Maine House Minority Leader (and Lobsterman) Lands a Lobster as Big as a Child

When you’ve been hauling traps off the Maine coast your whole life, you think you’ve seen it all—until a lobster the size of a toddler crawls up to say hello. Maine lobsterman and House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham had the catch of a lifetime this week and made sure it lived to see another day.

In a reel posted to his public Facebook page, Faulkingham pulled a giant lobster from one of his traps—an estimated 17 to 18 pounds, and believed to be at least 100 years old. Wide-eyed and nearly speechless, the lawmaker marveled at the massive crustacean, calling it “as big as a child” and “an absolute giant.”

The footage captures Faulkingham holding up the lobster with both hands, its claws stretching wider than most dinner plates. Nearby sat another hefty lobster weighing around 12 pounds, which suddenly looked like a “baby” in comparison.

“This thing is a dinosaur,” Faulkingham said in the video. “I mean—I just can’t believe how big that lobster is. I hope the video and pictures do it justice, because I’m speechless.”

Despite the excitement, the ending was a gentle one. The lawmaker made it clear the enormous lobster wasn’t headed for anyone’s dinner plate. After admiring the rare find, he and his crew released the century-old crustacean back into the Atlantic.

The giant lobster capped off a day in which Faulkingham said his crew had been catching “these things all day.” It was found in the final two traps of the outing—a fitting grand finale to an already memorable day on the water.

For lobstermen in Maine, big hauls are part of the job, but few can claim to have pulled a living relic from the deep that may have been crawling along the ocean floor since before World War I. And in true Downeast fashion, Faulkingham gave it back to the sea.