October 10, 2024 — One morning this past spring, after commercial elver fishermen had met their quotas and elver buyers had closed up shop for the season, two fyke nets showed up where the Megunticook River empties into Camden Harbor. Maine Marine Patrol officer Callahan Crosby was perplexed. A few weeks earlier, the harbor would have been lined with nets and fishermen, but the penalties for breaking elver-fishing rules are stiff, and even a first-time violation can result in permanent license revocation. Crosby, wondering who would make such a brazen move, got back in his pickup truck and waited for the owner of the nets to appear.
A few hours later, a white Dodge Ram pulled up, with state-issued Wabanaki license plates that read FISHRMN. Flags of Sipayik, the Passamaquoddy reservation near Eastport, flew from the back, and a large, blue-plastic fish box sat in the bed — the kind typically used by elver buyers and dealers authorized to deal with much greater volumes than individual fishermen. Erik Francis, a 28-year-old Passamaquoddy fisherman, exited the truck and ambled down to the riverbank to check the nets. He had just been upstream, where he released four pounds of elvers that were previously stuck in puddles and pools below the river-mouth dam. A haul like that, if taken to market, would fetch at least several thousand dollars.