Floating in still waters in the harbors of Maine, the lobster cars stand sentinel in the quiet moments between twilight and the coming darkness. Their shapes and lines recalled the ice fishing houses of my childhood in Minnesota.

A lobster car is a mostly submerged, enclosed pen to hold lobsters in seawater. Commercial buyers will assemble the catch from numbers of individual fisherman in a car before shipping to market. Cars are constructed from wood and, these days, vinyl-coated wire mesh with some floatation from plastic foam or barrels.