The daughter of a lobster fisherman from Maine describes herself as being “born into it.”
Sadie Samuels left the Pine Tree State and headed to college across the country in California, but she kept fishing during the summers to pay for her tuition. After graduation in 2013, she began fishing full-time – and has never looked back.
Samuels, 32, opened her restaurant, Must Be Nice Lobster – which has the same name as her boat, F/V Must Be Nice – in a permanent indoor location in 2022.
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Previously, she sold lobster rolls at a farmers market, then on a food cart, then from a food truck and, finally, at a brick-and-mortar location in Belfast, Maine.
Samuels fishes off the coast of Maine, where she catches North Atlantic lobsters. These are different from “spiny” or “rock” lobsters, which are found in the warmer, more southern parts of the Atlantic Ocean.
There’s an easy way to tell the difference, Samuels told Fox News Digital: claws.
“We have the claws on our lobsters, and, honestly, that’s where some of the best meat is on the lobster.”
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The colder water off the coast of Maine and New England leads to a sweeter-tasting lobster, Samuels said.
“Our water’s a lot colder. And I truly think that anything in a shell and the colder the water tastes sweeter because they produce more glucose, but it just tastes sweeter. So it’s better.”
By the time Samuels was 16 — an age when most girls her age were getting their driver’s licenses — she had already been a licensed commercial lobster fisherman for two years with her own boat.
“I just was always on the boat with [my father] as a kid, and then just kind of naturally wanted to do it,” she said.
At just 7 years old, Samuels got her student license. At 14, she got a commercial license – then set out on her own.
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“My dad kind of kicked me off his boat because you can only fish 800 traps on a boat,” she said. “So the more I wanted to fish, the less he could fish if I still fished on his boat.”
“[My father] finally was like, ‘All right, obviously you’re interested in this. Go buy a boat,'” she recalled. “So that’s pretty much how that happened.”
While lobsters are not considered endangered, there are constant concerns about over-fishing and population collapse of the species.
As a result, lobstering in Maine is “one of the most sustainable industries – fisheries – on the planet,” Samuels said.
“We throw back way more lobsters than we keep in a day,” she said. “It’s highly regulated.”
Every lobster she catches has to be measured using a gauge. Lobsters that are smaller than the gauge have to be thrown back – and so do the ones that are bigger than the gauge.
The sex of the lobster matters as well, especially if the female lobsters have eggs showing.
“If the lobster is a female and it has eggs on it, and the second-to-right flipper on the tail is not notched, then you have to notch it so that the next person who catches it, even if she doesn’t have the eggs on her belly anymore, will know that she’s a ‘proven breeder’ and she has to go back,” Samuels said.
“So even if you pull a lobster, a female lobster that has no eggs on her, but she has a mutilated flipper, then you legally cannot keep that lobster,” she continued.
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Keeping these breeding lobsters in the water – and out of kitchens – ensures that the lobster population can survive into the future.
“That’s why we’ve had such a good, strong industry for so many years,” she said.
As for the process of cooking and eating a lobster, Samuels has her preferences.
On a roll.
“My favorite way to eat a lobster is the classic lobster roll. I think it’s just perfect – a nice, buttery, toasted bun, light mayo. Tons of lobster,” she said.
Plus, “then you don’t have to deal with the shell part, which, you know — I deal with them all day, hurting me.”
And while some people may feel squeamish about boiling a lobster alive or killing a live lobster, Samuels believes from experience that lobsters do not feel pain the same way humans do.
“Their brain is about the size of a pea,” she said. “And I think if they felt pain like humans did, they wouldn’t eat each other – and they do.”
Lobsters, she said, do not discriminate when it comes to their food.
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“When you pull up a trap, often you have to be really quick to get them out because – especially if there’s a big, hard-shell female and she’s got eggs on her – she is eating everyone [and] she is going after everyone,” she said.
Lobsters also have an ability to break off and regenerate their limbs.
“It’s one of the coolest things ever,” she said. “You often will catch a lobster that has a big full claw and then this little tiny jelly claw that’s growing back. They’re fascinating.”
But what Samuels likes most of all about lobstering is the freedom it awards her.
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“I really like being my own boss. And I like that it’s an industry where you can kind of put in as much as you want – you get what you put in,” she said.
“So you can work all the time and put everything into it, or you could just kind of go part-time and still enjoy it.”
“And you have the best office in the entire world.”
