Kids Learn About Lobsters on a Lobster Boat Cruise

No trip to the Maine coast is complete without lobsters, but on a lobster boat tour out of Portland, your family can get up close and personal with them and even help haul them in from the sea.

The trip with Lucky Catch Lobster Tours is great for young children (who love to squeal and giggle at the awkward creatures) and older ones who will love donning rubber aprons and thick gloves to hold and measure them as they emerge from the traps. Along with all this activity is a lot of fascinating information on the life cycle and other mysteries of the homarus americanus. Older kids will be especially interested in the ecology of the bay and the work of the Maine lobstermen to protect the bay and its inhabitants.

But there is more than that to the tour. Few know the life cycle of the lobster and the fact that it takes many years for a lobster to reach table size. An integral part of the tour is an anatomy lesson of the lobster, while the subject, fresh from the trap, flaps its tail indignantly.

Lucky Catch Boat Tours with Portland Head Light. Photo: Stillman Rogers

Lucky Catch is a real working lobster boat, one of the hundreds of small boats on the Maine coast that set out daily to tend their traps. But this is a lonely industry, a place where tourists seldom get to find out how these delectable crustaceans are born, grow and are plucked from the sea to the dinner table.

The tour is an exciting introduction to the lives of the lobster and the people who bring them to the table. The trip includes a hands-on look at the design of the traps and the baffles used to keep the lobsters inside. Visitors watch — and help — as traps are hauled from the water, the lobsters extracted and measured, and the trap re-baited and lowered back into the sea.

Adding extra interest to the trip is the boats travel out into beautiful Portland Harbor and participants are welcomed to a stereoscopic view of the city spread out over the low hillsides around the bay. Although it has a few tall buildings, Portland generally stays under five–six stories with most of its buildings under five. The view from the harbor is in human scale. Tall church spires stand out, as does the Portland Observatory. The Observatory dates from the 19th century, when it identified returning ships when they were still hours away from the docks.

As the lobster boat ventures further out, look for the ferries chugging across the bay and look particularly for Fort Gorges, a heavy granite fort that seems to float on the water at high tide. If weather permits, passengers get to see the iconic Portland Head Light from the sea side, a view seldom seen by tourists.

Lucky Catch Lobster Tours offers lobster tours twice a day from Memorial Day through Columbus Day, but because Maine law prohibits pulling lobster traps on Saturdays after 4 p.m. through Sundays during the months of June, July and August, lobster tours are not available during those times. But they do have other tours available, including seal-watching.

A convenient place for families to stay in Portland is the beautiful Portland Harbor Hotel, on Fore Street, a block from the waterfront, surrounded by shops and restaurants and within walking distance of Portland’s other main attractions. Lucky Catch Lobster Tours is only a few steps from the door.