5/22/96
A day in the life of a lobsterman
By KYLE BROUGHTON
New Bedford (Mass.) High School
EDITOR'S NOTE: Kyle first e-mailed Rhode Island HORIZONS on May 17, expressing sympathy with the lobstermen whose livelihoods were hurt by the North Cape oil spill in January. Curious, we wrote back, asking if he had any lobstering links himself. He sure did. We then asked if he'd like to share his experiences on our Web site. Here is his reply:
Hello, I am going to write a story on a regular day of lobstering that I do in the summer. My name is Kyle Broughton and I go to New Bedford High School in Massachusetts. I am 16 years old and in the summer I work on a 31-foot boat called the Sea Blitz 2. The boat is out of Fairhaven, Mass., and that is also where I live.
My day starts off at about 3 a.m., that is when the other deckhand picks me up at my house and we go down to the docks. There we meet up with the captain of the boat and we load the bait on to the boat. The bait we use is skate and flatfish. We usually bring about 10-12 totes of bait because we pull about 300 traps a day.
We do not sleep over night and we usually get in around 6 at night. It is a very long day I think.
My job is to band all the lobsters and bait all the traps and sometimes stack the traps. Brian the other sternman gauges all of the lobsters and cleans out the trap and also sets the traps. Henry the captain hooks the buoy and makes sure everything runs smoothly and that we catch alot.
The trawls we fish have 10-15 traps on them, and the strings of traps have 10. We fish anywhere from 10-40 miles offshore. We fish around the Elizabethan Islands. Sometimes it gets very rough and it ain't fun let me tell you! Other times there is no wind and it is hotter than hell.
When we go back to the dock we take the lobsters out of the tank and put them in totes and then go sell them.
I don't have any more time to write so see-ya later!!!
Readers may e-mail Kyle at 1word7@nbhs.newbedford.k12.ma.us
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