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The Long Haul

March 25, 2019   New England

“I been here for so many years, I just can’t give it up,” he says. He raises his voice over the whine of the hydraulic hauler that lifts his trap out of Muscongus Bay. After more than nine decades on the water, World War II veteran and Maine-art-lore inheritor John Olson can’t stop trapping lobsters. At 96, Olson is square-shouldered and cowboy-lean, and although he sticks closer to shore than he used to, he still works 250 lobster traps in the waters off Cushing. His 68-year-old son, Sam, one of seven children, hoists the trap over the gunwale. >Photo’s, click to read<14:14

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96 yr old World War II veteran, F/V Sarah Ashley, girlfriend Barbara, John Olson, lobsterman John Olson, Muscongus Bay, senior citizen, World War II

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  It took me a while to decide how to most accurately describe the situation that has been visited upon the New England fishing communities that are and since colonial times have been dependent on the groundfish fisheries.

  

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