Miami Herald

‘Lobster Lady’ turns 103. She’s been hauling traps for 95 years

- BY SYDNEY PAGE The Washington Post

For the past 95 years, Virginia Oliver’s morning routine has been much the same: She applies red lipstick, puts on her fishing gear and — just before daybreak — she boards a boat. Then, for several hours straight, she hauls lobster traps.

“All my life, I’ve done this kind of thing,” said Oliver, who turned 103 on June 6. “I never get seasick.”

Around her hometown of Rockland, Maine, Oliver is seen as a celebrity of sorts.

“Everywhere I go, people stop me and talk to me, and say they saw me on TV and all that,” said Oliver. Her friends call her “Ginny,” but most people know her as the “Lobster Lady.”

Oliver was surprised by the attention she recently began getting because she has been lobstering for most of her life. She started when she was 8 years old, under the watchful eyes of her older brother and father.

“We used to go every day,” said Oliver, whose father was a lobster dealer and ran a general store on a 25-acre island called

“The Neck” in the Gulf of Maine. Oliver piloted her father’s boat at age 8 — and she’s still steering at 103. She is speculated to be the oldest lobster harvester in the state — and perhaps even the world.

As Oliver grew up, she was keen on continuing her family’s lobstering lifestyle. She married fellow fisherman Max Oliver.

The couple worked in the business together for 61 years, spending their mornings side-by-side, lobstering out of Spruce Head in Knox County, Maine.

“He told everybody I was the boss,” said Oliver, who has four children — three of whom became lobstermen — and two grandchild­ren.

Since her husband died in 2006, Oliver’s son, Max Jr., 80, has been her lobstering partner. They have about 400 traps between them, and they sell the lobsters to the Spruce Head Fisherman’s Co-Op.

“I love being with my son,” she said, adding that in recent years, they go out three mornings per week during peak season, which typically runs from June through September. On lobstering days, Oliver wakes up around 3:30 a.m.

In addition to piloting the boat and hauling traps, Oliver measures the lobsters and bands their claws.

She’s been bitten a few times, but she doesn’t mind.

“There’s no sense in complainin­g,” she said.

Over the span of nearly a century, Oliver has watched Maine’s lobster landscape evolve. Maine has long been the country’s largest lobster producer, and it’s one of the state’s most prominent industries. Many locals, including Oliver’s family, depend on it for their livelihood­s.

When Oliver started out in the field, she recalled being one of the only women on the water.

“Now, there’s quite a few,” she said.

Another change she’s seen is fewer lobsters in the water.

“When my husband was with me, there were more lobsters than there are now,” Oliver said.

Due to climate change, rising ocean temperatur­es have reduced lobster population­s in the Gulf of Maine, causing the crustacean­s to move northward.

Some seafood guides have deemed Maine’s lobsters unsustaina­ble since endangered whales are becoming entangled in fishing gear. In response, licensed lobstermen, including Oliver, say they have taken measures to prevent whales from getting trapped — \ including modifying their gear and using knot-free buoy lines — and they comply with conservati­on law.

Oliver recently renewed her commercial license and is planning to start her 95th season hauling lobsters in a few weeks. She is excited to soon be “getting out on the water,” she said, “and doing what I’ve always done.”

That includes eating lobster — and cooking elaborate meals for her family. Every Saturday, her children come over for dinner, and she always makes her famous biscuits and baked beans — a traditiona­l New England dish. Oliver is also an avid baker, making cakes, pies, doughnuts and brownies.

While Oliver has gotten some media attention though the years, her story spread widely around the world after a short documentar­y, “Conversati­ons with the Lobster Lady,” was released in 2021. Children’s books have also been written about her.

Wayne Gray, a local documentar­ian who cocreated the film, decided to tell Oliver’s story because he was inspired by her work ethic and love of lobsters, and figured others would be, too.

He met Oliver for the first time two years ago, after hearing about her through the Rockland Historical Society. He approached her and asked if she would be open to being the subject of a short film and was delighted when she said yes.

“I made a date to go out on the boat with her,” said Gray, who quickly came to realize that “she is loved by other lobstermen.”

Still, he didn’t anticipate that his short film would launch Oliver into a local legend.

“I never expected that to happen,” said Gray, who has remained close friends with Oliver, and attended her birthday party at the Rockland Historical Society – to which Oliver wore lobster-shaped earrings.

 ?? WAYNE GRAY ?? Virginia Oliver began lobstering as a child with her father, then later with her husband, and now goes out daily on the boat ‘Virginia’ with her son, Max, 80.
WAYNE GRAY Virginia Oliver began lobstering as a child with her father, then later with her husband, and now goes out daily on the boat ‘Virginia’ with her son, Max, 80.

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