January 7, 2013 — Holly Masterson’s neat shingled home has nautical charts pinned to the wall, a barnacle-encrusted glass bottle on the front step, and a lobster buoy hanging from the porch roof. Painted white, blue and DayGlo yellow, the pattern on the buoy is registered with the state of Maine for Jennifer Lynn, the 35-foot Mitchell Cove that Holly lobsters on with her stepdad Dave Horner. Near the house a six-foot tall sign is propped by the garage advertising Maine shrimp for sale, and you get the idea that Holly’s life is wrapped up in the sea.
Holly makes her living fishing. She lobsters, scallops, shrimps, and has dragged for haddock, monkfish, cod and other ground fish. It is not an occupation for those who aren’t willing to work long hours, and hard hours. Holly is a woman who sees the sunny side of life, however, and hauling traps, shucking scallops, and marketing the catch offers her the chance to be outside, with variety and challenge as well as income.
When she was fifteen, her stepfather hired her to clean his fishing boat and get in provisions for the next day’s run. She would drive down in a small red pick-up, hose down the boat, grab the list left by the fishermen, and get in their supplies. Jim was stern man, and Dave’s right-hand man back then. Holly’s job included cleaning his working station and fishing gear. While Holly loved the grown-up feeling of driving a truck with her worker’s license, and restocking the boat, she never once thought someday she would be doing what Jim did.
“I’m now the crew,” Holly says, “using all the equipment and working with all the tools that I used to keep clean, but never imagined I’d be operating.” She also went out on the boat when she was young, but claims, “When I was fourteen, I wanted nothing to do with it. It was interesting to watch, but that is all. Nothing I ever contemplated as a career.” Fishing and being on the water is now Holly’s life, and it turns out she comes by this naturally. During a recent visit to family she learned that her great-great-grandfather Charles Beshong, a fisherman out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, was lost at sea in 1893, leaving Holly’s great-great-grandmother a widow and seven months pregnant. This tough lady, named Lena, also lost her next husband at sea. She went on to remarry, raise her family and pass on to Holly a love of the water and a resilience that is just can’t be quenched.
Read the full story on the Marine Morsels blog of the Bangor Daily News