Not all August fishing here is for lobsters. Here you see a fishing vessel and crew purse-seining for Atlantic menhaden in Great Cove on Monday.
That is, they’re using a special net (or “sein,” a word derived from the Old English word for dragnet) to catch a school of small fish named menhaden. Those fish are a primary source of lobster bait; they’re fish in the herring family and commonly called pogies (PO-ghees). The purse sein operates somewhat like the old-fashioned draw-string purses that Robin Hood used to steal in his tales.
Here's how it basically works: A skiff from the fishing vessel pulls the large netting wall around a school of pogies. Then, a “purse line” that passes through rings at the bottom of the net is pulled to cinch the bottom closed. When closed, the net full of fish is hauled alongside the fishing vessel, where dipnets can scoop out the fish and put them into large containers for transporting.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on August 5, 2024.)