The Haul

A day in the life of an American lobsterman

Carter Davis Johnson and Andrew Granstaff

Mar 04, 2026

Our boat cut through the black water in the early morning darkness, illuminated by small lights that touched the water with a faint glow before dissipating into a flicker of wet sheen. The diesel motor, which growled lowly around the wharf, was fully awake and loud and the water flew against the hull. Two hundred yards off our starboard side another lobster boat pulled beside us; our two paths were momentarily parallel. Each boat smashed the dark swells. Two lanterns swinging in the morning fog. And then we drew away, leaving both the other boat and the island, departing through the harbor channel.

We were aboard the Psalm 34, a forty-foot Young Brothers’ lobster boat. She was captained by Elijah, a young man whose family has fished the waters around Swan’s Island for generations. He wore a Red Sox hat and took draughts of coffee while shifting his glance between the dark horizon ahead and the dimly lit monitor that showed our position. Andy and I swayed within the small partially-covered cabin, bracing ourselves against the morning’s agitated waters. I lingered over the occasional smell of Elijah’s coffee, which was soon drowned out by the bait. The rest of the crew, Jerry and Brady, prepared the day’s equipment. It hardly felt real. Andy and I had traveled from Central Kentucky to document the lobstermen and fisheries of Swan’s Island, and now we were here, aboard the Psalm 34, careening with the swells and listening to the diesel motor and watching the water explode into mist against the hull.

Photographed by Andrew Granstaff
Written by Carter Davis Johnson

Just as the first traces of grey began to slip over the water, the crew began their work. The process is called “the haul” - emptying, rebaiting, and returning each individual lobster trap. The haul is a precise and repetitive series of tasks. It begins with Elijah. He cuts the speeding boat toward a buoy and leans over the side, hooking the rope with a gaff and swinging the buoy into the boat. He then loads the rope into the “hauler,” an assembly of motorized pulleys that rapidly retrieves the rope into the ship. The rope slings a mist of brine and coils like an angry snake. Elijah then throws the buoy (and eventually the coil of rope) into a hot water tank to remove the organic buildup.

Suddenly, out the dark water, the first trap emerges. It jumps from the surface with a gasping urgency, like coming up for air after swimming across the pool. Elijah seizes and slings the trap onto the railing. The sternmen snap to work. The “picker” (in our case, Jerry) begins by throwing open the trap and snatching lobsters as fast as he can, placing them into the banding box. At the same time, the “baitman” replaces the bait. He uses a spike with an eyelet to thread rope through the mushy eye sockets of rockfish, red head, poggies, herring, and/or cod. Often this pungent kabab will also include cow or pig hide. While the sternmen are finishing their respective tasks, the next trap smashes to the surface and Elijah swings it onto the rail, beginning the process again until all the traps are emptied and re-baited. Depending on the depth and location and intuition of the captain, one buoy could have up to fifteen traps (the Psalm 34 hauled pairs and triples during our morning on deck). As the captain speeds away, the traps are returned in reverse order, the rope hissing across the deck.

Meanwhile, the sternmen move to the band box and continue work, now measuring the lobsters and checking the sexes. The first legal requirement (in the US) to keep a lobster is the length between the eye socket and the head, which must fall between 3 1/4 and 5 inches. Anything bigger or smaller must be thrown back. Second, females that meet the length requirements are excluded if they 1) have eggs or 2) have a v-notch clipped into the bottom of their tail, signaling that the lobster has had eggs in the past. The sternmen breeze through these identifications, deferring any dubious cases to Elijah by tossing the lobster onto the ship’s dash. He lifts the “bug,” as they are fondly called, before issuing a final decision.

The sternmen band every legal lobster, using a special pair of forceps that stretch a rubber band around the claws. As Jerry and Brady finish banding, Elijah is already swinging up to the next buoy. This process continues for hours at a time without a break. Each lobster boat attempts to “haul through” all of their traps twice per week, checking hundreds per day.

As seen in pages 22 and 23 of WARKITCHEN Winter 25/26

Jerry invited me to join the work and help band some lobsters. After identifying a keeper, he’d place it aside, forming a pile of squirming shells for me to retrieve and attempt to band. After a little practice, I was able to work at a slow but effective pace. I also helped Jerry “pick” some cages, removing the lobsters as fast as possible; my speed was (again) not fast but passable. I only got “bit” (pinched) once. Another time, I eagerly snatched a “jumbo” - trying to replicate Jerry’s decisiveness. Elijah jumped. It was the only time that day I saw him look nervous about having us on board. “Be careful with the big ones. Their crushers can take off your finger.” In that moment, I realized my previous “bite” was a small inconvenience from a small lobster. I had grabbed the jumbo with the same gusto of ignorance and thankfully retained all my digits. It would have been, however, quite the story: my bleeding stump, the scrambling crew, a racing boat, and the expressionless eyes of the bug that performed the dactylectomy.

My time banding and picking was punctuated by fits of nausea. You often hear about motion sickness at sea (and there was no shortage of spinning and rocking on the boat), but the origin of my weakness was olfactory. The smell of the bait was simply unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Jerry had warned us that the smell was bad. But I imagined “bad” as in unpleasant and gross and nasty, like a sewer or backed up drain. But the smell of the decaying rockfish and red head - milky eyes dangling within their sockets - was not just “bad.” It was something entirely different. It was malevolent. It was putrid. It was like the smell of sour milk with long expired fish (unsurprisingly) and the brain-stinging sharpness of propane with the dank, primal, and unnerving stench of deadness.

The smell was alive. It was something with ill-will, following you around the boat. The crew had long defeated its effects, but it sent Andy and I reeling. We stood at the stern trying to catch the comforting saltiness, but the smell was always within reach. I worked to constantly suppress my gag reflex. I was not successful.

There is something extremely vulnerable and self-conscious about having a group of men watch you throw up over the side of the boat. But c’est la vie. They kindly pretended not to see and continued their work. They understood. As the morning progressed, Jerry and Brady kept - graciously - inviting me back into the work. Unable to resist, I would take a deep breath, filtered through the fabric of my sweatshirt, and slink back to the bait table. I’d work until I felt sick and then fade back to Andy, who was posted near the stern. I became a pale pinball, bouncing across the deck and stretching my nose toward the salty air like a dog out of a car window. Andy, on the other hand, retained the contents of his stomach. He even took some photographs with his large 4x5 camera out on the stern, balancing against the swells and peering into the black box, performing a kind of aesthetic high wire act, one that he downplays but is particularly impressive. Perhaps Andy’s constitution is just stronger than mine, or perhaps I should have taken, as Andy did, the Dramamine that Jerry offered. “I’ll be fine.” Famous last words.

On the water, the lobster boats look quaint, almost picturesque. The captains wave with vigor and conversation is polite. But each boat is its own business, and business on the water is high stakes. Jerry tells us that “it’s insanely secretive.” There’s some conversation about where the lobsters are moving and general speculation, but everyone is searching for an edge. No one shares any information about their traps, locations, or numbers of lobsters caught. Even the seasonal workers that bunk together are tight-lipped about their respective boats. The competition is real, and the feuds and territory conflicts, boiling under the surface, are likewise real, stretching with long fingers into the past. Sometimes these conflicts involve boats from other islands infringing on boundaries. Other times they center around the most serious offense: the “cut off.” When someone cuts off another fisherman’s traps, they inflict not only a serious social infraction, but they also commit a substantial financial attack. A “fifteen” can cost as much as $2,500 for equipment alone, not to mention the rope, lost cost of the lobsters, and the fuel for the haul. To cut a boat’s traps is to cut at the captain’s very livelihood, community, and family.

After finishing the haul - a marathon which involves no formal breaks, save snacking between buoys - boats return to the wharf to complete the day’s final tasks. Importantly, one of these tasks involves getting paid. Our crew had worked especially hard the previous day, hauling several hundred traps, to give Andy and I an easier morning (only around 170 traps). With the bait packed away and the boat running a fast and straight course, I felt better. Brady and Jerry were still working, cleaning the boat, and I moved up to the front cabin to talk with Elijah. He asked me how I was feeling. I probably looked worse than I felt, and I had felt pretty damn bad. I assured him that I was happy as a lark, and we fell to discussing navigation and the history of lobster fishing. Elijah is part of a multi-generation family of fishermen. Life on the island is mirrored on the water. In fact, they’re not even separate things.

As seen in pages 32 and 33 of WARKITCHEN Winter 25/26

On Swan’s Island, family lineage is not merely traceable; it’s the way one makes sense of everything. Captains are cousins, fathers, brothers, and in-laws. The community is tightly knit, and with any community there is conflict and negotiation and acceptance. The past is thick on the island. The small villages and factions of the past have transformed into the current strata. There are certain ways that things are done, and there are consequences for disrupting this balance. The island can socially excommunicate with surgical effectiveness. Conversely, all the seasonal fishermen, who Andy and I bunked with, go to church together every Sunday. The island’s traditions create a rigidity which is both stern and comforting. It is both things. It will always be both things.

We arrived at the wharf and began unloading the lobsters into large crates. Beneath the clear water, a mass of red and black shells swarmed like brittle viscera. The captain gets paid by the pound, and each sternman works for a percentage of the day’s haul. After the lobsters are weighed, the crates are returned to the water before being trucked to the distributor. Our crew finished washing the deck while we disembarked, smelly and content.

Later that evening, while we talked and laughed with the guys at the bunkhouse, I was ready to get back out there the next day. But our future was 30,000 feet above the water and a return ticket home. Believe it or not, I forgot my earlier sickness, or rather it was eclipsed by something else. I saw a glimmer of what drove these young men to travel to a remote Northeastern island to work among the cages and rotting fish. There was something enchanting about the dark water and the orange slicks and the brawny “bugs.” There was something undeniably important and human about the traditions that tethered the small population (350 year-round residents) to the island and each other. It was beautiful.

On some mornings, I will glance out the window and think of the Psalm 34 - a thousand miles away - cutting her way through the water, animated by the movements of three men, faithfully pulling a life from the murky water below.

Carter Davis Johnson and Andrew Granstaff publish Lost Swan, where they document real people doing real things in real places. They describe their work as a blend of creative non-fiction and photography. Explore more of their world and subscribe at lostswan.substack.com.