50 ft Christmas tree made from lobster traps

What started out in the lobster-fishing port of Gloucester, Massachusetts 12 years ago has become a competition of sorts between Gloucester and the northeastern ports of Rockland, Maine and Beals, Maine where the lobster is king.

Rockland started making the Christmas trees from lobster traps 5 years after the initial Gloucester tree. The downtown tree in Gloucester is 30 ft high withseveral hundred traps and a 5-foot star made out of lobster trap wire.

Maine’s lobster capital, Rockland, will have a tree 38 feet tall with 152 traps made by a local company, more than 125 lobster buoys, 480 feet of garland and 3,000 white lights, topped with a 5-foot fiberglass lobster.

But this year a new player is in the game, and it is making the old-timers take notice. The small lobstering town of Beals, Maine has erected a lobster trap tree that stands a towering 50 feet.

And everyone has something to say about the unofficial competition. Albert Carver, a seafood distributor who helped spearhead Beals' upstart effort took a jab at the trees in Gloucester and Rockland saying, "They're nice beginner trees. I mean, they are a little small."

And then there is David Brooks. He oversees the Gloucester tree this year had this to say about the others; “Beals may have the tallest tree and Rockland may have the fanciest, but Gloucester's tree is truly a reflection of the city's working fishermen.”

See a video of last year’s lobster trap Christmas tree to the left.