Are Lobsters Funding Criminal Gangs?

Shocking news from Little Cranberry Island, the sleepy fishing village described in THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS. Two criminals, their faces hidden by ski masks and hoods, were recorded by security cameras in the middle of the night pilfering lobsters from the holding pens of the Cranberry Isles Fishermen's Co-op. Another local dealer was hit, too. A sergeant in the Maine Marine Patrol, speaking to reporter Bill Trotter of the Bangor Daily News, called it a "quick hit-and-run operation." From Trotter's April 23 article:

"A recent string of live-lobster thefts in Hancock County has investigators searching for nighttime thieves who, knowing they were being videotaped, wore ski masks and large hoods when they hit up three lobster wharves for more than $20,000 worth of shellfish. Two people have been recorded on security cameras paddling small boats in the dark of night up to Thurston's Lobster Pound in the Tremont village of Bernard and up to the Cranberry Isles Fishermen's Co-op on Little Cranberry Island, Sgt. John Williams of Maine Marine Patrol said Friday. At each dock, they wore gloves and ski masks or large hoods over their bowed heads as they loaded four or five crates of lobster onto a purloined vessel and then rowed quietly away."

Crime scene: Cranberry Isles Fishermen's
Co-op (photo: Trevor Corson)

Now, given the ski masks, it seems not impossible that Al Qaeda could have established a sleeper cell on Little Cranberry. To be sure, it would be difficult to keep such a group secret on an island little more than a mile long, occupied most of the time by at least seventy observant and mostly law-abiding citizens. Yet it is also true that when I was a boy on Little Cranberry, several friends and I found a thicket of trees located in a marshy bog on the island where we were able to successfully store a cache of Playboy magazines for up to three months without detection.

Sgt. Williams of the Marine Patrol, however, didn't seem to think that Al Qaeda was involved:

"I believe these people are connected to the fishing industry somehow," Williams said. "I believe they are local people."

"We're hoping someone knows what's going on and will give us a call," Williams said. "Sooner or later they'll be caught by somebody. We'll be a lot easier on them than the fishermen will."