July 3, 2024 — The New England lobster industry has played a vital role in generations of fishermen’s lives. Kids as young as six years old are following in their parent’s footsteps, hauling traps to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
Many lobstermen thought they would be on the water until the day they die, but in Connecticut, that isn’t the case.
Poor climate conditions have caused an almost total decline in the lobster population across the Long Island Sound over two decades, ending lobstering careers.
DJ King is a former lobsterman from Branford. His livelihood is still on the water, but not reliant on lobsters.
He says his love for trapping came early.
“I started with ten wooden traps, I was in a small boat, I would go out with my father, we pulled them by hand and caught a few every day,” King said.
What started as just a hobby quickly turned into a lifestyle.
“We did very well with lobsters back then, it was very lucrative, King said. “We would get around 600 or 800 a day usually. like 60-70 per 10 trawl, the guys couldn’t band them fast enough.”
But one day, after years of the good life, the traps came up empty.
“It never rebounded from that ‘99 year when we were catching hundreds daily,” King said. “Then all the sudden the pots were empty, or the lobsters were coming up dead. Even if they were alive, they wouldn’t make it back to the docks.”