Joe Goldman is captivated by lobster fishing.

He is thrilled by the pitch and roll of sea, the sound of gulls overhead and the sight of a trap brimming with lobsters.

Goldman does not hold a lobster license and he does not own a boat. What the New York filmmaker does have is an overwhelming passion for the craft of lobster fishing and the men who ply the waves in search of the sea’s bounty. He found inspiration in the lives of those solitary fishermen.

In what can only be described as a labor of love, Goldman, 48, has spent the past 20 years making a documentary film about the lobster fishermen of Mackerel Cove on Bailey Island.

Although Goldman’s subject is a group of elderly fishermen on one particular island, it could just as well be about any fishermen in any small coastal Maine community. The story he depicts in his film is universal and it takes place every day along harbors up and down the Maine coast. It is a story of heritage, hard work and loss, and it is told by those who know their craft – “The Fishermen of Mackerel Cove.”

“That was what I found to be extraordinary. There was this group of fishermen who never stopped fishing. These were people who were born with the 20th century and were still at it at its close,” recalled Goldman. “You see it all right there. The relationship of the rugged individual with the sea and the collective ideal of an island community.”

Goldman is a veteran filmmaker whose first film “Almost,” made when he was 15, won a CINE Gold Eagle and Kodak Teenage Movie award. He received another CINE Gold Eagle in 1976 for his film “Coastal Marsh” about the change in seasons in a salt marsh.

In between film shoots, Goldman has worked full-time as a stagehand on Broadway and as a camera operator for a number of network television productions.

Goldman arrived in Maine in 1983 with the idea of filming village life from York to Machias. It was a chance meeting with a fisherman on Orr’s Island that steered him in the direction of Bailey Island. Once there, Goldman introduced himself to the local lobster fishermen and was gradually allowed to film them at work and at their homes.

Most of Goldman’s subjects, including Rip Black, a University of Maine graduate and bronze medal winner in the 1928 Olympics for the hammer throw, were already in their 70s and 80s when he began filming. Many have since passed away.

The men were descendants of families that had settled Bailey Island 200 years earlier. All had grown up on the water and despite having opportunities for employment on the mainland, chose instead to live their lives as their ancestors did before them.

Besides lobster fishing, the men had spent time hook-trawling, hand-lining, harpooning swordfish, gill-netting, seining for sardines, and dragging for ground fish. In the fall they traveled up-country to hunt deer.

“I was searching for a sense of the roots of the country and what I found was that it was personified by these men, in their actions and their words,” said Goldman. “These men charted the course for what their needs were and stayed to it. As time went by, I realized the film was about the seasons of age, the seasons of man.”

Goldman returned to the island again and again. Sometimes over the course of a few months, sometimes not for years. While some of the men he focused on have died, he continues to visit with family members and has held private screenings for island residents.

“When I showed it to the families and fishermen at the firehouse three years ago they said, ‘Every word is truth. How did you know what it meant to us?'”

As he began to put his project together, Goldman decided on a four-act film to describe the lives of “The Fishermen of Mackerel Cove.” The first act introduces the viewer to the external forces the fishermen face in their daily lives.

The second deals with the frustrations and doubts of the men as they encounter changes to the way of live that had nurtured them for so many years. The frailty of age looms throughout.

The third act shows the ritual of the fishermen’s work as a continuous voyage from shore to cove and back. The continuity of a community is viewed as one generation succeeds another. Where young fishermen store their traps for the winter, the older men contemplate whether they will see another spring.

The final act presents the island in winter, when the fishermen build wooden traps, knit headers and work in their fish houses. The storms blow across the island and the men share a few moments at the local store.

“I’m really interested in showing people as they wish to be seen, whether in their homes or out fishing,” said Goldman. “I’m always aware and conscious that I can’t take things for granted. I’m in people’s homes and being allowed to listen. I want to see integrity in people, it’s something I choose to see.”

Over the course of two decades, Goldman shot hundreds of feet of footage to create his documentary film. He did all the camera work and recorded the sound. Much of the movie was self-funded, but he recently received supporting grants from the Maine Humanities Council and the New York State Council for the Arts.

At present, “The Fishermen of Mackerel Cove” is in a rough-cut, two-hour version that needs to be converted from the 16-minute original to digital video and sound format. During the production, Goldman also has written a manuscript and taken 1,500 still photographs that he plans to include in a companion book.

Goldman said that he has already spent more $200,000 on the film and needs another $110,000 to complete the production. He said PBS has indicated a willingness to air the film when it is completed.

“I’ve been applying to foundations and arts councils for grants,” he said. “I need all the support I can get. All of this is beyond what I can earn in the theater.”

Former Maine governor Kenneth Curtis viewed portions of the film and described it as a “cultural work of art that has appeal far beyond its setting in Maine.” Curtis has written Goldman a letter of recommendation, as have Maine PBS, Mystic Seaport, Island Institute and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president of the Waterkeep Alliance. Kennedy described the film as “a worthy project that will help preserve a rapidly disappearing piece of America’s culture, the independent fisherman and lobsterman.”

Goldman said the story of “The Fishermen of Mackerel Cove” is universal and needs to be preserved.

“For them, their life will always be an island. The center of their world begins at the cove,” said Goldman. “The purpose of film is to allow others to feel something of a place and its people. It’s about the character of a place and the desire to preserve some feeling of what it is and who these men are.”

Joe Goldman can be reached at 1-212-777-0785 or joegoldman452@cs.com.