Is there a doctor on the boat?

• Author: Morgan, Bruce
• Position: SEASIDE LIVING

WHEN YOU MEET Jon Rogers, the 57-year-old Maine lobsterman looks to be in great shape. He is sturdily built, with a weathered, ruddy complexion, and he carries a welcoming brightness in his light blue eyes, but he is living in a world of hurt. Where exactly does Rogers feel the pain? "Knees, hips, back, shoulders," he answers with a smile. "Basically all the working parts."

Rogers has been lobstering for almost a half-century, since he first set out from a dock on Bailey Island with his grandfather at the age of 10. The strenuous work of pulling lobsters out of the ocean day after day has taken its toll. Rogers is typical of a special breed of men--and they are almost all men. He is the average age of a Maine lobsterman. These individuals carry a host of hidden scars. Apart from the inevitable accrued damage to muscles, joints, and bones, they tend to have high blood pressure and high cholesterol, widespread hearing loss, and recurrent melanomas.

In countless ways, they bear this all alone. It makes sense, as those who take up this challenging job are stoic, independent-minded sorts in thrall to the flukes of the weather. Naturally, they do not much like sitting in a doctor's office, waiting for the expert to show.

As an initial step in conducting a first-ever health assessment of Maine lobstermen, Miranda Rodgers--Jon's daughter and a student in the Tufts University School of Medicine's Maine Track program--distributed 444 surveys to them in paper and electronic form. The response of 64 completed surveys, while small in number, was suggestive. Some 35% of respondents had no health insurance; 28% had experienced a serious job-related injury; and 49% reported having had to reschedule doctor appointments in the past year. Sixty-eight percent claimed an annual income below $61,000.

All these undercurrents met at Maine's annual four-day commercial fishing conference, held at a big hotel on a scenic spit of land in mid-coast Rockland, where several thousand lobstermen mingled, surveyed nautical exhibits, and attended talks. (There are about 7,300 commercial fishermen in the state, and roughly 80% of them are lobstermen.) Miranda occupied a small table in a row of tables, promoting her health outreach amid all the competing claims for attention. Rope? Propeller? Health care?

Jan Burson, a retired nursing professor from the University of Southern Maine, has run a health clinic here at the conference for many years. In a room just off a main...