Monique Coombs Director of Community Programs at the Maine Coastal Fishermen’s Association, where she works in the watershed and leads fisheries initiatives. Jordan Rubin is a 2025 James Beard Foundation semifinalist for Best Chef of the Northeast, and was recently honored as one of Food & Wine’s 2025 Best New Chefs.
Maine talks a lot about our incredible seafood and restaurants, but we can talk about the people behind both. Fishermen harvest seafood from the Gulf of Maine and restaurant owners turn that food into nutrition, community and culture. Both are small business owners, and both work in low-income situations. Both quietly bring extraordinary mental and emotional stress that must be acknowledged if we want Maine’s food system to continue.
Fishing and restaurant work share more in common than most people realize. Neither comes with a fixed salary. Both depend on markets, labor availability and rising costs that are largely beyond individual control. A fisherman can do everything right and still lose money due to fuel prices, bait shortages and empty nets and nets. A restaurant owner can offer exceptional food and still struggle with rent increases, staff shortages or supply chains. In both cases, failure can feel deeply personal, even when the causes are structural.
Mental health challenges in these industries don’t always seem like a crisis. Often, they manifest as fatigue, depression, isolation and a feeling that there is no place to slow down. In fishing and restaurants, a day off is not always a relief. Sometimes it is a risk.
Missing a window of weather or meal service can result in falling behind on fuel, bait, rent or wages. This reality makes people work harder because stopping feels more dangerous than continuing.
And when work stops, when storms stop ships or kitchens shut down unexpectedly, the impact is never just a break. Money goes out even when no one comes in because debt and overhead don’t stop. What looks like a temporary distraction from the outside can be a financial disaster on the inside.
Fishermen are often described as tough and resilient. Restaurant owners are praised for their courage and agility. These explanations are not wrong, but they are incomplete. Rigidity does not make people immune to stress, and resilience does not mean unlimited capacity. When mental health support is not accessible, culturally relevant or normative, people suffer in silence. Sometimes they leave the industry altogether.
Access to good food, especially local, wild-caught seafood, is not guaranteed. When fishermen leave the industry, Maine loses more than the boats in the fleet. We are losing food security, local knowledge and generational livelihoods. When restaurants close, communities lose gathering places, economic anchors and one of the most direct connections between growers and diners.
Mental health is inseparable from access to food. This is fundamental to it.
Mental health support doesn’t just mean therapy offices and crisis contact lines, although those are important. This includes reducing barriers to care, normalizing conversations about stress and burnout, and creating systems that reflect the reality of these tasks. Peer support, industry-specific resources and trusted local organizations can make the difference between someone seeking help or suffering in silence.
We must honestly think about who is coming next. Maine’s fishing heritage and its independent restaurant culture do not stand alone. They need the next generation of young people to take the risk, learn the art and carry on these traditions. This will only happen if the carrier offers genuine support, accessible resources and enough customers who understand the value of what they are choosing to take the plunge.
When fire ripped through Custom House Wharf in Portland, it wasn’t just one building that burned. It was gear, income and stability for the fishermen who worked there. As a result, Mr. Tuna and the Maine Coastal Fishermen’s Association teamed up to do something remarkable: a joint T-shirt whose proceeds went directly to support affected fishermen.
It was a small action against a huge loss, but it was the right action, two parts of the same food system recognizing each other, showing up and doing what they could. This pattern is not charity or sympathy; It’s the connection and investment with the people that make Maine’s food culture what it is.
The most straightforward thing anyone can do is powerful: Eat at community-owned restaurants in your community and buy seafood caught close to home. Ask: Who owns this restaurant and where does the seafood come from? Choose places and products where your money goes to a person, not a company, where the owner is in the kitchen, and the fish was in the boat yesterday.
Maine fishermen and restaurant owners are not asking for a rescue. They ask to be seen, supported and adopted. This is something we can all do.
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