Maine’s famed seafood has long been a major draw for tourists. Visitors love to chow down on a lobster roll, shoot some freshly shucked oysters and see the lobster boats moored in the state’s many harbors.
To capitalize on that interest, a growing number of commercial harvesters are getting directly involved in tourism themselves.
More than two dozen Maine oyster farmers and a few commercial lobstermen have started providing tours and firsthand demonstrations in recent years to show how the state’s prized seafood goes from ocean-to-plate.
Similar to how tours of breweries and wineries have taken off elsewhere, both hungry tourists and locals are interested in learning what goes into harvesting seafood, said Annie Noll, who owns Pemetic Sea Farms in Union River Bay.
“People want to see it for themselves,” she said. “If you’re a seafood lover, there’s nothing quite like going out and seeing it.”
While there have long been whale watches and tour boats up and down the coast dedicated to lobster fishing demonstrations, commercial harvesters giving their own tours is relatively new and are still fairly few. But some in the seafood industry see it as a way to add a new revenue stream while also building a stronger bond with customers.
In 2015, there was only one oyster farm in Maine offering tours, said Afton Vigue, an outreach and development specialist at the Maine Aquaculture Association. Now there are about 25 farms that give farmer-hosted tours and several others that run tours through third parties.
“Visitor experiences don’t make sense for all farms,” Vigue said. “But several farms have made tourism a key component of their business and have staff dedicated to facilitating tours.”
The types of tours can run the gamut. Noll’s tours of her Pemetic Sea Farms are small and don’t run on a regular schedule. The amount she charges is mostly to cover her time and the fuel used by her 20-foot Boston Whaler.
For her, it builds name recognition and promotes the growing Maine oyster industry.
“By engaging with our customers like that, they’ll look for our oysters again,” she said. “It builds presence for Maine oysters as well.”
Being a full-time commercial seafood harvester isn’t easy and it often entails long days that start before the sun rises. That can dissuade many from taking on the extra work of hosting tourists.
Joanna Fogg, the owner of Bar Harbor Oyster Co., said she is already running at full capacity getting oysters out to the myriad of restaurants on Mount Desert Island that want her product.
So instead of booking and handling tours herself, she contracts with Maine State Sea Kayak, which leads kayak tours to her farm twice a week in the summer. The paddlers will pull up to the farm’s work barge, where they’ll try some oysters and learn from Fogg how farming works.
Fogg expects she could make more money doing tours herself, but it would likely take a lot more upfront cost and would cut into the time she spends growing food – her true passion.
Giving kayakers half an hour at the tail end of a work day is much easier, and often they end up buying her oysters, too.
“It works really well,” she said. “I think every single tour has been fully booked.”
On the other end of the spectrum is Linda Greenlaw, an oyster farmer and lobsterman who has fully leaned into giving tours out of Surry.
She started taking people out lobstering with her about five years ago and has since added tours of her oyster farm, sunset cruises and nighttime sky tours complete with an astronomer on board.
She understood why many fishermen have no interest in taking on even more work after a long day of hauling and Greenlaw said she resisted it for years. But since she’s gotten older and slowed her lobstering schedule, Greenlaw has enjoyed tours more. It’s easier on her boats and her body. It also acts as a stable financial supplement to fishing, uncoupling some of her income from the fluctuating price of lobster.
“Are there days I’d just like to be hauling lobster and not have people on my boat? Yes, but right now, I’m just having fun with it,” she said.
Her favorite part is getting to show people what it’s like in Maine’s most iconic industry.
“It’s really nice to share that,” Greenlaw said. “You see people falling in love with the state of Maine and it’s a great feeling.”
