About The Atwood Lobster Company

Atwood Links: The Great Crate Race Maine Lobster Festival

Bill Atwood with a Maine Sea Goddess, 1967.

A Third Generation Maine Lobster Company

Maine is the leading lobster producer in the United States. With its cold waters and abundant supply of lobster, Maine is the definitive source for this mouth-watering delicacy.

Bill Atwood is the grandson of a lobster fisherman. When asked why he chose to join the lobster fishing profession himself, he says with a smile, "I was born into it - as my father was."

In 1920, Bill's grandfather, a lobster fisherman in Nova Scotia, moved his family to Boston where Bill's father soon started a wholesale lobster business on Atlantic Avenue. In the early 1940s, 10-year-old Bill Atwood played around the lobster plant watching his father's employees pack all the lobsters in wooden barrels. In those days they had 100 lobster tanks made from wood.

The Atwood family's lobster business survived the Depression and World War II, continuing to thrive up until 1950, when a devastating fire burned the entire business down flat. At that point, the Atwood family made the decision to move up to Maine to be "closer to the source."

Bill Atwood worked part-time in his father's business while attending high school. He took part in every aspect of the business from lobster fishing, packing, even driving the delivery trucks. After graduating from high school and college and finishing a stint in the Marine Corps, Bill Atwood ventured out on his own in 1962 and launched the Atwood Lobster Company. Back in those days, Bill bought from seven boats and paid local lobster fishermen 40 cents a pound. In that first year, the company sold 120,000 pounds of lobster.

The Atwood Lobster Company first set up at this site on Spruce Head Island, just minutes from their current location, back in 1962

Atwood Lobster from the air

Some of the Atwood Lobster Company's clientele include The Grand Central Oyster Bar in New York (loyal customers for nearly 28 years) and Red Lobster restaurants across the United States (nearly 300,000 pounds were shipped in one month). In addition, a host of smaller

Bill Atwood out hauling

restaurants and many of the grocery chains in the country have come to depend upon the reliability and quality of the Atwood Lobster Company. Bill Atwood also fills the overseas demand for lobster, shipping lobsters via airplane to France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Belgium and Switzerland.

After a day in the office, Bill takes to the water around 4 or 5pm to go lobstering for fun. Wearing hip waders, he hand-hauls each trap to relax. "I'm getting ready for retirement," he jokes. In any weather, whether it's thick fog, rain, wind or beautiful sunny afternoons, Bill enjoys being on the water and close to the elements of nature. He loves the challenge of finding lobsters and discovering what he'll haul up in his trap. The most unusual catch: one afternoon Bill pulled up a lobster with cotton gardening gloves pulled over each claw - the practical joke of another lobster fisherman!