By Jim Hartley
Over the past decade and a half I’ve operated a fish market, I’ve come to observe something that no amount of therapy or meditation could teach me: there’s profound joy and healing in a family meal built around the ocean’s bounty.
Every day, I watch tourists and locals alike walk through my doors, shoulders hunched from the weight of whatever troubles they carry. They’re preoccupied with bills, health worries, work deadlines, world events and the endless doom scrolling that characterizes modern life. But something magical happens when they leave with live lobster or a pound of haddock, salmon or scallops. I see it in their eyes—a small spark of anticipation.
Last month, a customer came in looking absolutely exhausted. Her face told the story of fatigue and mounting anxiety. She bought two lobsters and some steamers, mentioning she hadn’t cooked them in years. A week later, she returned and asked for the same. She told me her family had gathered around the dinner table that night—truly gathered, without phones—and talked for hours. The kids actually laughed. She’d forgotten what her teenagers’ laughs sounded like.
That’s what I witness daily from behind this counter. People don’t just come here for dinner ingredients; they come seeking something uplifting. Seafood makes people happy because it’s special, it’s a treat. To them, an opportunity to connect by disconnecting.
There’s something irreplaceable about the ritual of a seafood meal. The communal cracking of lobster shells and sharing of drawn butter, the incomparable taste of haddock that was swimming in the Gulf of Maine just days before—these aren’t mere gastronomic experiences. They’re acts of rebellion against a world that constantly demands we move faster, worry more, accomplish more. They’re deliberately slow moments in an aggressively fast culture.
Our local seafood connects us to something real and tangible. It comes from the water our ancestors fished for generations. There’s continuity in that. When a family sits down to eat clams and haddock together, they’re participating in a tradition as old as Maine itself. In our fractured modern world, that matters.
I’ve noticed something else: people who cook with local seafood talk differently about their meals. There’s pride in sourcing it fresh, gratitude in preparing it, and joy in sharing it. The stress doesn’t disappear—life’s still complicated—but it becomes manageable. It shrinks to its proper size when you’re sitting across from someone you love, eating something that tastes of salt and sea and home.
Every lobster we sell, every haddock fillet we wrap up, carries with it the possibility of healing. An overstatement? I don’t think so. In retrospect, I see I’ve built my life’s work on the foundation that good food, shared with people you care about, is one of the most reliable antidotes to modern despair. And honestly, I wouldn’t trade this perspective for anything in the world. Enjoy, and eat slow.
Jim Hartley is a Scarborough resident and owner of Pine Tree Seafood and Dunstan Smokehouse.
Top photo by Negley Stockman.
