“One thing I like about being a girl out here is that they can’t pay me less than a guy,” Sadie Samuels shouted over the grinding sound of her lobster boat’s mechanical pulley as it hoisted a trap up from the bottom of the ocean. Samuels switched the pulley off and yanked the trap onto the side of her boat before lifting the lobsters out of their wire cage. Some hung on to the mesh with their pincers.

“They just can’t,” the 23-year-old continued at a normal volume. “There’s a price per pound, and fuel costs the same whether you’re a guy or a girl. Any other job, they’d pay what—73 cents to a man’s dollar, statistics say?”

Samuels, whose long, blonde braids poked out from under her turquoise baseball hat and framed her freckled face, turned back to the steering wheel of her boat, which is christened Must Be Nice. Her sternman Zach Buckley finished transferring the lobsters from the trap to a table, where they awaited the rubber bands he’d soon strap around their strong claws. Some raised their tails and clacked their crushers, poised in fighting position like karate masters.

Read the full story at Boston.com >>

Read more about lobster fishing >>