ROCKLAND (NEWS CENTER Maine) — There are happy and hungry people in Rockland this week-- lots of them. The annual Maine Lobster Festival began …and once again its expected to bring big crowds to have a lobster feed on the edge of Penobscot Bay.
The festival is all about taste and tradition.
The taste, clearly, is lobster. Just ask Donna, a tourist from Virginia, making her second trip to the Festival:
“My husband and I came here five years ago had a wonderful time. And I’m a lobster friend, absolutely a lobster fiend.”
Festival president Cynthia Powell said that last year the festival consumer 21,000 pounds of lobster and lobster meat, and that included one rainy day. Powell said they’re hoping to sell even more this year.
The tradition is what keeps local people returning and volunteering at the Lobster Festival year after year. Powell herself began volunteering as a child. She said that when she moved back to the Rockland area a dozen years ago she again got involved with the Festival.
“It's about coming down and seeing everyone you know, it's about supporting the community and so many volunteers,” she said.
This year’s Festival began, as always, with the arrival of King Neptune and his entourage. Wednesday night is the annual coronation of the new Sea Goddess, escorted by Navy sailors and Coast Guardsmen from the Rockland station. Saturday is a big parade All those things, combined with a range of entertainment, make the festival an event local people celebrate for reasons far beyond the crustaceans.
But lobster, which is the dominant industry on the Maine coast (along with tourism) is the real identity of the Festival, as it has been for 71 years. And that’s why Donna’s brother George came from New York, the family renting a local cottage to stay and feast on lobster.
“Fantastic,“ said George, making his way through what looked like his second lobster at lunchtime. “Very good.”