Even though they snagged their husbands years ago, wives Katie Crowell, of Gloucester, and Rockporters Barbara Silva and Marilyn Halmen still stand by their men at sea as sternmen — or sternwomen — on their lobster boats.

These ladies, members of a minority female workforce on commercial fishing boats in the northeast, quicken and ease their husbands' job of catching the lobsters on the bottom and getting them to the market.