Unlike other kinds of fish, lobster must be shipped alive. Uncooked dead lobsters develop poisonous toxins that will sicken or possibly kill anyone who eats them. Therefore the lobster industry, as we know it today, did not become possible until the early nineteenth century with the development of lobster smacks, sailing vessels with seawater tanks in their hold. By 1840 Provincetown had five of these smacks devoted full-time to shipping lobsters between the Cape and New York City. The industry was given further boosts by the development of canning factories in New England in the 1840s, and also by the coming of the railroad and improved methods of preserving food with ice.

Cape Cod initially provided all of the lobsters for the inland urban markets, but, by the Civil War, populations had been fi

Homarus Americanus, alternatively known as the New England, Maine, or Atlantic lobster, once thrived in such profundity here on Cape Cod that the colonists actually used them, not as food, but as fertilizer for their crops or as bait for their fish hooks. As sustenance, lobster was little more than “poverty food,” fit only for feeding indentured servants, slaves, children or cows, in that order. Here in Massachusetts, the servants did finally rebel and won an amendment to their contracts- No longer would they be forced to eat lobster more than three times a week.

Today of course, the lobster ranks as the king of all summer foods, more a celebration than a meal. For lobster-lovers a lazy summer day baking at the beach is merely prelude to the height of indulgence- tying on the lobster bib, unwrapping the special forks, picks, and claw-cracker, and consulting the place mat with its numbers outlining, step-by-step, how to dismember your lobster to extract its full contents.

We New Englanders so love the lobster that Logan Airport has its own lobster pool, whose feisty inhabitants wait to be shipped to all points of the globe by air express. It was not always so. In fact there is little about the history of this pugnacious crustacean that would predict its exclusive rise to popularity in the American diet today.

The History On a journey to the Cape guided by Squanto on September 18, 1621, Miles Standish was struck by the omnipresent hordes of lobsters. He found “savages seeking lobsters” in Barnstable, and, at daybreak the following morning in Nauset Harbor, he moved to acquire some of his own:

"There we found many lobsters that had been gathered together by the savages, which we made ready under a cliff. The captain set two sentinels behind the cliff to the landward to secure the shallop, and taking a guide with him and four of our company, went to seek the inhabitants; where they met a woman coming for her lobsters, they told her of them, and contented her for them."

The potential for the creature in the American diet was noted not only here on Cape Cod, of course, but all along the New England coast. In June 1605 Captain George Waymouth, on a trip to Maine, was also struck by the teeming populations of American Lobster, a close cousin to the smaller Spiny lobster of Europe:

“And towards night we drew with a small net of twenty fathoms very nigh the shore; we got about thirty very good and great lobsters... which I omit not to report, because it sheweth how great a profit the fishing would be.”

Nevertheless, lobstering as an industry began, not in Maine, but right here on Cape Cod. Populations were so high that the typical lobster went for a mere two or three cents each. In fact, lobstermen on Monomoy’s Whitewash Village are said to have made a decent living at a penny apiece. The crustaceans grew to such size that they were often reported up to five and six feet long in the markets of Boston. One gargantua reached a weight of nearly forty-five pounds.

Unlike other kinds of fish, lobster must be shipped alive. Uncooked dead lobsters develop poisonous toxins that will sicken or possibly kill anyone who eats them. Therefore the lobster industry, as we know it today, did not become possible until the early nineteenth century with the development of lobster smacks, sailing vessels with seawater tanks in their hold. By 1840 Provincetown had five of these smacks devoted full-time to shipping lobsters between the Cape and New York City. The industry was given further boosts by the development of canning factories in New England in the 1840s, and also by the coming of the railroad and improved methods of preserving food with ice.

Cape Cod initially provided all of the lobsters for the inland urban markets, but, by the Civil War, populations had been fis

Today of course, the lobster ranks as the king of all summer foods, more a celebration than a meal. For lobster-lovers a lazy summer day baking at the beach is merely prelude to the height of indulgence- tying on the lobster bib, unwrapping the special forks, picks, and claw-cracker, and consulting the place mat with its numbers outlining, step-by-step, how to dismember your lobster to extract its full contents.

We New Englanders so love the lobster that Logan Airport has its own lobster pool, whose feisty inhabitants wait to be shipped to all points of the globe by air express. It was not always so. In fact there is little about the history of this pugnacious crustacean that would predict its exclusive rise to popularity in the American diet today.

The History On a journey to the Cape guided by Squanto on September 18, 1621, Miles Standish was struck by the omnipresent hordes of lobsters. He found “savages seeking lobsters” in Barnstable, and, at daybreak the following morning in Nauset Harbor, he moved to acquire some of his own:

"There we found many lobsters that had been gathered together by the savages, which we made ready under a cliff. The captain set two sentinels behind the cliff to the landward to secure the shallop, and taking a guide with him and four of our company, went to seek the inhabitants; where they met a woman coming for her lobsters, they told her of them, and contented her for them."

The potential for the creature in the American diet was noted not only here on Cape Cod, of course, but all along the New England coast. In June 1605 Captain George Waymouth, on a trip to Maine, was also struck by the teeming populations of American Lobster, a close cousin to the smaller Spiny lobster of Europe:

“And towards night we drew with a small net of twenty fathoms very nigh the shore; we got about thirty very good and great lobsters... which I omit not to report, because it sheweth how great a profit the fishing would be.”

Nevertheless, lobstering as an industry began, not in Maine, but right here on Cape Cod. Populations were so high that the typical lobster went for a mere two or three cents each. In fact, lobstermen on Monomoy’s Whitewash Village are said to have made a decent living at a penny apiece. The crustaceans grew to such size that they were often reported up to five and six feet long in the markets of Boston. One gargantua reached a weight of nearly forty-five pounds.

Unlike other kinds of fish, lobster must be shipped alive. Uncooked dead lobsters develop poisonous toxins that will sicken or possibly kill anyone who eats them. Therefore the lobster industry, as we know it today, did not become possible until the early nineteenth century with the development of lobster smacks, sailing vessels with seawater tanks in their hold. By 1840 Provincetown had five of these smacks devoted full-time to shipping lobsters between the Cape and New York City. The industry was given further boosts by the development of canning factories in New England in the 1840s, and also by the coming of the railroad and improved methods of preserving food with ice.

Cape Cod initially provided all of the lobsters for the inland urban markets, but, by the Civil War, populations had been fi

The History On a journey to the Cape guided by Squanto on September 18, 1621, Miles Standish was struck by the omnipresent hordes of lobsters. He found “savages seeking lobsters” in Barnstable, and, at daybreak the following morning in Nauset Harbor, he moved to acquire some of his own:

"There we found many lobsters that had been gathered together by the savages, which we made ready under a cliff. The captain set two sentinels behind the cliff to the landward to secure the shallop, and taking a guide with him and four of our company, went to seek the inhabitants; where they met a woman coming for her lobsters, they told her of them, and contented her for them."

The potential for the creature in the American diet was noted not only here on Cape Cod, of course, but all along the New England coast. In June 1605 Captain George Waymouth, on a trip to Maine, was also struck by the teeming populations of American Lobster, a close cousin to the smaller Spiny lobster of Europe:

“And towards night we drew with a small net of twenty fathoms very nigh the shore; we got about thirty very good and great lobsters... which I omit not to report, because it sheweth how great a profit the fishing would be.”

Nevertheless, lobstering as an industry began, not in Maine, but right here on Cape Cod. Populations were so high that the typical lobster went for a mere two or three cents each. In fact, lobstermen on Monomoy’s Whitewash Village are said to have made a decent living at a penny apiece. The crustaceans grew to such size that they were often reported up to five and six feet long in the markets of Boston. One gargantua reached a weight of nearly forty-five pounds.

Unlike other kinds of fish, lobster must be shipped alive. Uncooked dead lobsters develop poisonous toxins that will sicken or possibly kill anyone who eats them. Therefore the lobster industry, as we know it today, did not become possible until the early nineteenth century with the development of lobster smacks, sailing vessels with seawater tanks in their hold. By 1840 Provincetown had five of these smacks devoted full-time to shipping lobsters between the Cape and New York City. The industry was given further boosts by the development of canning factories in New England in the 1840s, and also by the coming of the railroad and improved methods of preserving food with ice.

Cape Cod initially provided all of the lobsters for the inland urban markets, but, by the Civil War, populations had been fi

“And towards night we drew with a small net of twenty fathoms very nigh the shore; we got about thirty very good and great lobsters... which I omit not to report, because it sheweth how great a profit the fishing would be.”

Nevertheless, lobstering as an industry began, not in Maine, but right here on Cape Cod. Populations were so high that the typical lobster went for a mere two or three cents each. In fact, lobstermen on Monomoy’s Whitewash Village are said to have made a decent living at a penny apiece. The crustaceans grew to such size that they were often reported up to five and six feet long in the markets of Boston. One gargantua reached a weight of nearly forty-five pounds.

Unlike other kinds of fish, lobster must be shipped alive. Uncooked dead lobsters develop poisonous toxins that will sicken or possibly kill anyone who eats them. Therefore the lobster industry, as we know it today, did not become possible until the early nineteenth century with the development of lobster smacks, sailing vessels with seawater tanks in their hold. By 1840 Provincetown had five of these smacks devoted full-time to shipping lobsters between the Cape and New York City. The industry was given further boosts by the development of canning factories in New England in the 1840s, and also by the coming of the railroad and improved methods of preserving food with ice.

Cape Cod initially provided all of the lobsters for the inland urban markets, but, by the Civil War, populations had been fi

Unlike other kinds of fish, lobster must be shipped alive. Uncooked dead lobsters develop poisonous toxins that will sicken or possibly kill anyone who eats them. Therefore the lobster industry, as we know it today, did not become possible until the early nineteenth century with the development of lobster smacks, sailing vessels with seawater tanks in their hold. By 1840 Provincetown had five of these smacks devoted full-time to shipping lobsters between the Cape and New York City. The industry was given further boosts by the development of canning factories in New England in the 1840s, and also by the coming of the railroad and improved methods of preserving food with ice.

Cape Cod initially provided all of the lobsters for the inland urban markets, but, by the Civil War, populations had been fished so low that buyers turned to the waters of Maine to fulfill demand. As lobstering became a tireless and full-fledged New England industry, regulations were similarly enacted to restrict the size and season of the catch, and populations for the last century have remained remarkably stable.

Cape Cod Today At Chatham Harbor on a shimmering summer day, with little wind and no sea running, the picturesque view of lobstermen tending their colorful pots close to shore conjures up an ideal way of life. Even within the fishing industry itself, lobstering is enviously referred to by fellow longliners and gillnetters as an easy “gentleman” fishery.

“Well, we are lucky here in Chatham,” says 30 year-old Chatham native and lobsterman Ben Bergquist. “A lot of the best fishing is just 8 miles from shore and, generally all over the Cape, we have very good lobster habitat with good bottom -- all within twenty-five miles. It is a fun fishery when it’s good, but it’s like anything else-- when it’s not going well, it’s absolutely miserable, and persistence counts for everything. Everybody who makes money from the ocean has to work to make that money. It’s all up to you if you want to get out of bed in the morning and work or not, no matter what the fishery, and lobstering is no different.”

In a fishery plagued annually by predictions of crashing lobster stocks, Bergquist, who began helping his father at the age of eight and took over the boat, the Benjo, in 1996, says that for himself every year has gotten better. Though he has a Bachelors degree in Environmental Science and the option for a more traditional career on-shore, he sees a strong future for himself in lobstering.

With a young wife, two daughters aged one and four, a mortgage, and a sizeable investment in gear, he has found that hard work and perseverance has paid off just like any other business.

“Well, for sure, the successful days are averaged by an equal amount of hard-luck. Everything’s trial and error, and every year’s different. You can never count on the same things happening twice. But at the end of the year it all comes out in the wash. Last year August was great and July was not, but that’s not always true. They (lobsters) were just nowhere to be found in July. And overall we caught them deeper than normal because, for some reason, I think the water was warmer deeper than in shoal water. Once it gets colder, they either hibernate or take off. Water temperature has everything to do with it, and that varies throughout the year and from year to year.”

Thus, in order to survive, lobstermen cannot afford to mindlessly return to the same grounds that were successful in the previous year. They must constantly update their information by learning the lobster’s habits and appetites well enough to outsmart him.

Ben’s work-day actually begins the previous night when he checks the weather. If the fierceness of the wind and waves prohibits actual fishing, he’ll stay on shore, building or repairing traps, working on his boat, or hunting for bait, something of which he never has enough.

“I get bait from four or five different boats and some from the markets. Codfish heads or racks seem to work best. We also use bass, bluefish, flounder, swordfish, tuna. Any scraps at all will work. It’s amazing how good lobsters taste with their diet, that