It was another busy day for the crew of the Rest-Ashoar, a lobster fishing boat that works the waters off the rocky coast of Winter Harbor, Maine. The captain, Jacob Knowles, had gotten up at 3 a.m. on a brisk October morning and took his vessel 10 miles into the ocean.
Using a hydraulic hauler, buoys and ropes, Mr. Knowles, Keith Potter (the stern man) and Coty White (the third man) hauled up 400 wire traps over the next 10 hours. They pulled legal-size lobsters — at least 3.25 inches but not over 5 inches, from its eye to the back of its shell — from each baited cage and tossed back the smaller ones. As the boat listed in the rolling waves, they heaved the empty traps back overboard.
Even while doing the grueling work of commercial fishermen, the crew was engaged in another job: filming a video.
Over the past two years, Mr. Knowles, 30, has amassed a large audience on social media by sharing snippets of his workday with his 2.5 million followers on TikTok and nearly 400,000 followers on Instagram. Wearing an orange Grundens rubber fishing bib and a matching coat, he stands on the deck and, in a Down East accent, gives tutorials about, say, lobster reproductivity, or how to remove barnacles from the shells of crabs.
In September, the Rest-Ashoar added a fourth crew member: Griffin Buckwalter, 20, a videographer. On fishing trips, he often sits in the cabin, editing footage on a laptop.
