This story is so ridiculous I’m not even sure I want to post it.  It makes Maine seem like the Wild West.  To recap for those of you who are too lazy to click the link and peruse the article, it recounts the current trial of a Maine lobster man who is being charged with shooting a competing lobster man in the neck with a pistol.  This all occurred after numerous confrontations between the two parties.

It’s a convoluted story with lots of “he said, he said” information so the truth will probably never be known.  However, one thing that is known is guns were fired and physical confrontations happened before the shooting.  The issue behind the so-called “Lobster Wars” is an long standing tradition of territoriality of fishing grounds.

Certain groups of lobster men from a certain area fish the same places year in and year out.  It is an unspoken rule that fishermen from neighboring areas cannot and will not fish in a “claimed” area.  Of course, the rule is violated all the time and as it is unenforceable by any law, it becomes a case of frontier justice.  Lines to traps are cut, traps are damaged, curses are exchanged, and in the most dire cases, violence is done to boats, trucks, and sometimes even the people themselves.

This has not changed in the hundreds of years that humans have been fishing, hunting, or gathering.  Wars have always been fought over food supplies.  Today, very few Americans understand what it takes to live under these ancient laws.  Personally dealing with many lobster men has allowed me a small glimpse into their traditions and heritage inherited from antiquity.  As Hobbes said, our lives are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” and nothing gives him more credence than the justice of a scorned lobster man.

Give these independent men and women credit.  They make a living doing a very difficult and dangerous job.  While we may not agree with their methods, it is the original Wild West on the ocean and these people will only heed frontier justice.  Perhaps these men saw themselves as the modern day Earps and Claytons, ready to battle to the death over their livelihoods.  We will never know the truth of this case, but we do know that this will not be the last instance of violence in the untamed wilderness of the sea.