This coming winter, Portland Harbor will see its first major dredging project in years to widen and deepen the Casco Bay ship channel. But before anyone can move mud, local fishermen and biologists are moving some lobsters. In the first major lobster relocation program ever attempted in Maine — and possibly in the United States — thousands of juvenile lobsters will be lured from burrows in the bay’s bottom and moved to safe territory before the dredges go into action.

Divers discovered the lobsters early this spring when they surveyed the dredging site. Conventional wisdom among lobster experts has always held that lobsters move offshore during the winter and spring, returning to their inshore grounds only when the water starts warming. “A lot of people were surprised at the number of lobsters the divers found,” says Joe Payne, executive director of Friends of Casco Bay and a member of the Portland Harbor Dredge Committee. The bottom is studded with burrows, and 65 to 70 percent of those excavated by divers contained lobsters.

Because Casco Bay supports at least twenty lobstermen and some seven thousand traps, the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the dredging, and local officials have been careful to listen to fishermen’s concerns and advice. “That’s why we’re limiting the dredging to the winter months, for example,” Payne explains. Lobstermen fear that destroying the young lobsters at the dredge site could have catastrophic results for future catches.

Current plans call for catching the crustaceans in specially modified lobster traps and moving them to safer waters. Payne says the project is attracting attention from other coastal communities as well as various state and federal agencies. “A lot of people are very interested in what happens,” he says. Doubtless, so are the lobsters.

(Published August 1998)