Organizing the Coast: Information and Misinformation during the Maine Lobstermen's Tie-up of 1989

This paper describes an attempt by Maine lobstermen to organize a tie-up to protest low prices during August of 1989. The mustering of widespread support for the tie-up required overcoming several obstacles. These included the social isolation of the Maine coast's scattered fishing villages, the lobstermen's traditional values of independence and egalitarianism, the competition resulting from the exploitation of a common property resource, and a divergence of interests between lobstermen. These obstacles contributed to contradictions and ambiguities in the flow of information during the tie-up. While these distortions caused numerous problems for the organizers of the tie-up, there were also instances where misinformation was beneficial to organizational efforts. This complicated role of information and misinformation is discussed.