Lobsters were so plentiful that Native Americans used them for fertilizer and colonial families thought of them as "poverty food." Until the early 1800s, lobsters were gathered by hand along the shoreline. Lobstering traps came into existence in Maine around 1850. Today, Maine is the largest lobster-producing state. The number of lobstermen has tripled in the last 100 years, though the quantity of lobsters harvested per year has remained relatively steady, at close to 40 million pounds.