Maine Madness

Swimming in a sea of Shrimp

By Jill Strauss

PANDALUS BOREALIS: hauling in the good stuff.

My mother, a staunch New Yorker who thought I lost my mind when I moved to Maine fifteen years ago, recently invited me to escape to Florida for a brief vacation. “I can’t leave now,” I said impatiently. It’s Maine shrimp season.”

“It’s what? ”

“I’ll see you next month during shad roe season,” I said, trying to comfort her. “I hate shad roe.”

My mother has never tasted fresh Maine shrimp so she does not understand my passion, but I’m sure if she had just one bite of the beautiful Pandalus borealis, she would head straight to Portland.

Pandalus borealis, otherwise known as northern shrimp, are ardently pursued in Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Aleutians and Japan. In Maine, their southernmost habitat, the waters are relatively warm so the shrimp tend to grow faster and larger. Still, it is a small shrimp measuring less than five inches, and usually only half of that is the part that is eaten.

I can’t say that I have eaten this delicate sea creature every day it has been available to me, but I’ve come close. My friends have begun to call me “Bubba” because like Forest Gump’s pal, I seem to find a way to sneak the subject of shrimp into almost all of my conversations. “Are you aware that shrimp seasons and catches have been reduced in recent years because of scientific evidence that the shrimp population is shrinking?” I asked one friend. “Does it matter to you that last year fishermen were catching 1000 pounds in an hour and this year it’s taking them all day to catch the same amount?” I demanded to know of another. Their shrugs of indifference shocked me so that I vowed to associate (at least until April 30, the official end of Maine shrimp season) only with shrimp aficionados. This has narrowed my social engagements somewhat on the one hand, but on the other, it has opened the door to new acquaintances and even a few soul mates.

Take Hank Soule, a Barbara Stevenson seller representative for the Portland Fish Exchange, for example. Most of Soule’s life has been spent in the water or on the waterfront. That’s why his true-life tales of the sea are almost as exciting as Chuck Noland’s (No, Soule was never a castaway floating helplessly out to sea on a crudely crafted raft, but he was a professional fisherman who actually saw a humpback whale jump out of the water and do a circle around his boat). And his knowledge of Pandalus borealis seems endless. He can tell you what the average price of whole shrimp-per-pound sold for at the auction last year (82 cents), where to go to get premium quality trapped — unprocessed — shrimp (Harbor Fish Market at 9 Custom House Wharf), and how to make the best scampi in the world (Sauté fresh Maine shrimp in a pan with garlic and parsley and serve over linguini).

“It’s a wonderful business and a terrible business. It’s dirty and the hours are long,” says Soule of life as a shrimper, one February evening in his office at the Portland Fish Pier, hours before the scheduled shrimp auction. “Sometimes you have to put up with 20 to 30 knot winds and the wind chill is a big deterrent: it will freeze the shrimp, but,” he says with a gleam in his eye, “it’s the unpredictability that makes it so exciting.”

The next night the wind is still. “Maybe the shrimpers are feeling lucky,” I think as I walk past Hank’s office and head over to Pier two where Craig Mifflin, the skipper of the Megan Christine, is offloading his catch.

“Twelve totes come to 1,030 pounds,” the clerk shouts to the captain once the weighing of the wiggling scuttlers is done.

“Is it true that last year shrimpers were catching that much in an hour?” I ask Captain Mifflin as he stops to light a cigarette.

“Last year any idiot could fill his boat towing in mud. This year you have to tow in the rocks, and the rocks are as big as Volkswagens.”

“Volkswagens?”

“That’s why this shrimp season has put a hurting on a lot of guys because they don’t want to put the time in, but if you’re willing to crash and bang, you can get the good stuff.”

At Sea Fresh USA, Inc., a processing plant across from Soule’s office, 30 immigrant workers are peeling piles of the good stuff at lightning speed when I visit the next day. Their fingers move so quickly I cannot explain their technique. I only know that the crustaceans seem to be flying out of their shells into waiting colanders.

“They look good enough to eat,” I think, feeling a wave of hunger well up inside of me. It’s 3:30, still plenty of time to take Soule’s suggestion and go to Harbor Fish Market. Maybe some freshly trapped shrimp is available. I am now inspired to separate the meat from the shells. There is only the question of how to prepare them. I could boil them or broil them, sauté them in butter, fry them in oil or even eat them raw. I could serve them in a salad, save the shells for stock, or maybe I could make a stock and start a bisque. Oh, Bubba, I tell myself excitedly, the possibilities are truly endless.

Jill Strauss can be reached at straussj@adelphia.net.