National Lobster Day
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Why is September 25 celebrated as National Lobster Day and what does it honor?
September twenty fifth, twenty twenty six. I learned late this afternoon that in addition to being Dolly Parton Day, today is National Lobster Day, honoring the cultural and economic history of the lobster industry. That industry thrives in Maine because of unique conditions in the water offshore, where the cold Labrador current and the warm Gulf Stream mix over the shallow continental shelf, creating one of the richest habitats for marine life on the planet. Lobsters have been vital in the creation of Maine's coastal communities, but the industry's current place of pride is recent. Until the mid twentieth century, lobster was considered poor man's food. Before then it was not the lobster but fish that shaped society on the coast of New England.
How did Maine’s unique ocean currents create the world‑class lobster habitat?
Fish were central to the English settlement of the North American continent. In the twenty years between thirteen hundred and fifteen hundred of the current era, fish were a limited resource and brought sky high prices in Europe. As the fish in the North Sea became scarcer in the late fourteen hundreds, fishermen and explorers began to push into the Atlantic. There they found such a bonanza of fish in the nutrient rich water that scholars have called its discovery and the trade it sparked the Fish Revolution. Todd especially, but also Haddock and Haik, concentrated on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. A member of the crew with Italian John Cabot, who was sailing for the English crown, noted in fourteen ninety seven that there were so many cod on the Grand Banks that they can be taken not only with nets but with fishing baskets.
What role did fish play in shaping early New England society before lobsters became popular?
In fifteen oh two, the first recorded landing of Atlantic cod in Europe fetched one hundred and eighty pounds equivalent to about one point two million pounds in twenty sixteen, with a buying power at the time of just shy of seventy six million pounds, close to one hundred million dollars today. Fishing meant big money, and British fishermen were among those who tried their hand in the fog of the grand banks, making an annual trip to toss their hooks overboard. They beheaded and gutted their catch, splitting each fish in half like a book, salted the fish, and then dried them on shore. By sixteen hundred they had moved into the Gulf of Maine, where they landed in places like Manhigan Island and Damaris Cove, where they dried the fish until they were hard before taking their catch back to Europe.
As European fishermen landed in North America, they brought with them European diseases, for which the indigenous populations had no immunities. The tribes were wiped out so that when the pilgrims arrived in sixteen twenty
How did the 16th‑century “Fish Revolution” and the Grand Banks cod boom influence the American colonies?
On Cape Cod, they found a land so rich and yet depopulated that they believed God had prepared it for them. The fish trade continued to be so important to New Englanders that almost two centuries later, when their new nation negotiated for its independence, the first thing leaders demanded after independence and national boundaries was continued access to the fisheries. On september third, seventeen eighty-three, negotiators signed the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the Revolutionary War between Great Britain and the United States. The preamble of the document promised that King George III and the United States of America would forget all past misunderstandings and differences that have unhappily interrupted the good correspondence and friendship which they mutually wished to restore.
The first article of the treaty contained the king's acknowledgement that the thirteen states that made up the new United States were free, sovereign, and independent. The second article established the boundaries of the new nation.
Why did the Treaty of Paris’s third article protect American fishermen’s rights on the Grand Bank?
The third article, which came even before those protecting debts and calling for the return of confiscated property. Protected the rights of American fishermen to take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank and on all the other banks of Newfoundland, also in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and at all other places in the sea where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Why is September 25 celebrated as National Lobster Day and what does it honor?
0:07–0:58
2
How did Maine’s unique ocean currents create the world‑class lobster habitat?
0:58–1:53
3
What role did fish play in shaping early New England society before lobsters became popular?
1:53–2:59
4
How did the 16th‑century “Fish Revolution” and the Grand Banks cod boom influence the American colonies?
2:59–4:11
5
Why did the Treaty of Paris’s third article protect American fishermen’s rights on the Grand Bank?
4:11–5:00