Dustin first went lobster fishing when he was 5. “I went with my dad. He had 5 traps for me in the harbor, and I was barely able to see over the wash rail.” When Dustin was 11, he bought his own skiff with the money he’d saved fishing those 5 traps.
Dustin hails from a long line of fishermen—5 generations—all from Friendship. He fishes out of a 40’ Wayne Beal named the “Knotty Lady.” He goes all year and tried his hand at pogie seining this summer, too.
When asked what he dislikes about fishing, Dustin comes up dry: “I don’t know.” What he loves about fishing is easy for him to answer: “It’s a lifetime of learning and making my own way. I like that I can make decisions myself and go about it in my own way.”
Dustin attended college in Pennsylvania but came home in the summers to fish and always knew he would fish full time. Dustin purchased his first “real boat” when he was a senior in high school, a 34’ wooden boat he named Provider. Provider had been his stepmother’s father’s boat’s name. He was “kind of like a grandfather” to him and had drowned some time ago. “My stepmother gave me the original wooden carving of the name for my boat.”
His scariest time fishing? “It was shrimping with my father, in February, and it was blowing about 45 knots out of the northwest. There was ice everywhere and a sea running. It got pretty hairy at times, chunks of ice falling out of the rigging and hitting you on the head.”
When he’s not fishing, Dustin looks forward to hunting – deer and bird hunting, “partridge especially.” He adds, “And I like to just go up to my grandparents and sit on the deck and relax, just do nothing.”
Dustin’s favorite way to eat lobster? “Anything that has lobster in it, I like. There are so many ways to have it. I like a lobster stew, scampi with pasta, a lobster roll, anything really.”
Meet The People Behind the Fishery
A diverse group of people passionate about Maine and the lobster industry.
