives to put in a full day’s work in the sunshine.

We kneeled in the muck to cut slimy, rotten rope from under wharves with our knives. We pulled hundreds of beverage and bleach bottles out of prickly rugosa rose bushes and rock crevices. We hauled, we picked, we gathered and we stacked old, derelict traps on the wharf. We strained to pull half-buried items out of the wet sand. We loaded all manner of stuff onto trucks if there was anywhere to park a truck, and made piles in some of the coves for collection by skiff where there was no road access.

John Tripp of Spruce Head, with his boat the Sea Wife, and Jarod Bray of Matinicus, captain of Volition put their boats to work as “garbage barges” for the day, alongside Miller in the Mallary Sky. The gang on the Matinicus steamboat wharf heaped the three vessels high with junk.

Of course, summertime beach cleanup efforts are not uncommon on the coast of Maine, often bringing school children or vacationers out to patrol a popular sand beach, gathering Styrofoam and beer cans. Miller and the other fishermen were in the position to tackle some of the more difficult terrain and the heavier trash. Employing Carolina skiffs (and experienced small-boat handlers) and wide-decked lobster boats to haul masses of tangled pot warp, smashed lobster traps thrown ashore by storms, rusty iron (perhaps from the days of cars being hauled outside the harbor after they ceased to operate) and other bulky waste, everything was carried to the mainland.

Miller describes having started the annual clean-up effort with others from the Tenant’s Harbor Fishermen’s Co-op, a relatively new operation that sells exclusively to Luke’s Lobster. Luke’s is a local seafood company which advertises its products as “traceable and sustainable.” Luke’s Lobster provided a generous ration of lobster and crabmeat for the cleanup volunteers, and a delicious pile of lobster and crab rolls was prepared on Matinicus by food volunteers Janet and Kathleen. Other food and drinks were provided for the work gang by island cooks.

Two large roll-on roll-off containers were staged at the Tenant’s Harbor Co-op to receive the trash, and another group of volunteers on that side were ready to unload the boats at day’s end. Merritt Carey of Luke’s Lobster and co-op president Josh Miller helped make it all happen. Arranging for and paying for those containers is a critical part of this effort. Anybody could potentially haul beach junk to a mainland port, but in many cases, there is nowhere to put it once it arrives.

Tad Miller serves on the Board of Directors of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. Lobster fishermen are sometimes presumed to be on the opposite side of the small-business argument from anybody labeled an “environmentalist,” but Miller, Bray and others who help out with this effort are quick to mention how their industry is dependent upon the health and well-being of the ocean. There is likely no end to it now; coastal residents will be cleaning beaches for the foreseeable future, and these fishermen know that it will take time, muscle, and machinery to make a difference.

Beachcombers, resident and visitor alike, see an awful lot of commercial fishing gear tangled into our rocky shorelines. For some of it, there is no excuse. Soft drink containers, bleach jugs, plastic-coated work gloves and rope knots being intentionally tossed overboard defies logic in this day, with all we know about how plastic does not disappear in the ocean, but ends up in the bellies of marine animals. This “toss it over the side” habit comes from the era of natural-fiber rope and biodegradable trash, and we are loathe to steer away from doing things the way our grandfathers did things—but, of course, Grampa didn’t have all this plastic. With every coastline on the planet wreathed in trash now, it is evident that much of it floats in from elsewhere; beach trash is not exclusively the fault of area residents. Beachcombers might also keep in mind that all of those pieces of lobster gear we find twisted into the bladderwrack are generally the result of storm damage, not intentional dumping. Trap wire and similar bulky fishing gear is hard to get rid of, to be sure, and we may wish to look at materials in future with an eye toward more ease of disposal (our grandfather’s traps surely worked without all those plastic add-ons). Still, most of the time it is nobody’s fault when smashed traps end up on the beach.

The people of Matinicus wish to thank all those who turned out to help with this cleanup project.

Eva Murray is the Recycling and Solid Waste Coordinator for Matinicus Island. Eva’s last lobster license was dated 1990, the year her son was born, and cost $53.00, which at the time she thought was an awful lot of money.