By David Howard
Photos by Tara Rice
From our July 2024 issue
Thomas Dube was already wearing his orange Grundéns waterproof coveralls when I arrived at his house last fall, although he was not quite ready for his afternoon fishing foray, as he still had a saucepan of ramen noodles to polish off. He slurped the snack straight from the pot, unfazed by the prospect of having a full stomach on the open water. It was a calm, clear day, but more to the point, “I’ve never gotten seasick,” he said. An experienced lobsterman, Thomas — better known around his Saco neighborhood of Camp Ellis as Tommy — gave off a confident, old-man-and-the-sea vibe. Except that he was nine years old and in fourth grade.
Tommy’s precociousness is a little surprising until you consider his DNA. He is a seventh-generation Maine lobsterman. In 1950, his paternal grandfather, whom Tommy is named after, built the Camp Ellis home where the Dubes live. As we sat in the kitchen, Tommy’s father, Seth — thickly bearded, with tattooed arms and a pronounced down east accent — pulled up a photo on his phone of his great-great-great-grandfather hauling a trap. There were magnets featuring tiny lobster buoys holding pictures on the fridge. Tommy’s maternal grandfather was also a lobsterman and now runs a lobster pound. His mom, Allyson, works at one as well.
On an early morning last fall, nine-year-old Tommy Dube, of Saco, helped out aboard his dad’s lobsterboat (then dozed off after downing a can of SpaghettiOs). Since he was eight, Tommy has held a lobstering license entitling him to 10 traps. When he turns 11 next spring, the state will permit him to increase his allotment to 50 traps.
A month after Tommy was born, his parents strapped him into a car seat and began bringing him on Seth’s lobsterboat, Irish Lady. “He’s always gone with me,” Seth said. “I did the same with my grandfather and father.” As he grew older, Tommy took to the work intuitively. He was banding lobster claws by age two and has helped steer the boat since he could walk, standing first on a bait barrel, then on a five-gallon bucket, and now on a milk crate. As soon as he was eligible, at age 8, he received a lobstering license entitling him to 10 traps; shortly after, his parents bought him his own boat. Today, he’s one of 84 licensed lobstermen aged 10 and under, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
Tommy and Seth head out together on one of their boats after school (and sometimes before, around 4:30 in the morning) and throughout the summer. On the day of our trip, the wheelhouse on Tommy’s boat, Sea Hunt, was being rebuilt, so we took Seth’s. “You wouldn’t want to go in mine — you’d have to be rowing,” Tommy joked. He pulled on tall rubber boots and set off on his mountain bike, hammering the couple of blocks to the dock, where he navigated a dinghy out to fetch the lobsterboat, then guided the bait barrel as Seth lowered it onboard. As we chugged toward open water, Tommy clambered onto his milk crate to steer, wearing bright-blue rubber gloves. His every movement looked well practiced, almost rote, except when he was manning the hydraulic system that pulled up traps as heavy as he is. During these moments, Seth occasionally stepped in to help. Tommy measured the lobsters to determine whether they were large enough to keep, also with his dad’s supervision, then dropped them into a bin or tossed them back into the sea.
He is, in fundamental ways, just a regular kid. Even after the ramen, he got hungry and warmed up a can of mini ravioli on the boat’s engine. He played with a crab and a fish that wound up in one of the traps before flinging them overboard. Sometimes, he’ll catch a nap on the boat. Back home, he roams the neighborhood on his bike and plays Wiffle ball with a neighbor. “They call him the mayor of Camp Ellis because he knows everybody’s business,” Allyson said, laughing.
But unlike most kids, Tommy’s future is all but preordained. When he turns 11 next spring, the state will permit him to increase his trap allotment to 50, and the Dubes are considering eventually homeschooling him to facilitate more time on the water. He’s already earning a steady paycheck, which gets automatically deposited into an account his parents created for him. It all may sound like a lot in a world where kids already grow up fast. But Tommy exudes a palpable joy when he’s lobstering. “This is what he wants to do,” Allyson said. It’s almost as if he were born to the job.
