Brendan McCarthy ’26 moves a lobster pot aboard his family’s boat, Anam Cara.
At least three St. John’s students are actively lobstering along the North Shore. They’re not the first Eagles to tap into this side-hustle and they won’t be the last.
The allure of treasures from the deep is a core motivation for all of these young men. Graham O’Connell ’31 captures the magic with a compelling metaphor. “It’s like opening a Christmas present every time a trap comes up,” he says. “You never know what’s going to be in there. It’s about the fun of anticipating it. It’s the mystery. It’s like fishing, but different.”
O’Connell, a Rockport resident, was pre-ordained to be a bug-hunter (offshore parlance for the tasty crustaceans). His dad is a commercial lobsterman. But past and present student lobstermen at the Prep have come to the craft via differing paths. Gloucester’s Brendan McCarthy ’26 fell in love with the discipline—and make no mistake, it requires discipline, elbow grease, and a strong back— because it’s a hobby for his dad. Marblehead’s Charles Kirby ’22 lived next door to a lobsterman who once loaned him five traps, which was enough to set the hook.
Kirby shares O’Connell’s anticipation of the surprise waiting at the other end of the buoy line. “In a lot of ways, lobstering is just another excuse to be out in the water,” says Kirby, who just finished his senior year at Duke. “I definitely miss the idea of opening up a lobster trap. It is kind of like Christmas or, sometimes, I compare it to a lottery ticket where you really don’t know what you’re going to get.”
Perhaps not the most pertinent question but one that requires an answer is: How in the world do these guys resist simply drowning their entire catch in butter and perpetually eating like royalty? Believe it or not, the construct of lobster as a pricey delicacy ($10 to $15 per pound average North Shore summer retail price; and good luck getting a lobster roll for under $35) vanishes like a trap slipping beneath the swells when you’re working a lobster boat.
“It’s hard when you catch them because you can see hundreds of them in a day,” says Gloucester’s Andy Dominick ’32, whose father is also a commercial lobsterman and scalloper. “I’d probably eat it if someone put a good one in front of me, but I don’t eat it a lot. My mom makes a lobster salad when we’re meeting up with family or friends because it’s more of a treat for them than for us. My sister doesn’t even like it.”
Kirby notes that hunting for lobster inspires a laser focus on maximizing and selling the catch as opposed to daydreams of sprawling on a divan swallowing shellfish while being fanned with palm fronds. “I mean, lobstering is hard work, and it’s usually odd hours. It’s also very frontloaded at the start of the season getting gear ready and again at the end of the season getting gear out of the water.” In other words, he explains, the prime impulse is return on investment.
Another component that comes into play is the “ick” factor. Not the lobsters, of course. The bait for the traps. We’re talking pogies (Atlantic menhaden), Acadian redfish, skate, and even cowhide (squares of rawhide that look like a dog treat) ... all in varied states of decomposition.
“We’ve had rotten redfish heads before and that’s rough,” says McCarthy. “I actually threw up over the side of the boat because it was the worst thing I’ve ever smelled in my life. It was so bad. And cowhide doesn’t smell much better.”
Be that as it may, McCarthy is a big fan of lobster and seafood in general. Tastes, however, remain secondary. The avocation is a splendid lesson in microeconomics for all of these guys. Margins are tight and overhead including fuel, equipment, maintenance, repairs, licensing, and, of course, the vessel are huge expenses. Each of them acknowledges that without the help of their family, they would likely lose money on the venture. With a portion of their passion funded, each of these lobstermen can turn their attention to turning a profit.
“I definitely had a good thing going in high school and even the beginning of college,” says Kirby. “It might not have been as stable as some of my friends who were working at restaurants or doing other things, but I definitely think I had a lot more fun than they did while I was working.” The demands of his computer science and economics studies in Durham eventually forced Kirby into retirement from running a hauler and decking traps; this fall, he’ll begin work for a California-based tech investment banking group with Bank of America.
Graham O’Connell ’31, Charles Kirby ’22, and Andy Dominick ’32
McCarthy, meanwhile, is looking forward to at least one more lucrative summer of fair winds, calm seas, and full traps. He mostly sells to friends and neighbors, but he also puts up flyers around town. He and his dad have also sold directly to a local restaurant. He won’t disclose his hotspots, but McCarthy generally drops pots off of Manchester and Magnolia; no shallower than 10 feet of water and no deeper than 60 feet.
“If my dad (who’s maintained a commercial license since youth) hadn’t showed me, I probably never would have discovered a love of lobstering, for which I’m grateful,” he says. “Now, I can go out four days a week and pull 200 traps and it’s so fun. Lobstering involves a lot of grit. You’re out on the water and it’s way more unpredictable than your normal summer job in terms of navigation and weather and whether and where the lobsters are crawling or not. But it’s also more fun, too. It’s just so thrilling when we pull up a trap. We caught a nine-pound lobster once, which was amazing [though too big to be a keeper].”
O’Connell has laid eyes on plenty of man-made bycatch from beneath the waves: His grandfather used to run a trawler and once surfaced a full-length flag pole that’s now installed in his front yard. Dominick, too, has seen some intriguing curiosities from the seabed including a copper-plated Bugs Bunny statue and the full-length drive shaft of a boat’s propulsion system [which is now a curtain rod near the bar of Gloucester’s Mile Marker One Restaurant].
Interestingly, Dominick came to the Prep by way of a seafaring connection. Marblehead’s Ryan Finn ’25 lobstered throughout high school and his father, also a commercial lobsterman, is Dominick’s godfather.
One of Dominick’s earliest memories is sitting in a tray on his dad’s boat banding lobster claws. As he grew, he took on bigger roles, like baiting. These days, he’s even decking, which means lifting the traps onto a rail along the gunwale, then sliding it along toward the stern for removal of the catch followed by rebaiting. He fishes 25 traps with his own boat on his student license, but often accompanies his dad on commercial daytrips or even overnights. On some outings, he joins two crewmen and a sternman as they pull more than 600 traps in a single day between 15 and 30 miles offshore.
The economic allure of the job is not lost on Dominick despite the fact he’s only 12. He’ll likely earn a full share this year (the highest percentage of a catch’s value that a deckhand can make) since he’ll be working the boat with just his father and a sternman; he’s excited about the profit margin.
Benefits like spending money and college tuition supplementation aside, the pastime is still much more fun than financial for these young men. O’Connell’s favorite way to dispense his earnings is by popping an outboard on his dad’s seine boat and motoring from Pigeon Cove to Rockport Harbor to meet friends for ice cream on Bearskin Neck. Proof positive that lobster isn’t the only delicacy this industry can deliver.
P.S. Kristian Hanson '94 P'26 checks off all the Prep boxes: Prep parent, alumnus, and Prep coach. Read about his "coach approach" for the Prep's varsity hockey program.
Alumni, didn't get your Prep Magazine? Make sure the alumni office has your most up-to-date contact information.