Tanner Lazaro, featured in the series “The Lobster Trap,” hauls up his traps in his boat, Used N Abused, in August 2021. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

The Press Herald’s 2021 collaboration with The Boston Globe on the pressures facing Maine’s lobster industry has been honored by the Society of Professional Journalists.

The yearlong project “The Lobster Trap” has won SPJ’s Sigma Delta Chi Award for environment/climate reporting.

Press Herald staff reporter Penelope Overton was the lead reporter on the series, spending nearly a year researching and reporting the story. She was joined by Globe reporters Jenna Russell and David Abel. Two photojournalists – Brianna Soukup of the Press Herald and Jessica Rinaldi of the Globe – photographed the story. The team immersed themselves in the lives of lobstermen on the island of Vinalhaven to understand their struggles as climate change and regulations designed to protect right whales threaten their way of life.