In a crowded harbor on Spruce Head Island, where midcoast Maine folds into the Atlantic, a lobster turf war is brewing — not over fishing territory, but over which boats can squeeze a living out of the island’s tiny working waterfront.
On one side is Spruce Head Fishermen’s Co-op, a century-old bastion of about 40 independent lobstermen. On the other is Mazzetta Co., the multimillion-dollar Chicago-based seafood giant that buys local lobster from 58 fishermen to sell in the global market.
The dispute between waterfront neighbors has turned this sleepy fishing village 15 minutes south of Rockland into a legal battleground. At the heart of the battle is a proposed dock expansion and an old, strategically moored smack boat once used to carry lobster to market.
It started with a blueprint. On paper, Mazzetta’s expansion is an infrastructure upgrade. The co-op considers it a maritime taking that would lead to its closure and cede control of Maine’s fourth most valuable lobster port to an out-of-state corporation.
The proposed expansion would make the already narrow lane between the rival wharves so small that no boat over 50 feet long could reach the co-op’s bait and trap loading station. Smaller vessels would need ropes and dockside helpers, but even that would require calm seas.
“It would make it impossible for the co-op to stay in business,” said David Cousens, the longtime co-op president. “We can’t risk banging up our boats. We don’t have the time to walk 100 pounds of bait up and down a plank or wait an hour every day to sell our catch.”
The price of competition
The co-op alleges a predatory motive: Without competition, some independent fishermen would likely sell their catch to Mazzetta. Given the high cost of diesel, Mazzetta could cut the dock price without worrying about lobstermen selling their catch in other ports.
High dock prices have helped Maine lobstermen survive the financial consequences of rising fuel and bait prices and a declining catch. In 2024, Spruce Head lobstermen earned $6.14 a pound, the second highest yearly dock price on record, according to state data.
The Spruce Head branch of Mazzetta Co. — which goes by the name of the local lobster dealer, Atwood Lobster, that it acquired in 2011 — did not return calls or emails asking about the dock expansion plan or the co-op’s claim that it would block their boats.
In filings with the state, however, Mazzetta leans into Atwood’s seven-decade history in Spruce Head to portray itself as a community fixture, despite the former owner’s legal claims that Mazzetta tried to exploit his dementia to force him out of the industry.
The state filing says the expansion is part of a $3.2 million project to repair damage caused by the devastating winter storms of 2023-24, raise the decks by a foot to withstand sea level rise and add space for another 20 vessels. The work is partially funded by two state grants.
In response to the co-op’s initial complaints, Mazzetta dropped its plan to install a float and ramp on the north side of its wharf, on the co-op side. “This substantial compromise by [Mazzetta] was a sacrifice of operational needs,” the company wrote in its filings.
But the co-op refused to budge: The revision wouldn’t give members access to the loading station.
In January, the Maine Board of Environmental Protection approved Mazzetta’s permit without a public hearing. The co-op appealed. Mazzetta said the appeal would delay its work and jeopardize the project’s state funding.
Even if the court rejects the co-op’s appeal, Mazzetta still needs the blessing of town officials to move ahead with the expansion. With the co-op crying foul, local approval could be difficult for the out-of-state company to secure.
A surgically placed smack boat
The cold war turned hot after the co-op filed its appeal in February. That drew state inspectors to Spruce Head, where they discovered that Mazzetta had installed two floating docks on the south side without the necessary state permits. The state has ordered at least one removed by May.
Then, about a month later, Mazzetta moved an old lobster buying boat called the Jack Black to its wharf. The placement of this 45-foot boat at Mazzetta’s wharf is surgical: parked in the footprint of the planned expansion, it recreates the blockade effect the co-op is trying to stop in its appeal.
The smack boat — which is not being used and on some days can’t even start — has paralyzed the co-op’s bait and trap-loading operations. Co-op boats have had to engage in perilous and time-consuming maneuvers just to use their own pier, according to the co-op manager, Casey Morrill.
Jarod Bray, a 42-year-old co-op member who fishes the waters around Matinicus Island, set the last of his 800 traps days before the Jack Black arrived in Spruce Head. But most co-op members aren’t so lucky, Bray said. They have yet to set their traps.
The seasonal fishermen will have to walk their 40- to 60-pound traps down the gangway one or two at a time or spend about $1,000 on diesel to load traps in Tenants Harbor, a half-hour steam to the south, Bray said.
With the Jack Black tied up like it is, Bray won’t be able to bait up like usual. Instead, he must back his 47-foot vessel up to the loading station. In doing so, however, the Artemis takes up the bulk of the co-op’s dock, blocking other co-op members from the lobster buying station.
The rivalry has devolved into something ugly, Bray said. It’s so far above and beyond competition that, should the co-op go under, Bray said he would rather spend the time and money required to sell his lobsters in a different port than do business with Mazzetta.
“In a trap war, people can lose a little money, and everybody gets mad,” he said. “Now we’re talking million-dollar businesses. That’s a whole new level. That’s about putting a bunch of Spruce Head fishermen and their crews out of business.”
‘I don’t have an answer’
The dispute also has spiraled into a referendum on the Wild West nature of Maine’s working waterfronts. Without a local harbormaster — the town has rejected the idea on several occasions — the co-op appears to have nowhere to turn except the court.
According to Cousens, the co-op has asked the following officials for help: the code enforcement officer, local selectmen, Marine Patrol, the state agencies overseeing marine resources and parks and lands, Attorney General Aaron Frey, Gov. Janet Mills and the U.S. Coast Guard.
No regulator appears to have the will or authority to wade into these murky jurisdictional waters.
“I do not have an answer,” said South Thomaston First Selectman John Spear in an email. “The Selectboard has not discussed this, but my personal understanding is that absent a harbormaster the town has no authority to intervene.”
Selectman Jeff Northgraves agreed with Spear, but added: “It’s bound to be resolved by a judge.”
Marine Resources Commissioner Carl Wilson has “been in contact with both parties to urge them to resolve this issue in a constructive way by seeking compromise,” a department spokesperson said Tuesday.
State laws and rules offer some guidance, often without specifying who should enforce it.
Under Maine’s submerged lands rules, any new dock or pier must generally be set back at least 25 feet from the boundary line that extends from someone’s land out into the water up to 1,000 feet. This creates a 50-foot no-build buffer between two neighboring docks.
Under the state’s century-old wharves and weirs law, people can’t build a structure that interferes with their neighbor’s ability to reach navigable waters. With state permits, shorefront owners are entitled to “wharf out,” or build a dock to reach navigable depths, even though they don’t own the submerged land beneath it.
For now, the smack boat remains at its mooring, rising and falling with the 10-foot tides, while the co-op waits for a judge to hear its request for the boat to be moved. Meanwhile, the state has yet to set a court date for the co-op’s appeal of Mazzetta’s expansion permit.
And in the quiet harbor of Spruce Head, still two to three months from the traditional start date for Maine’s summer lobster season, two neighbors continue to stare each other down from their abutting wharves, waiting to see who blinks first.
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Penny Overton can be reached at poverton@pressherald.com.