In late July, Lindsay McDaniels, a female lobsterman who makes a living hauling traps off Mount Desert Island, often with her 16-year-old daughter onboard, reported 30 hardshell and jumbo lobsters missing from her stash at a dock in Northeast Harbor.
The marina’s surveillance footage showed two men walking off with her lobsters, which McDaniels, who is known within the fishing community as “Lobsta Lindsay,” had planned to sell for between $300 and $500 that same day.
“It appears they are from away,” McDaniels wrote in a Facebook post that went viral among MDI lobstermen.
The footage showed a pair of middle-aged men circling various crates along two docks at the Northeast Harbor Marina, one with commercial boats and the other with million-dollar yachts. The theft occurred in the late afternoon of July 24.
The incident is an example of the sometimes tense relationship that local residents have with summertime tourism, which brings millions of visitors and seasonal residents to the island to enjoy Acadia National Park and its surrounding beauty. Amid that beauty are communities of hard-working locals who live on the island year-round, many of whom rely on the working waterfront.
Many islanders directly benefit from the surge in seasonal activity every year — whether they’re a lobsterman or shop owner — but they’re also left to tolerate what comes with living in a region that is overrun with newcomers every season and people who may be unfamiliar with, or uninterested in, local norms.
At first, McDaniels, who later reported the incident to the Mount Desert Police Department, thought the men may have mistaken her lobsters for those they’d purchased from another fisherman. But she’s not so convinced of that now.
“I have spoken with many fishermen to see if they got the wrong lobsters, [and] that has not been the case,” McDaniels wrote, adding that the men made a phone call while searching the docks. “Either way, if they had it arranged or not, they should have made sure it was the right crate.”
McDaniels, who sells most of her lobsters at Beal’s Lobster Pier in Southwest Harbor, wondered if the pair were friends of summer residents because their black SUV came from a neighborhood where seasonal residents live, not from the direction where day visitors tend to go. The men also carried their own laundry baskets, not often found on tourists, to transport the lobsters.
Several circulating Facebook posts about the incident ignited anger among locals.
“I hope the lobstermen don’t find them first,” one Facebook user wrote.
Another user responded to that comment: “I hope the lobstermen do find them first.”
“Good way to wind up [as] lobster bait,” a third commenter wrote.
The matter remains under investigation and the pair have not yet been identified, Mount Desert Police Chief Dave Kerns said, noting that the security camera footage suggests the lobsters likely were taken from McDaniels’ crate by mistake. Maine Marine Patrol is also involved in the matter, but Jeff Nichols, a spokesperson for the Department of Marine Resources, said local police were leading the investigation.
But even if the lobsters were accidentally taken from the wrong fisherman, McDaniels was still left scrambling on the evening of July 24, with pending orders and missing catch. She weathered windy conditions during a last-minute fishing trip to replace the lobsters.
McDaniels, who is originally from Minnesota but settled in MDI in the early 2000s after attending College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, has worked on many boats, out of many harbors, she said, adding that she’s “earned respect from local fishermen.”
On Saturday morning, shortly after hauling a trap in Northeast Harbor, a recreational tender leaving the marina slipped through a narrow waterway between McDaniels’ fishing boat and a moored yacht. McDaniels had to maneuver around the tender to ensure a safe passing.
“Can’t they tell I’m working?” McDaniels asked, disapprovingly.
It was another example of the parade of visitors that hits MDI every summer. In places like Mount Desert — a summer hotspot for multi-million dollar yachts, many of whose owners stay in exclusive mansions in the villages of Northeast and Seal Harbor— locals and seasonal residents may depend on each other for certain things, but don’t always see eye-to-eye.
In 2024, a group of wealthy summer residents unsuccessfully opposed a workforce housing proposal near their homes in Northeast Harbor, even though local officials fully supported the plan. Before that, in 2006, another group of seasonal residents asked the town to ban or restrict construction during the summer months, saying it was too noisy.
“I don’t think there’s any malice here,” then-Selectman Patrick Smallidge said at the time, just before the board unanimously rejected the idea. “I think there’s an ignorance about the working class.”
Such tensions extend beyond Northeast Harbor and people who work on the water. In 2024, three hikers angered locals residents and nature lovers after they violated a trail closure order meant to protect nesting peregrine falcons in Acadia. The adult peregrine falcons were particularly agitated that year, likely due to human disturbances, a park official said at the time.
Two years prior to then, a tourist’s Ford Bronco was stuck for days in mud flats off Bar Island after a rising tide flooded the vehicle. The Bronco’s fluids polluted the ocean during the days it was submerged, which also drew local criticism.
Occasional friction between tourists and locals also crops up elsewhere in Maine. In the early 2000s, officials created a brochure for newcomers interested in buying property in Jonesport and Beals, two Downeast fishing communities.
The brochure was intended to inform potential wealthy homebuyers, many of whom were enticed by the region’s romantic waterfront, of the realities that come with living by the ocean, including the early morning sounds from loud lobster boat engines starting at 4 a.m.,and the intrusive smell of fish waste that’s stocked for bait. It also described community norms, like ignoring parking signs or stopping in the middle of the road for a brief chat.
The brochure, produced in 2004, may have helped but hasn’t been a cure-all in Jonesport. In 2022 a group of wealthy summer residents on nearby Roque Island organized to oppose a proposed local $110 million fish farm, which ultimately was approved but has yet to be built, angering local officials and residents eager for the economic benefits and jobs that would come with it.