How the Largest Lobster Company in Maine Processes Over 600,000 Pounds per Week — Vendors

- If there's one thing Maine is known for, it's

lobster

from the cold, clean, rocky coasts. (

lobster

s loudly) In an average

week

that we process, I would say between five and 600,000

pounds

of lobster. (lobsters clattering) It's always comforting to remember that those lobsters you'll catch sometime next

week

will be someone's dinner somewhere in the world. (soft, upbeat music) We're going to drag some traps around Portland Head Light, but most of my traps are here behind Richmond Island, which is off the coast of Cape Elizabeth. So, the first thing we do every morning is fill up with dead fish to put in the traps.

This is like the gas station stop. Most of my daily lobster hunting money is spent on dead fish. This is a pogy or a menhaden. Lobster is the economic engine of coastal Maine. Communities depend on this fishery for their survival. Without the lobster fishery, Maine would be a very different place. (brilliant music) Right here we have John Leavitt, my assistant for the day. Nobody sells more lobsters in the world than this guy here. These fish are actually sometimes used to produce fish oil, and that oil is what lobsters smell and feel underwater. That's what draws them into the trap. - The stinkier the better, as Curt says.

With this we are going to catch a lot of lobsters. (upbeat music) - Then they smell and see the bait in the trap and crawl across these two side heads here. It is difficult for them to get back out, and this is a requirement in all traps: to have a biodegradable exhaust vent. The traps are designed to allow juvenile lobsters and other critters, whether crabs or fish, to exit the trap right there. (upbeat music) Everyone has their own buoy colors, and that's how we identify whose traps they are. These are my buoy colors, green and a tan color.

We are in 20 feet of water. We'll see what we get out of this trap. Alright. Here we have two lobsters, one male and one female. Females grow wider tails to hold more eggs. Males put more energy into larger, stronger claws. This here is a crushing claw, and then its ripper claw or pincer here has much sharper teeth. It is designed to tear apart the meat of those same clams and muscles. What he's doing now is breathing, blowing bubbles. Lobsters can also urinate on the face. There will be two streams of water that will shoot directly at you.

That's what they do in nature to establish their dominance. So, two male lobsters will literally end up engaging in a pissing contest. This is our measurement meter. In Maine, the minimum size for a lobster is 3 1/4 shell length. We take this tool and start just behind the eye of the lobster. And if it were to touch the lobster's shell, it would be legal size. It passes the shell and returns to the ocean. And the minimum size is designed here in the state of Maine so that by the time they reach 3 1/4 shell length, they have had the opportunity to reproduce for at least a year or two.

This one here, legal size. That's a nice pound and a half male lobster. Ah, finally. Fourth, if we take four lobsters out of a trap, that's about five

pounds

of trap. It's a really good average for the day around here. So we take our band and our main wedding ring, we take the band, we put it over the claw like this, we twist it, we pull and it goes on like this. I get bitten all the time and honestly you have to be careful with the smaller lobsters. They are also used as a ratchet pressure, so it presses.

It's not a good feeling. Ready Seafood is a

company

founded by my cousins, John and Brendan. We grew up on the coast of Cape Elizabeth and have been fishing for lobster since we were very young, but I can assure you that it is something you have to love if you are going to do this for a living. This is a female lobster with about 10,000 eggs. So obviously when we catch a female with eggs, we have to return them to the ocean. But before we do that, we need to make a notch on this tail fin right here, and that means she's a proven breeder.

So if she ever gets caught again by another collector, even if she doesn't have eggs but she has that notch, it's illegal to keep her. So we're going to do this quickly and you can see that notch on the tail of her right there. And female lobsters will release between 10,000 and more than 100,000 eggs, depending mainly on their size. (brilliant music) This is actually the shell of a molted lobster right here. Molting is the process by which a lobster grows. Imagine if we had to shed all our bones every year in order to grow. That's what every lobster does.

When this part of the lobster's shell splits and the lobster comes out of its old shell, out of its old claws, it comes out and starts over with a new, bigger, very soft shell. This here is a baby lobster, probably one or two years old at this point. It takes five to eight years for a lobster to reach legal size. Two to three years here, probably six or seven years here. Then the baby will go back to the ocean, find a good hiding place, and we'll see each other in three or four years. - That's how it is. -She returns.

Oh, crab infestation. They get to the bait very quickly. Last trap of the day right here. Let's leave this one behind, go to the barn and unload our lobsters. This is a generational fishery. Much of what I learned, I learned from my father. Really, the key to achieving this is maintaining a sustainable fishery to ensure that there will not only be a next generation of lobsters, but also a next generation of lobster harvesters. In total today, we carried between 30 and 35 traps and we probably weighed between 40 and 45 pounds. A big part of what we do is ensure that a lobster stays alive from the time it is harvested until it reaches the pot of boiling water.

We have two storage tanks, each holding approximately 100,000 pounds of live lobster. These holding tanks are kept at 40 degrees, so by keeping them in cold water, we are preparing them for their journey by reducing their metabolism, reducing their oxygen consumption, and reducing their stress level. This is the first stage right here. This is our purge tank. So the lobsters come here, they immediately go into this tank for 12 to 24 hours. Right now, we have about 150,000 pounds of lobster in this facility. (thoughtful music) These lobsters here have a little softer shell. So these lobsters in this box, in this row here, their next step is our processing facility. (bright music) So once the lobsters arrive at our processing plant, the first step in their journey is onto a conveyor and through our stunner. (brilliant music) And a stunner is designed specifically to kill lobsters humanely.

Basically, it sends an electrical charge through the lobster and kills it instantly. (lobsters loudly) So after stunning the lobsters, they decompose right here. The tails go in one direction, the claws, the knuckles, the bodies and the legs go up this conveyor right here, towards our steam pot. (brilliant music) So, this fun equipment weighs and separates our raw shell-on lobster tails by weight. So there are sensors on that conveyor that actually weigh each individual queue. Depending on that weight, they take them to one of these containers and then send them here to freeze. (bright music) They enter our nitrogen tunnel right here.

So this is essentially a pizza oven on the other side of the temperature spectrum. (Nitrogen tunnel hum) This is probably the highest quality way to freeze a lobster tail. It maintains the quality of the protein, it is glazed, they are frozen and ready to transport. This equipment is registered as a bomb in the city of Saco. So we're talking about crazy pressure. We can go from zero to 45,000 PSI in about 90 seconds. That pressure kills all those bugs associated with food spoilage. When you put lobsters in there, that pressure separates the meat from the shell, so we can produce our cold-split raw lobster meat. (upbeat percussion music) The machine actually separates the meat from the shell, so when we get it here, you can see the meat literally falls off the shell. (upbeat percussion music) If you ask me that personally, I love claw and knuckle meat, tender, salty and really absolutely delicious. (upbeat music) This here is our steamer.

It is about the size of a subway train. The temperature inside is constant, different products go through at different speeds (upbeat music) and then they go into this cooling tank right here, which is 38 degree water and essentially stops the cooking process. (upbeat music) Those bodies and legs go to our ground beef line where we produce lobster ground beef. (upbeat music) (lobsters clicking) And then the rest of this line here is all the team members collecting meat from claws and knuckles. It goes through two levels of quality control in which each piece of meat is picked and ensures that no small pieces of shell or cartilage remain. (thoughtful music) Here we have a great machine that allows us to use more lobster daily.

All of the body meat and much of the leg meat and meat that gets stuck in the shell after being harvested would simply go into the waste stream. And with this, we can produce over 10,000 pounds per day of ground lobster meat that would otherwise be a waste stream. It's 100% lobster meat, so you can use it in anything from ravioli to arancini to lobster rolls. (lobster shells clashing) So, in my opinion, this is one of the coolest parts of our plant. And these shells are full of amazing minerals, compounds, and all kinds of good stuff. My goal over the next 10 years is to turn these shells into the most valuable part of this plant.

They are full of chitin and chitosan, and other mineral components that have real value. That chitin and chitosan are antibacterial. It can act as a biopesticide, it can act as a biofertilizer. We are working with scientists looking to develop rechargeable batteries from the chitin and chitosan in our lobster shells. So, everything that we produce daily and that is going to be sold fresh is packaged, weighed, sealed, but nothing leaves here for two days. We send samples of every batch of lobsters we produce to an outside laboratory for micro-testing. And until we get those results back that the product is OK, it's going to stay here for food safety reasons.

We are very proud to supply lobster meat to many local restaurants here in Portland. So being able to work with chefs on the culinary side of lobster is something we're very proud to do. - 61 and... - Eventide is an amazing restaurant. They take our lobster product and put their own spin on it. - So we get lobster every morning and our commissary will poach that meat down there. And once it's processed, it shows up in these five-pound bags. We start by heating up our brown butter sauce. Coat it with butter and a little salt. The richness of the butter, that nice nutty flavor, all of that really complements the lobster meat well.

It needs a little lemon juice to finish. Put it on our homemade bao buns topped with chives. (upbeat music) It's delicious, well balanced and definitely nostalgic. We sell about 700 lobster rolls a day in the summer. People come from all over to look for them. (upbeat music) (confusing chatter) Two dairy-free sandwich rolls. (upbeat music) - Every day, you wake up early on the water before the sun rises. One of the things I love most about being on this planet is being able to untie my boat and catch lobsters. (thoughtful music)