Zita and I finish the day of kayaking and conversation with a traditional boil-up outside on a large deck in front of their boathouse. A pot bubbles behind us as he tends a barbecue piled with rockweed tangled around mussels—a technique to gently cook the mollusks while enriching them with a smoky flavor. “People come to the East Coast for the landscapes, the paddling, the history—but they usually want to eat,” he says. “Every now and then, someone says they don’t like lobster, and I tell them, ‘Well, you’re in the wrong place.’”
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For an industry built on tradition, TikTok may seem like an unlikely stage—but for many fishermen, it’s become a way to bridge the gap between their way of life and the people who enjoy its bounty. Some seem to use it as a form of cultural preservation; others use it to spotlight the challenges of the industry.
In Winter Harbor, Maine, Jacob Knowles, a fifth-generation fisherman, has amassed 3.2 million followers with videos of him and his crew clipping barnacles and sharing sustainability practices, while bringing fishermen’s lingo like “eggers” into the common lexicon. “The initial thought was that we may as well have some fun with it,” says Knowles. “What you can’t convey though is the 12-hour grind behind that two-minute clip. I don’t know what my day looks like until I wake up. We’re always watching the weather. There’s no set schedule.”
Most of his days start with a 3 a.m. wind and waves check. If all looks good, he’s out well before dawn. By the time he’s back on land, there’s always something—bait to prep, traps to mend, or a boat to maintain—not to mention family and managing his online media presence.
The forecast isn’t the only variable. Warming waters continue to shift things around. According to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans. Meanwhile, the American Lobster Settlement Index reports historic lows of young lobster in southern New England, while northern areas like Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland are seeing record highs. To get ahead of declines, regulators proposed stricter size limits on what can be caught. But this move was met with pushback after fishermen reported an abundance further offshore—suggesting that for now the overall population is shifting, not shrinking.
“No one wants to protect the population more than us, but sometimes the science doesn’t match what we’re seeing. Lately, there’s been more effort to work together, comparing what we see in our traps with their data. That’s the way forward,” Knowles says.
For his own part, while he has no plans to stop lobstering, Knowles continues to diversify his income stream in the face of uncertainty: “Lobstering is great, but it’s unpredictable. One injury, one bad season, and you’re in trouble.”
That mindset led him and his wife Ashley to invest in a cluster of waterfront cottages in 2023, painstakingly restoring them and sharing the process online—until a winter storm nearly wiped them out. They rebuilt, moved them back from the shoreline, and expanded. Now, they run ten charming vacation rentals perched at the edge of Prospect Harbor, Maine, where guests can sip their morning coffee with a view of the working wharf, buy directly from the fisherman, and unwind by a crackling campfire on the beach. If you’re lucky, Knowles might swing by with fresh lobsters (no promises, but he said he hasn’t said no yet).
Despite the state of flux, this world feels timeless—the knowledge, the passion, the handiwork, the sea’s relentless pull. It has me romanticizing Poppy’s calloused hands, longing for my childhood summers, even mourning an era I never knew. But the survival of both the lobster population and the small fishery hangs in a delicate balance.
“My worry for the future is that we keep phasing out individual fishermen to the point where it’s just a handful of large boats or corporations or even fleets,” Knowles laments. “I’d like to see it remain a small business and be handed down to as many kids in the next generation as possible.”
