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BOOTHBAY HARBOR – The campus smells of salted herring.
The dorms were built in 1786.
But don’t expect any enrollment problems at the launch of next month’s Lobster College, where students will study and dine on Maine’s main export: the American lobster.
Do expect plenty of cramming.
With “No SATs required” and lasting only four days, Lobster College is not a real university. Yet organizers hope the program in this coastal village will help students-slash-tourists better understand the state’s most popular – and profitable – crustacean. Plus, if the college proves successful, they plan to open a second “campus” in Chicago next year with classes, conferences and, of course, tastings.
Opening Lobster College ’08 is the marketing brainchild of Dianne Ward, an innkeeper in neighboring Boothbay, and professor Robert Bayer, director of the Lobster Institute, part of the University of Maine.
“I called Dr. Bayer over the winter because I’m trying to organize the world’s largest human lobster for next summer and we started talking about Lobster College,” Ward said. (Ward plans to draw tourists and enter the record books by gathering 2,250 people to stand in the shape of a lobster next year.)
For his part, Bayer is thrilled that part of the college’s $575 “tuition” will help support the institute, which researches lobsters and promotes the industry. He also hopes the class will help non-Mainers see the critters as more than entrees.
“There is a fascination with lobsters and this is a way to get a feel for what the people and lobstering in Maine is all about,” he said.
Once considered a food fit only for the poor, lobsters caught off Maine last year were valued at $280 million, and lobstering stands as the state’s third largest employer.
Wholesale prices have held at about $4.50 a pound for the past four years, a steadiness brought on by government and industry regulation and rigorous quotas. Commercial sellers say they are not seeing a significant dip in demand as a result of the economic downturn.
Ward’s bed-and-breakfast, once the home of an 18th century shipbuilder, will serve as the college’s “dorm,” where Bayer, other academics and lobstermen will lecture on “Lobster Management,” “Lobstering as Big Business” and “Lobsters in the Ecosystem.”
One of the “professors” is Dan Kaler, a former Marine who owns a seafood restaurant here and has been lobstering since he was 15. With his yellow waders, sun-wrinkled skin and quick, salty tongue, Kaler, 65, appears to have just walked out of one of those “Life in Coastal Maine” paintings sold in the area tourist traps.
He also gives thrice-daily, hourlong tours to summer visitors, who pull his lobster pots, or traps, listen to his lobster tales and ask him about the trade. In an industry, and state, where stoicism and keeping to oneself is a refined art, Kaler’s willingness to suffer often inane inquires made him an obvious choice for the Lobster College faculty.
“All they want is for someone to answer their questions without getting smart with them,” Kaler said about his students.
On a tour this month, two couples from New Jersey climbed aboard Kaler’s 16-foot boat, the Hunky Dory, before it motored into the harbor which was crowded with buoys attached to the lobster pots. Lobster fishers register their buoy colors with the state, and Kaler and his crew were on the lookout for his green-and-yellow ones.
“I was a Green Bay Packers fan as a kid,” he explained, as he scanned the bay for buoys.
“Thar she blows!”
A buoy spotted, Kaler brought the Hunky Dory alongside it, and pulled the pot up from the ocean floor and into the boat with the help of a tourist and a winch. Inside the 4-foot pot, they found starfish and Jonah crabs, which everyone helped throw back into the water. The five lobsters appeared ready for some steam and butter, but Kaler had to first measure them: in Maine, the legal length, from eye to just above the tail, is 31/4 inches minimum and 5 inches maximum, usually the 1- to- 3-pound or so size found on dinner tables.
Only two made the cut – the rest, alive and well, were returned to the ocean.
Kaler and his greenhorn crew rebaited the pot – Kaler uses salted herring in his 100 pots – and tossed it back into the water. In unison they shouted his lucky cry: “Fish, baby, fish!”
If Lobster College does appear in Chicago next year it will be because of the friendship of Bayer of the Institute and Dan “The Lobster Man” Zawacki, founder of Lobster Gram, which bills itself as the country’s “leading live lobster mail-order service,” based in Chicago.
Zawacki said he loves the idea of hosting classes taught by lobstermen and other experts.
“I think it would be fun,” he said.
Of course, unlike Boothbay Harbor, Zawacki’s North Side offices sit 800 miles from the closest ocean, but he doesn’t think that would be a problem.
“I’ve got a lot of traps just sitting around here,” he joked by phone from Chicago. “We’ll do our best!”
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