Snapshot

or Zach Smith, lobstering means 4 a.m. wake-up times, 10-hour days, and hauling more than 300 traps four times a week. The six-month Maine lobster season from May to November is perfect for Smith because it affords him valuable time off to rest and focus on his other passion: Music.

Smith is sternman for his father, Chris, on the F/V Pamela Jane (named for his mom). The father-son crew works out of Jonesport, Maine, a small commercial fi shing community with about 1,500 fulltime residents. Jonesport is a peninsula 6 miles out into the Gulf of Maine, where boatyards, lobster boats, blueberries, loons, grebes and eagles are just about as common as people. As a youngster, Smith would go out fi shing with his dad, but he never imagined he would earn his own living on the ocean.

“I worked other jobs in high school, studied sociology and theater in college,” Smith says. It was not until after Smith fi nished college that his father offered him a position on his boat.

He says his father has taught him a ton and that “it’s been a growing experience for us working together. I pick up things from him all the time on how to be a better person as well as a better businessman.”

While they typically don’t talk much while they’re out on the water, when they do, it’s “about music, the gear we are hauling, marine life,” Smith says.

Until recently, Smith was the lead singer of a fi ve-piece surfadjacent punk band called Beach Trash, when he was on dry land. The band formed in 2017, and Smith says he started creating music “because I heard the calling to it, literally hearing music in my head.”

In Beach Trash, Smith performed in drag, usually heels and brightly colored dresses, as Sandy River.

“Performing is an act of rebellion, because that’s what self-expression is,” Smith says. “My purpose as an artist is to take people on a journey, to make them feel something.”

Smith’s lyrics often touch on bigger issues and conversations.

“I think that until the presence of racism, sexism, transphobia, etc., at the very root of our civilization is acknowledged and accepted by the powers that be and the public, we would fi nally be working toward a solution. There is a huge divide right now amongst people, with so much misinformation and hatred, it’s scary.”

In the world of commercial fi shing, which the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has identifi ed as a dangerous occupation, it may seem just as risky for a sternman to perform in drag in communities that have not always been receptive to differences, of any sort.

“Some fi shermen know I do drag, but nobody seems to care,” says Smith.

Beach Trash is currently on hiatus, but Smith says there may be a reunion. In the meantime, he is still out every day before sunrise with his dad, which he says “gives me a lot of creative ideas, but also it’s just a time to be present and work hard.”

Smith also has a new blues album in the works. But for now, he says, “I am just trying to get through the lobster season.”

In 20 years, Smith will be almost 50 years old. What might he be doing then?

“Massage therapy practice? Famous singer?” Ultimately he lands on, “hopefully a full and happy life.” — Caroline Losneck

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Interior Department looking for seven additional areas off every coast by 2025

Five years after the fi rst U.S. offshore wind turbines were built at Block Island, the Biden administration is pressing to have utility-scale projects off every coast.

he Biden administration’s latest goal for o shore wind power is to have up to seven new o shore wind lease sales by 2025, from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico and in the Paci c o California and Oregon.

“This timetable provides two crucial ingredients for success: increased certainty and transparency,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in an address to the American Clean Power Association’s o shore wind conference in mid-October.

With the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management accelerating its timetable to review wind developers’ plans and prepare future lease o erings, agency o cials are insisting they learned from mistakes dealing with the commercial shing industry, and will work with “to minimize con ict with existing uses and marine life.”

“We are working to facilitate a pipeline of projects that will establish con dence for the o shore wind industry,” BOEM Director Amanda Lefton said. “At the same time, we want to reduce potential con icts as much as we can while meeting the Administration’s goal to deploy 30 gigawatts of o shore wind by 2030. This means we will engage early and often with all stakeholders prior to identifying any new Wind Energy Areas.”

Those future leases would be in the Gulf of Maine — requiring use of oating turbines in deep water — the New York Bight and Mid-Atlantic to the Carolinas, the Gulf of Mexico and o California to Oregon, like Maine requiring oating installations.

The Department of Energy said it is putting up $13.5 million to fund four projects “that will inform o shore wind siting, permitting and help protect wildlife and sheries as o shore wind deployment increases.” — Kirk Moore

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Continued from page 15

Return to Obama declaration will end lobster, red crab and longline fi shing

In another reversal of Trump administration moves, President Biden reinstated all restrictions to the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, including plans to phase out commercial shing for red crab and lobster by Sept. 15, 2023.

Former president Barack Obama originally declared the monument area south of New England on that date in 2016, and former president Donald Trump rescinded the rules with some fanfare including an in-person meeting with shing industry representatives in June 2020.

Commercial shing advocates, who mobilized after Biden inauguration to argue against reinstating the monument rules, said the decision shows politics trumped consistent ocean policy.

“This is an unfortunate decision that is opposed not only by those affected in the commercial shing industry, but by all eight shery management councils and NOAA Fisheries,” said Bob Vanasse of Saving Seafood, an industry advocacy group.

The Northeast marine monument includes Oceanographer, Gilbert, and Lydonia canyons; and Bear, Mytilus, Physalia, and Retriever seamounts, some 4,913 square miles in all — about equal to the land mass of Connecticut.

While recreational shing can continue in the monument area, crab, lobster and longline shermen say excluding them is an unjusti ed end-run around the federal and council management process.

“In March, before (Interior) Secretary Haaland was con rmed, industry members were given just one hour with sta to express their concerns. We have since requested an opportunity to meet with the Secretary — as we did with her two predecessors — but our request, though acknowledged, has gone unanswered,” according to Vanasse.

“The Mid-Atlantic and New England Fishery Management councils have already done their job, and have protected the deep-sea corals in the region with public input using their authority under the Magnuson-Stevens Act. Marine sanctuaries should be created with public input as outlined in the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, not by the stroke of the presidential pen via a misuse of the Antiquities Act.” — Kirk Moore

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