Influencer From New York City Attempts to Re-Wild Some Lobsters in Maine

By Molly Osberg | July 1, 2020 | 8:15pm

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Influencer From New York City Attempts to Re-Wild Some Lobsters in Maine

Welcome back to Maineweek Madness, a column where Jezebel intermittently checks in on the Pine Tree State. This week, we’re thrilled to discover that Katie Sturino, an Instagram influencer and purveyor of various anti-chafing serums, absconded to Maine from her home in New York city months ago and is definitely, absolutely, thinking about making the state her permanent residence following an unfortunate incident involving some lobsters and what sounds like some unwelcome attention online.

In a story in the Bangor Daily News, the founder of Megababe said she has been living in a rental property outside of Camden since the pandemic hit New York City, telling the paper she’d been vacationing in the state since her early 20s: “I love it here so much. I love the nature, I love the opportunity to really connect with a whole different side of life in a different way outside the city than you can when you go to the Hamptons or in the Tri-State area,” she said, a sentiment in evidence on both her Instagram page and the Instagram page for her dogs, both of which prominently feature their protagonists posed up against seaside rocks wearing vaguely nautical looks.

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In the interview, Sturino chronicles the agony of being one of the many people who abandoned Manhattan for fresher, less disease-ridden locales in the weeks when covid-19 cases in the city started to climb, telling the outlet it was difficult to find an AirBnb to rent and that she and her husband considered putting a sign in their car window to prevent locals from targeting their vehicle based on its New York State plates. (On what that sign might have possibly said, however, Sturino didn’t elaborate.)

Sturino has also developed, it appears, something of an affection for lobsters. “We’ve made so many lobster friends here,” she said, an apparent allusion to the people who sell her the crustaceans and have not yet found it necessary to smash in her windows. One night in May, Sturino recounted, she accidentally purchased five lobsters despite the fact that her husband isn’t particularly fond of seafood; finding herself overburdened, she “released” most of them back into the ocean, streaming the re-wilding experience to her half-a-million followers. “I could feel I had done something not very Maine,” Sturino told the reporter, noting she found herself buried in angry DMs.

According to Spencer Greenwood, director of the Lobster Science Center at Atlantic Veterinary College in Prince Edward Island, store-bought lobsters will likely die if they’re not carefully re-acclimated to ocean waters. [Bangor Daily News]

Jezebel congratulates Paul LePage, another recent Maine transplant, on his new position as head of the Maine Seafood Trade Task Force. Anyway, here is the president sitting between a boat and some lobster traps:

Mainers have been besieged by pests and fungi of all sorts over the last weeks: The knotty black tree fungus struck a grove of cherries, forcing city officials to put 12 trees out of their misery. The browntail moth caterpillars—little monsters with poisonous hairs—are emboldened by recent drought conditions. New research suggests the overzealous foraging of fiddlehead ferns could eventually lead to a significant decline in the local delicacy’s availability.

This week in Fuck Susan Collins: Collins, who previously indicated she believed Justice Brett Kavanaugh saw Roe v. Wade as “settled law,” has discovered with the judge’s dissent on a major abortion ruling that Kavanaugh is perhaps not as pro-abortion as she pretended to believe. This is causing some issues for the senator, who, as we noted previously, is second only to Mitch McConnell in how universally disliked she is.

In a statement, Collins’s office said anyone questioning Collins’s support of Kavanaugh was “reading too much into this specific decision.” [Bangor Daily News]

A young couple in Carthage bought a $100,000 winning lottery ticket while waiting for sandwiches at Bradbury’s Market & Diner, money they say they will improbably spend on reasonable things like tuition and building an addition on their house. “We already had most of the toys we wanted anyway,” said Lexy Duguay, 22. “We have a couple dirt bikes. He has a snowmobile. We have enough toys to keep us plenty busy for now.” [Lewiston Sun-Journal]

This week in bad tweets:

4,000 members of a Bath Iron Works union have been on strike for two weeks over contract negotiations. Starting today, the shipbuilders have lost their health insurance as communication between the company and the union hobbles along. [WGME]
The Maine Millennial imagines a summer without the Sea Dogs. [Portland Press Herald]
The Edmundston City Council has passed a resolution to fine anyone seen feeding the local white-tailed deer. “We find it a bit sad to have to get to this point,” the mayor said. [WAGM]
The Common Ground County Fair will, somehow, be moving online. [MOFGA]
Police officers have been booted from Portland public schools. [Bangor Daily News]
A Maine man drove across the country in less than 26 hours, beating his previous record. [News Center Maine]

A previous version of this blog misspelled the name of a very good newspaper in Maine. Jezebel apologizes for the error.