Women In Fisheries: Chris Cash

When Christina “Chris” Cash, 53, first saw the advertisement in 2021 for a position at the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine she thought to herself, “This is it.” Three years later, after serving as assistant director of communication and outreach and later as interim director, Cash became the Institute’s third executive director in 2024.

Chris on the boat.

Cash grew up far from the coast, in the small western Maine town of Bridgton. Her family, however, had deep roots in Yarmouth and South Portland, ties that went back centuries. “My mother’s family settled in Maine in the 1600s, my father’s in the 1700s. They were fishermen, store owners, cattle owners. My great grandfather died in a seining accident off Harpswell,” she said.

Cash’s father, a Marine who went on to become a district superintendent for Central Maine Power, and her mother, once a surgical assistant, were both strong people, according to Cash. Neither attended college. “It was always expected that we would do well. We were the first generation [in the family] to go to college or trade school,” she said. “There were six kids and I was the baby. I was always full steam ahead. ‘Often wrong, never uncertain!’”

During her first year at the University of Maine at Orono she met Rich Shea, who would later become her husband. The two spent summers working on Monhegan Island, holding every position imaginable. After graduation in 1994 they lived on the island for the winter, during which Cash was sternman for lobsterman Zoe Zanadakis, who became known for her tenure on the T.V. show “Survivor.”

The couple next traveled across the U.S. looking, as Cash said, “for a place we might like better than Maine.” Finding none, they returned to Monhegan to live. During the following three years Cash worked lobstering, tuna fishing — whatever got her out to sea.

Eventually she and her husband began to think of doing something else. They both took professional jobs in Portland but “we hated it,” Cash said with a laugh. Instead, the couple began working for lobster buyer Sam Olsen, Rich on the wharf and Chris as a driver taking lobsters to Boston or Moncton, New Brunswick.

Later she took a position with the Island Institute in Rockland as the non-profit organization’s Island Fellows coordinator. Then she worked at the Lobster Conservancy in Friendship with lobster biologist Diane Cowan. But one day Cash said to herself, “I don’t think I ever be satisfied with my life if I don’t try to become a lobster boat captain.”

She became Monhegan lobsterman’s Robert Bracy’s sternman for two seasons, putting in the apprentice hours necessary to get her license, and gillnetting with him at other times. Bracy was also a pilot boat captain; Cash accompanied him on many trips as he maneuvered his lobster boat alongside ships entering Penobscot Bay to deliver or retrieve a pilot.

In 2006 Cash got her license and her own boat. That was the last year that the Monhegan lobster season began in December; in 2007 the season expanded to begin in October but lobstermen were limited to 300 traps each.

At the same time, she worked for the Institute for Broadening Participation, a non-profit organization funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation to help underrepresented students gain summer research experiences and graduate fellowships in STEM fields. “The Institute allowed remote work way back then. I was half-time and had health coverage,” Cash said. “I traveled during the off season and then went back to lobstering. I gave me a foot in the professional world.”

In spring, 2012, Cash was gaffing a buoy when something went terribly wrong in her wrist. “I blew my wrist out. And I ignored it. But it got worse,” she said. By winter the pain was so great she made an appointment with a doctor. “He said I’d have to have surgery but even then I wouldn’t get much use out of the wrist,” she said. The injury put an end to her commercial lobstering career.

She and her husband and young daughter left Monhegan and found a home in Damariscotta. Cash continued to work for the Institute for Broadening Participation, then later took development positions with the Frances Perkins Center in Damariscotta and Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay.

In 2021 she saw the advertisement for assistant director of communication and outreach at The Lobster Institute. To Cash, an outgoing person by nature with a wealth of on-the-water experience in the lobstering world, it seemed a perfect fit. “Working in a non-profit and knowing the industry just came together. I could do outreach and work with people, which I love,” she said.

She is based at the University of Maine’s Darling Center in Walpole. The Lobster Institute is involved in an array of projects, from the Lobster Data Trust with the Maine Lobstermen’s Association to the American Lobster Settlement Index, a region-wide juvenile lobster monitoring program. One of the Institute’s better-known initiatives is the U.S.-Canada Lobster Town Meeting, which takes place in each country in alternative years and brings together U.S. and Canadian lobstermen, scientists and managers in a collegial two-day event.

“We are also in the last year of a major National Science Foundation funded multi-institution project, Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) Lobster Network, managed by my colleague, Chris Brehme. The project connects Arctic change with lobster population dynamics and socio-economic impacts in the Gulf of Maine,” Cash said.

At the moment what really makes Cash happy is the fact that the Institute now owns its own lobster boat. The wooden 32-foot F/V Poozie was built by Basil Bray in 1949 for Skeet MacDonald and lobstered from Isle au Haut for decades. Most recently the vessel was owned by John DeWitt.

“We have a demonstration license and 20 traps,” said Cash. “I want to use the boat as an education platform, to show how much goes into lobstering. Lobstermen are some of the smartest people I know. There is so much that goes into it — the environmental stewardship, the technology, the reliance on waterfront access, as well as all the positive impacts lobstering creates for Maine’s communities.”