schools gathered at The Grand theater in Ellsworth to make their final presentations on the theme of sustainable ocean systems. In the audience were dozens of teachers, family members, and friends. The students clustered at the edge of the stage, laughing nervously and adjusting clothes. One young man from Deer Isle, now a junior, who had been in the program since his freshman year, got ready to speak as West watched from his seat in the darkened theater. The student gave a 10-minute presentation on his innovative redesign of a shrimp trawl. Traditional shrimp trawls drag across the bottom, tearing up the seafloor as they move. Using principles of hydrodynamics, this student had come up with a way to make the trawl fly just above the bottom in order to keep impacts to a minimum. “It was amazing to hear him,” West said. “When he began the program he was terrified to speak, incredibly nervous. This year he spoke without a script, just notes, and he was so engaging, so confident.” At the beginning of each school year, the schools participating in the Skippers Program (Deer Isle-Stonington, George Stevens Academy, Ellsworth, JonesportBeals, Mount Desert Island, Narraguagus, North Haven, and Vinalhaven High Schools) are given a topic related to the ocean. Students in the program decide how to tackle that topic. During the program’s first year in 2013-2014, the topic was the viability of an inshore winter flounder fishery. Currently lobster is the dominant fishery along the coast of Maine, an uncomfortable economic position to be in for the small fishing communities in downeast Maine. Could local fishermen develop a winter flounder fishery in order to diversify their income? To answer that question the students studied the life history and biology of winter flounder. They researched how to apply for a special fishing license from the Department of Marine Resources, designed a trap specifically for winter flounder, and collected relevant data on the trap and its bycatch. The students spoke about their project at the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum and then
Opposite page: Narraguagus High School student Betsey Brown was invited to the Slow Food Conference in Italy last May to talk about the Eastern Maine Skippers Program. She is shown here (middle) with Christina Fifield and Paul Molyneaux (left), staff at the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries in Stonington, and French plankton expert Pierre Mollo (far right). Top: A Skippers Program student from Mt. Desert Island dissects an oyster during a workshop at the Darling Marine Center in Walpole. Bottom: Seaweed harvesting is a sustainable industry in Maine and provides year-round employment on the coast. Shown here, Skippers Program students from Jonesport-Beals Island High School learn about rockweed botany.
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