According to the reading material, the “harbor gang” is a cluster of fisherman who claim and defend their fishing territories, and that reminds me of the fisherman culture in my mother’s hometown, a tiny fishing village in China. People living in the villages in that area have been living on fishing for centuries, and each village occupies a certain fishing area. Though there are no government regulations to protect the breeding stock, the fisherman cluster, or “community”, developed several unwritten rules (according to my grandparents), for example, the fishing net mesh should not be smaller than a certain size, and fishermen should not go fishing during the spawning period. Unwritten rules like these, I believe, resemble those Maine laws to protect undersized lobsters and egg-bearing lobsters.
However, when advancing transportation boost the time-space compression between these tiny villages and the main cities, increasing numbers of people in the younger generations went to seek better working opportunities, and those who did not want to abandon the traditional means of subsistence began hiring people from outside to help out during the fishing season. These immigrant workers had no idea about the old rules, they used fishing net with tiny meshes, leaving no fish behind, paying no attention to their sizes. They began fighting other fishermen from nearby villages for larger fishing territories. All the old rules were ruined because of the destruction of the stability of a long-standing community.
The point I want to make is that the social obligations, which are unwritten but being taken by everyone, is closely related to a long-existing culture. Once the culture itself is gone, the tacit agreement no longer exists. That’s why I believe that the unique culture of Maine lobstermen is the result of the existence of the cluster, or the “gang”.