WORKING THE TIDES
THE MAINERS WHO DIG SEAWORMS SAY BEING YOUR OWN BOSS MAKES UP FOR THE TOIL
Working the mud for sandworms and bloodworms is a backbreaking job, but these Mainers are an independent lot who relish being their own boss. By WILLIAM SISSON
A strong back and a weak mind.
With weary laughs, Maine seaworm diggers invariably tell an outsider that those are the two most important qualifications for this job. There certainly is truth to the first attribute. Digging worms is lumbar-bending labor.
You spend three or four hours at the bottom of a tide bent over at the waist, standing in mud halfway up your shins or deeper, swinging a short-handled hoe with one hand and plucking sandworms or bloodworms out of the mud with the other.
You get paid by the worm: 20 cents for a sandworm, 35 cents for a bloodworm. You dig in all the elements coastal Maine throws at you: heat, cold, sleet, drizzle, fog. And if you get sloppy, the worms might even give you a nip every once in a while, especially the bloodworms. Sound easy?
No Boss
“It’s not an easy job,” says Stetson Everett, 74, of Hancock, Maine, who has been wholesaling bloodworms for 45 years. “It’s backbreaking. It really is.”
Physical demands notwithstanding, the job attracts hundreds of independent, industrious characters who like working for themselves in the outdoors and adhering to a lifestyle dictated by tides rather than a time clock.
“Nothing’s any better than being your own boss,” says Peter Johnston, 59, also of Hancock. “I wouldn’t work inside. You couldn’t pay me enough.” Johnston has been digging worms for 41 years. “The worst part of the job?” he asks, pausing to give the question consideration. “There ain’t no worse part of the job. I like it. Never got tired of it.”
The job rewards those who push themselves. “We get out of it what we put into it,” says Dan Harrington, 47, of Woolwich, president of the Independent Maine Marine Worm Harvesters Association. “No one is standing over our shoulder telling us what to do. And we don’t have to punch a time clock. We work around the tides.”
Sandworms and bloodworms are popular baits for a host of species, from striped bass to flounder. For decades they’ve been a staple with anglers throughout the Northeast and the Mid-atlantic and beyond. Maine worms are also shipped to California and Europe.
Last year, landings of Maine bloodworms and sandworms collectively topped $5.5 million, which is down from previous years, according to preliminary state figures. Prices vary, but sandworms sold at retail in southern New England will run you $7.50 a dozen. For bloodworms, it’s about $12.
On the Flats
Photographer Mike Cevoli and I spent two days in Maine this spring interviewing and photographing several members of the hardy band who make their living on the intertidal flats. We tagged along for one tide with Jim Arsenault, 50, his son Joe, 23, of Dresden, and longtime digger Chet Dorr, who is 82 and still working the mud like a man half his age.
We met in the midcoast town of Wiscasset, and I rode in Arsenault’s truck to a boat ramp in Boothbay, where he launched his aluminum skiff. En route, Arsenault showed me an issue of Down East magazine from 1994, with a story on worm harvesting and featuring a younger Jim Arsenault. The headline was as accurate then as it is today: “No Boss.”
It was a lovely morning, with high clouds, some blue sky and a light breeze from the southwest, probably as nice a day as you could find to dig. The five of us were soon headed north on the Back River.
Hundreds of herring gulls lined the flats along the tidal flow, picking at worms as the tide dropped. “See those gulls?” asked Arsenault, who has been digging worms for 30 years. “That’s evidence of sandworm spawning. Been going on for two weeks. The spawn looks strong. Gulls everywhere.”
After a little poking around, Arsenault guided the skiff down a narrow side channel just north of Tibbet Island and pulled the boat up to the edge of a flat, where the men would dig sandworms for nearly three hours.
Few are Chosen
This job is not for everybody. “A lot of people try this, and very few stay with it,” says Arsenault, who is vice president of the worm harvesters group. “The labor is tedious. Monotonous. They say, ‘Holy shit. I’m not doing this.’ ”
The state issues 800 to 900 licenses a year, but not everyone who gets a license is digging, and many of those who do are part-timers. Some dig sandworms, others bloodworms. The worms are found on different areas of the flats — sandworms need more salinity — and often at different depths.
“It’s a lifestyle,” says Harrington, whose father buys worms from individual diggers and then wholesales them out of state. “Many of us have been doing it for most of our lives. I started worming with my dad when I was a kid.”
It is the kind of work you’re more apt to take to if you’re introduced to it when you are young. “A lot of these guys are generational diggers,” Harrington says. “Fathers and sons and grandsons. Mothers and daughters.”
The Bigger They Come
Working the mud has a way of humbling even the stoutest characters. “Some look like they’re the toughest guys in the world, and they just don’t make it,” Harrington says.
“People talk about leg day at the gym,” Arsenault says. “Come out and try this. Every day is leg day out here.”
Even a young digger such as Joe Arsenault, who is 23, grimaces as he recalls a particularly bitter day this past March. “It was 4 degrees with 30-mile-per-hour winds, and I had a hole in this boot,” says Joe, who hopes to make a career out of writing, composing and playing music. “I dug just what I had to, and then I got out of there. Cold.”
I could see the strength the job demands in the thick wrists and forearms of the diggers. It’s not unusual to find hoe handles grooved with wear marks from the owner’s clasp. “When I fished a lot of double tides,” Arsenault recalls, “I could wear a hoe out in a season.” Each man wears a glove on his hoe hand to maintain a firm grip and picks worms with his bare hand.
Dorr, who has been digging since high school, looks sturdy for his age but admits, “I’m feeling it now.”
You wouldn’t know it by the way he dug a trench south along the edge of the falling water and then back toward the boat as the tide turned, stopping only occasionally to stand and straighten his back.
“You can’t believe he’s 82,” Arsenault says. “He’s one tough son of a bitch.” And, he notes, “In the working world, you learn never to gauge the strength of a man by his size.” The quiet, private octogenarian is lean and strong — and respected.
“He’s the worm guru,” Joe says. “He has a sixth sense. He can smell them.”
Technique
There is more to the job, of course, than brawn and biceps. Like any form of fishing or harvesting, techniques can separate the skilled digger from the googan who wields a hoe like a cudgel.
“You can get it done if you don’t do much thinking,” Arsenault says, “but you won’t be much good at it.”
There is an art to simply walking in the mud without bogging down. “Heel up, toe down and pull,” Joe instructs. “You should be OK.” That breaks the suction, but it’s easier said than done.
Success on the flats hinges on learning the natural calculus of tides, winds, season, temperature, rainfall, locations, the angle of the hoe, the depth of the worms — are they shallow or deep? — and more.
“You have to read how they lay, and dig accordingly,” Arsenault says. “To get really good at it, where you’re in tune with it, takes some time.”
Joe is still perfecting the skills, though he learned to dig when he was 8 and has done it full time for about four years.
“Efficiency is the name of the game,” the younger Arsenault says. “Technique and getting a rhythm. My technique isn’t as refined as these guys’.”
Work Ethic
Peter Johnston, who supplements his worm income by cutting about 20 lawns, has no intention of retiring. “Most of the older diggers are hanging up their hoes,” he says. “You get the old die-hard like me. I’ll do it until I die or can’t walk.”
“It’s backbreaking. It really is. You’re working in mud up to your knees. You have to be self-motivated.” STETSON EVERETT
The same might be said of Dorr. “He doesn’t have to dig,” Arsenault says. “He continues to dig because he wants to dig.”
Millard Hassan of M&S Hoes in Newcastle understands the satisfaction of working just to work. “People think I’m crazy, but I like working,” says Hassan, who is 75 and can usually be found puttering in his cluttered Newcastle Repair Shop, located beside his home. “I’ve worked seven days a week for 40 years. That’s the way I was brought up. I don’t know anything else.”
These days, Hassan keeps himself busy fabricating worm hoes, which he sells for $100 each. He cuts the steel, turns the wooden handles on an old lathe and brazes the steel tines to the hoe’s crossbar.
Like his father and uncle, Hassan started digging worms when he was 14 or 15. “I know as much about worming as anyone,” declares Hassan, who has five daughters and 25 grandchildren. “Dug them for 27 years. My back tells me about it every day.”
Money
Although no one is rolling in money, people can make a decent living harvesting worms, depending on how hard they work, how many double tides they dig. “There’s not a ton of money in this,” Harrington says. “No one’s getting rich. Independence is a big part of it. It’s the freedom of working on the water.”
I’d read somewhere that a digger can make $50,000 a year. I asked Arsenault whether that was accurate. “A good digger could, but they won’t earn an easy $50,000,” says Arsenault, who was paid 5 cents a sandworm when he started and discourages the notion that worm harvesting is a
road to riches. “The guys making good money earn it. There’s no grass growing beneath their hoes. And there’s no benefits that come with it.” Arsenault makes ends meet by wearing three hats. “Digging worms, working in the woods logging and fur trapping,” he says. “I’m making a living.”
Scenery
Working the flats has benefits beyond simply being your own boss, especially for those who love the outdoors. Several of the diggers I spoke to were avid hunters and fishermen. “The labor end of this sucks,” Arsenault says. “But the places we go and the things we see are gorgeous.” Not long after he made that remark, a bald eagle landed in a pine on the north end of Tibbet Island, a stone’s throw or two from where they were digging.
The trio were pleased with what they dug on the flats that day. “The worms are nice-size,” Arsenault says. A good digger will average 750 to 1,000 sandworms a day. Arsenault and his son probably came up a little short on this particular tide, but only because they had to stop regularly and break their rhythm to answer our questions.
Back at the ramp, they washed their catch and the mud out of the skiff and took their catch to a wholesaler — Dan Harrington’s father — where the worms were counted and the men were paid.
Resource Issues
As with all fisheries, there are concerns about the health of the resource. Annual landings of seaworms in Maine are declining. Bloodworm landings last year were the lowest since 1964, when landings data were first compiled. Sandworms were down, as well.
Reasons put forth for the decline include overharvesting, climate change and warming water, an influx of invasive European green crabs, fewer harvesters, natural cyclical fluctuations in worm populations, and loss of habitat. “If you get 10 diggers in a room,” Arsenault says, “you’ll get 100 opinions.”
“Our resource has been dwindling,” says Everett, the wholesaler who has been buying worms from individual diggers since 1972. “It has gone in cycles before. Peaks and valleys. But the valleys are getting a little deeper, and the peaks don’t seem as high as they used to.”
The diggers face other issues, as well. There was an unsuccessful legislative initiative earlier this year to restrict worm digging in winter to give the worms, in essence, a breather. And there are concerns that some coastal municipalities and other harvesters, such as those who dig clams, are looking to gain control over the resource via access to intertidal flats.
The Independent Maine Marine Worm Harvesters Association was formed several years ago to provide diggers with a unified voice on resource and regulatory issues. Harrington and Arsenault say they hope researchers will determine what is causing the population to decline. “We’re actively working with the state to find ways to enhance the resource,” Harrington says.
In the meantime, they do what they have done for most of their working lives. They check the tides and head to the flats, where they dig the mud until the water rises once more and closes another workday.