The Working Waterfront - May 2022

News from Maine’s Island and Coastal Communities volume 36, № 3

published by the island institute

Charged winds blowing along East Coast

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n may 2022 n free circulation: 50,000

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BACK ON SHORE—

Wind energy project off Virginia largest in U.S.

By Frances Mize

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cheduled to begin construction in 2024, the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project launched by Dominion Energy is the largest of its kind in the country. A 2.6-gigawatt wind farm that will consist of 176 wind turbines, each standing at around 800-feet tall 27 miles off the Virginia coast, the project also includes three offshore substations that collect the energy, undersea cables to shuttle it to land, and new onshore transmission infrastructure.

Dominion, a private American power and energy company, has marketed the project as good for business, claiming that states that opt-in early to offshore wind will remain at the forefront of a growing and rapidly changing energy sector, attracting investment and propelling economic growth. The wind farm will create 1100 jobs once it is fully constructed.

The pair of wind turbines currently in operation

by Dominion on the site are the first installed in U.S. federal waters and are collectively displacing up to 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

Mike Grindle of Brooksville returns to Stonington Harbor in his skiff on Saturday, April 2. Grindle fishes for lobster offshore and was in the midst of setting his traps for the season. PHOTO: TOM GROENING

The project will likely be the first of many of its kind along the East Coast.

In October, the U.S. Department of Energy pledged to generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. At the same time, the Department of the Interior also proposed a lease sale for wind energy development off the shores of the Carolinas and demonstrated interest in development in the waters of Massachusetts and the Gulf of Mexico.

This investment in wind energy is baked into the DOE’s push to meet the Biden Administration’s goal of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035 and a netzero emission economy by 2050. It doesn’t come without complications.

A challenge for the offshore wind industry will be ensuring viable transmission, or the process by which electricity is transported from the generating site to continued on page 5

Roux Institute envisions Portland as tech hub Redevelopment of waterfront site would join education and business

By Stephen Rappaport

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ucked between the shore and I-295 at the mouth of Portland’s Back Cove, the B&M Baked Beans cannery, built in 1913, was a landmark for city residents, tourists, and

even mariners on Casco Bay, as well as the source of the aroma of cooking beans and molasses. For more than 60 years, the four-story factory’s 145-foot-tall brick chimney towered against the sky.

About six months ago, the chimney was deemed a safety hazard and taken

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down, the demolition of the iconic tower a first visual clue to the changes coming to the industrial site.

If all goes as planned, over the next five years or so, the Roux Institute of Northeastern University will build its new home at the site. The Institute touts itself as offering graduate education steeped in technology entrepreneurship and research. Among its focus areas are artificial intelligence, computer and data sciences, digital engineering, and advanced life sciences and medicine.

Its namesake and leader, David Roux, is a Lewiston native who made his mark with Lotus Software and Oracle.

“Partnerships with industry, academia, and government set our education and research model apart,” the organization notes on its website. Among its partners in Maine are: Bangor Savings and Camden National banks, L.L. Bean, Idexx, Wex, Maine Health, and Unum.

The center aims to “build expertise at the intersection of humans and

machines,” its site notes, aiming to create a tech corridor from Portland to Boston.

Roux’s initial foray into Portland began in late 2020 in offices on Fore Street, where Wex also is located. The permanent campus, at the site of the former B&M plant, is slated to open in 2024.

That project calls for as much as 250,000 square feet of classroom, office, and laboratory space, with room for some 1,750 students and 50 or so partner organizations.

Roux also hopes to build some 50,000 square feet of commercial business incubation space, 175-250 units of high-rise housing, and an additional 125,000 square feet of commercial space for retail and dining facilities and, ultimately, a hotel.

Within 20 years, 4,500 students with related faculty and staff could occupy 350,000 square feet of laboratory and classroom space, 500,000 square feet of office and laboratory space, continued on page 5

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The Working Waterfront . may 2022

CHARGING IN PROGRESS—

An electric vehicle charging station has been installed in a Rockland municipal parking lot.

PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Maine’s not-so-clean history on race KKK to Native genocide part of our heritage

By Tom Groening

And though politically left-leaning now, the state’s coastal and island communities are “some of the most arly in his presentation, Todd Little-Sebold insular and I would argue xenophobic in America. shows a photo of a Ku Klux Klan gathering Islands in particular, with their attention to people in 1926 that drew about 30,000. Mississippi? ‘from away,’ are a particularly interesting case of the dominant white culture of Maine,” he said. “Few Georgia? Nope. Portland, Maine.

The photo often prompts the question, “You mean communities in America so closely attend to who the Klan was active in progressive, hip Portland?” he really ‘belongs’ in a community.”

With just 3.3% of minority populations here, Maine said. “And the answer is yes.”

A closer examination of the photo shows what is the whitest state in the U.S. Which prompted Littleappear to be local chapters holding banners that read: Sebold, a history professor who has focused on race and racism, to ask himself why that is. A common Brunswick Klan, Augusta Klan, Rockland Klan. answer he hears when he speaks People in Maine don’t think on the topic is, “Well, they just about issues of race very often, said don’t want to come here,” or “It’s Little-Sebold, a professor at Bar too cold.”

Harbor’s College of the Atlantic, The actual explanation is not during a presentation to staff at “Just to put it in context, as benign, he suspects, because the Island Institute, publisher of “Maine is almost exactly the The Working Waterfront. you could buy a farm for same percentage of white today Though an influx of people the price of one scalp.” as it was in 1820. Maine has not from several African countries changed.” And there is a need, he —TODD LITTLE-SEBOLD settling in Lewiston and Portland believes, to correct “the comfortand Mexican immigrants settling able narrative” that we’re equiin the Milbridge area have stirred table and just. conflict, Mainers still generally Another KKK rally—billed as a believe they were on the right Klan Clam Bake—held in 1924 in side of the civil rights struggles of American-born people of African descent, and they rural Trenton, near Ellsworth, drew 5,000-8,000. For and other New Englanders take pride in the fertile Little-Sebold, based in Bar Harbor, that bit of history brings the racist legacy literally closer to home. ground the abolitionist movement found here.

“Some of the people I meet in their 80s grew up in But it’s not quite that simple, says Little-Sebold.

“This kind of selective memory that is dominant families where those people participated in this,” he said.

In 1924, some 600 people came out to hear a Klan in Maine is a very carefully constructed narrative essentially to erase important aspects of the region’s speaker at a Bar Harbor Congregational church, history,” he said, “and actually to use other parts of introduced by its pastor.

Ultimately, Maine remained over 90 percent white the country as a sort of whipping boy to make people in New England and particularly Maine feel good as the Great Migration of African-Americans from the South transformed other parts of New England about their role in the Civil War.” Maine, like other regoins, is “rooted in geno- and the rest of the country because unions here cide and racism,” he said, “white nationalism and refused entry to African-American workers and denied them work. white supremacy.”

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The treatment of the indigenous tribes of Maine and the rest of New England also may not be familiar to many of us. The Phips Proclamation of 1755 stated that any Massachusetts or Maine settler who brought in a Native-American alive to Boston’s general court would be paid 50 English pounds. If the native were killed and scalped, the settler would be paid 40 pounds. A female or male child under 12 delivered alive would fetch 25 pounds, and if killed and scalped, 20 pounds.

“Just to put it in context, you could buy a farm for the price of one scalp. Let that sink in,” Little-Sebold said.

One particularly horrific attack occurred at Walker Pond in Brooksville on the Blue Hill peninsula. At some point between 1690 and 1704, English militia from the Massachusetts Bay Colony captured a Native warrior, he said, and forced him to take them to his community on the shores of the pond. They attacked the community at dawn and killed all inhabitants except one.

“An entire Wabanaki community was wiped out,” he said. “Almost every early settler of Maine would have participated in raids like this and were essentially bounty hunters.”

Most Mainers are unaware of this history, and Little-Sebold has wondered why that is: “I think it’s a pretty profound question. Mainers love their history.”

Even into the 20th century, Native tribes faced institutional discrimination. Wabanaki were not Maine citizens until the 1920s, not allowed to vote in federal elections until 1957, and couldn’t vote in state elections until 1967.

Native and African-American students were not allowed to live in the dormitories at the University of Maine.

Back to the Portland Klan rally of 1926. LittleSebold shows a detail from a photo in which a child is visible.

“We can’t forget that these are the grandparents of kids today who would be in their 20s or 30s.”

www.workingwaterfront.com . may 2022

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Guest Column

Slavery’s ties to New England Trade triangle linked New England fish with plantations

Located on the Stonington waterfront and supporting Maine’s coastal fisheries for nearly two decades.

By Linda Buckmaster

My curiosity was piqued when I attended a writing residency at Cove ike many of us, I learned in school Park, about an hour from Glasgow. about the trade triangle based on The community building of the Centre the shipping of enslaved people had a sprawling, eclectically unorgafrom Africa to the West Indies—rum, nized bookshelf of writing by and about sugar, and salt going from the West Scots, both classics and contemporary.

Indies to North America and Europe, Interestingly, the village of Cove Park and luxury goods, tools, and household was a big summer resort of these same items carried to white plantation merchants in the 19th century with their owners, government officials, and overblown mansions and yacht clubs.

The book I really connected with is their families.

I’d known that salt cod from New Yonder Awa’: Poetry from the Empire England and the Maritimes was part of Café, compiled after a series of readthat trade as the major food fed to West ings in Glasgow by Scots Caribbean Indian slaves, but I didn’t realize how poets, descendants of the former colokey Newfoundland was. For example, nies. The phrase “yonder awa awa” first 176,000 quintals (over 38 million appeared in Sir Walter Scott’s novel, pounds) were shipped from the island Rob Roy, and became a euphemism for to the British West Indies in 1816. Once the West Indies. (The real-life outlaw sealed into the barrel, salt cod was slow Roy was himself “transported” to to rot and could withstand the tropical Barbados for his crimes.)

Some of the poets’ ancestors arrived heat better than other foodstuffs.

In the process of writing Elemental: in Scotland in earlier times either as A Miscellany of Salt Cod and Islands, servants or as the mixed-race chilbased on my travels and research to dren of Scotsmen living in the islands.

Others arrived more Newfoundland and recently, especially after the Western Isles of WWII when Britain Scotland, I became My curiosity was needed laborers who more aware of the piqued when I became known as the back-breaking work, of attended a writing Windrush Generation not only catching the named for the ship they fish in the cold, rough residency at Cove traveled in. waters of the North Park, about an hour Sugar cane producAtlantic but also the tion was a particularly heavy labor of “makin’ from Glasgow. nasty undertaking— the fish” on the rocky razor sharp cane Newfoundland shore, which continued into the 20th century. leaves, all those machetes, cane-chopThe beach work was done by the ping machinery that needed to be fed, women of the community, whose skill and giant boiling pots to be stirred. It in the proper salting and drying of the was very labor-intensive, so much so filleted fish was crucial. As one woman that in the 1800s, 80% of the populasaid, “Everybody was after number one tion on Barbados were black slaves. fish—you’d get more for making number The whites were very aware of their minority status and the potential for one than you would for the seconds.”

There were over 20 grades and classi- slave rebellions. Punitive measures fications of salt fish, the finest of which were the worst I have ever read.

As in the U.S., the Scots are underwent to Europe and the Mediterranean and the poorest grades to the West going a reckoning of their own role Indies, where it is still known as stock- in the slave economy. This winter, I fish. The “West Indian” grade was received an announcement of a reading defined as “broken, but not excessively. in Ullapool on Scotland’s northern coast Sunburnt, over-salted, slightly slimy or by David Alston of his new book, Slaves dun. Hard dried.” Thus the fish needed and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of to be soaked in a stockpot for an Scotland and the Caribbean (Edinburgh extended period of time before eating. University Press). Alston is a thorough With my first trip to Scotland, researcher and lively writer; he mentions my awareness expanded. A large almost every well-known Highlander percentage of those American sugar clan name as being involved. Many of plantations were owned by Scotsmen. those names, of course, have reappeared These places were known as hellholes, on the North American coast. where a second son of a wealthy Scots family or one who needed his own start Linda Buckmaster has lived in Belfast for could make his fortune and maybe even over 30 years. She was formerly Atlantic a peerage. Many plantation owners and and Gulf Editor for National Fisherman, traders from Glasgow made “nation- poet laureate of Belfast, and worked in ally significant” fortunes during the the University of Maine System. Her golden days of sugar in the 18th and book, Elemental: A Miscellany of Salt 19th centuries. In 1807, the Glasgow Cod and Islands, is available in local West Indian Association was formed bookstores and can be ordered online to protect their pro-slavery interests. from Hello Hello Books in Rockland.

L

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The Working Waterfront . may 2022

Concept would eliminate Eastport causeway Plan to boost port would create bypass

By Tom Walsh

“This infrastructure effort may be our best chance ever of simultaneously onnecting America’s deepest addressing multiple environmental, Atlantic Coast seaport to economic, and cultural concerns,” mainland America is becoming Gardner said. “The time is right politically.

The whole idea is to focus not on where a 100-year challenge.

“It’s been said that there are only two we are now, but where we need to be.”

The inherent environmental things that Mainers here in Washington County hate,” says Chris Gardner, who concerns deeply involve the Native oversees the Port Authority of Eastport. American community at Pleasant Point, which is known to the area’s 2,100 “Change, and the way things are.”

Passamaquoddy residents For many years, as Sipayik.

Gardner has characterEastport, which ized Eastport’s deepbefore the 1930s was an water port as a largely “The whole idea unbridged island, has undiscovered and seriis to focus not been linked for decades ously untapped resource in the now-thawing on where we are to interior Washington County by Route 191 and North Atlantic. To wit: now, but where a causeway. The aging, A cargo ship leaving the we need to be.” two-lane route bisects New York/New Jersey Sipayik. For years it’s harbor complex for been the only means by Europe will require four which cars, recreational more days at sea than a similar vessel headed to the same vehicles, motorcycles, and heavy trucks can get into or out of Eastport.

European ports from Eastport.

As they pass through Sipayik, safety For years now, Gardner has been doing the economic, political, and and speed are issues. An estimated 40,000 cultural math, using a calculus that vehicles travel through the community embraces the vision of transforming each year, among them 18,000 trucks, Eastport into a major international all encountering school-zone and pedesimport/export cargo facility. It’s a vision trian crosswalks requiring speed limits of tempered by the reality that Eastport— 15 miles per hour.

The Passamaquody community population 1,300 and change—is more or less in the middle of nowhere. There’s and others are eager to address and no rail link, no convenient access to U.S. resolve those traffic concerns, which or Canadian interstate highway systems, involve a man-made causeway first and no easy access to a serious airport. proposed in the 1930s during the Then, too, are the issues inherent in Roosevelt Administration. For decades Eastport being located within not only the causeway has spanned Half Moon the poorest region in Maine but one of Cove. The causeway blocks the tidal the most economically depressed coun- flows of Passamaquoddy Bay, which for centuries has served as a natural ties in all the U.S. Gardner and others who are deter- fish passage to the St. Croix River.

“The causeway has choked out the mined to revitalize the Washington County and Maine economies see a tidal nutrients to the clam flats and glimmer of hope in the new federal access by alewives and the elvers,” “Build Back Better” political agenda, said Ernie Neptune, the Sipayik tribal which is grounded in a strategy encour- council’s vice chief, who is a proponent aging massive commitment of federal of removing the causeway. “For thoudollars to constructing new infrastruc- sands of years Passamaquoddy Bay was ture—including roads, bridges, and rail our garden,” he said. “It provided our lines—that will underpin 21st century people with lobster, clams, flounder, whales, alewives, and salmon.”

America’s economic growth.

C

A map of Eastport shows how what had been Moose Island became connected to the mainland and Sipayik through the construction of a causeway. MAP BY JACK SULLIVAN

Tribal leaders now find themselves immersed in yet another study of the complex issues involved. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been commissioned to undertake a two-year study of various options. The tribe anted up $62,500 as its portion of the $1 million cost of the two-year study. Neptune expects the first of the public hearings on exploring how best to assemble the puzzle pieces involved will be held in late spring or early summer. He, like Gardner, agrees that there currently are many more questions than answers.

Eventually, the Passamaquoddy community will vote on which option residents prefer.

“Alternatives have yet to be determined,” Neptune said.

“I think we have the right people working under the right circumstances

to determine the best ideas that will take us where we need to be,” Gardner said.

How much the remediation efforts will cost, Gardner said, will be determined by the option selected by those involved.

One bypass concept under study involves less than two miles of new road but includes a bridge that would be longer than the length of the Penobscot Narrows Bridge bridge at Bucksport. Costs, he said, may ultimately be the “billion-dollar question.” Perhaps literally.

“With inflation, the numbers are changing by the day,” he said. “And costs may kill us. But we have to make sure this project is well thought out and well-shaped, as we will be in competition with projects in places that are so much bigger than we are and with so much more clout than we do. We’ll also need a a load of luck.”

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continued from page 1 its consumers. Large offshore wind projects will require substantial upgrades to existing onshore grids, which currently are unable to support the amount of proposed energy coming onshore.

Further, much of the port infrastructure along the coast will need to be overhauled in order to provide adequate assistance on the oft-forgotten shore-side of offshore energy. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration announced $230 million in funding for port and intermodal infrastructure-related projects.

The tangle of local, state, and federal jurisdictions that manage these types of projects further complicates the future of offshore wind energy.

On the federal side alone, there are 26 agencies with authority over different aspects of ocean waters and resources. At the same time, states control coastal waters out to three nautical miles.

But beyond this bureaucratic complexity that makes it difficult to get projects approved, proposed offshore wind projects in the U.S. have faced strong dissent from opposing stakeholders.

In Maine, the loudest voices are primarily from commercial fishermen concerned about impacts on fisheries and on fishing rights.

“The Gulf of Maine has some of the strongest winds in the world, and Maine has among the most accessible deep-water ports on the East Coast,” said Anthony Ronzio, deputy director of Gov. Janet Mills’ Office on Policy Innovation and the Future.

Ronzio notes that this, in combination with Maine’s manufacturing base and a workforce already adept in maritime fields, could lead to economic growth for the state as it stretches to meet its own ambitious clean energy and climate change goals.

“By exploring opportunities for thoughtful development in the Gulf of Maine and

determining how to best position the state to benefit from an industry expected to generate $1 trillion in global investment by 2040,” Ronzio said, “we believe offshore wind can generate lasting economic investment.”

Still, in July, Mills signed into law a measure that prohibits new offshore wind projects in state waters. The move was a compromise with commercial lobster fishermen who are at work in an industry already under immense economic pressure due to the impacts on fisheries from increasingly warm seas.

Even with state waters protected for now, fishermen remain concerned about what they see as the potential industrialization of the Gulf of Maine. Projects coming down the pipeline require underwater cables to connect wind farms in federal waters to the Maine shore, disrupting traditional fishing access to the bottom.

Deliberations between the government and groups like the Maine Lobstermen’s Association resulted in the creation of a new Offshore Wind Research Consortium that includes representation from Maine’s fishermen.

The concern expands beyond the Maine shore and hasn’t gone unheard. The DOE and the Department of Commerce announced a new partnership through the Northeast Sea Grant program that will fund research into the impacts of ocean-based clean power (soon we’ll be talking about tidal energy) on the fishing industry and broader Northeastern coastal communities.

While responding to concerns from the fishing industry, Mills’ move retains the option for future wind power development in offshore federal waters, which will more than likely be the trend along the East Coast as the federal government continues to pump cash into renewable energies.

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ROUX INSTITUTE

continued from page 1

500-800 housing units and 155,000 square feet of commercial space.

Documents prepared for the city show the site divided into six zones, each with a proposed maximum height limit for new construction.

Along the shore in the southeast corner of the property, site of the main Roux Institute building, the height limit is 165 feet. In areas designated for future development, the height limits range from 150 to 210 feet.

The Roux Institute development could change the character of Portland, though other developments in the works are playing a part, including a 263-unit apartment building under construction at the corner of Temple and Federal Streets. That 190-foot, 18-story building will become the tallest building in Maine.

Many in Portland wonder how the Roux Institute will change the East Deering neighborhood and the city as a whole, and how it intends to integrate its development with its neighbors and Portland’s working waterfront.

The Initiative for Digital Engineering and Life Sciences (IDEALS) is the non-profit developer charged with turning the industrial site into a campus still open to the community at large for recreational use. Roux and the developer have addressed these issues in an ongoing series of meetings with members of the greater Portland and East Deering communities who are concerned about increased traffic on neighborhood roads and the shadows potentially cast by tall buildings.

In March, Margaret Angell, head of partnerships and strategic initiatives at the Roux Institute, and Sam Reiche, chief operations officer and head of real estate at IDEALS, met with members of the Portland Waterfront Alliance to address the issues surrounding the

development, use and public access to the project’s hundreds of feet of shoreline.

Roux “is still learning what they have as a site,” observed Tom Meyers, chairman of the Waterfront Alliance executive committee. The initial plans show “a lot of focus on recreation and public access, but not much focus on the working waterfront,” he said.

“If they’re putting all that brain power into different things,” Meyers said, “if they put some of it into the maritime domain it would be really nice.” He sees “a great opportunity for them to learn” about collaboration with Portland’s working waterfront community and its blue economy.

“Other big developments have come to realize the value of the working waterfront to their organizations,” Meyers said.

Reiche said the overall goal of the development was “to create a vibrant location where people want to be collaborative.” The housing proposed for the site would be “mostly for graduate students,” he said, but the open space on campus would be public and available for use by “as broad a community as possible.”

IDEALS is working with Portland Metro to develop direct bus connections to provide access from downtown Portland, Reiche said, and a private shuttle service might a possibility.

Expanding bike access is “very, very critical,” and discussions are under way to arrange connections with existing bike trails allowing traffic both ways beneath the I-295 Tukey’s Bridge to better connect with East Deering.

Also under consideration is establishment of water taxi service between the campus and the Portland waterfront.

The site of the planned Roux campus “has been closed off to the public for a long time,” Reiche said. “This is an opportunity to open a unique site to the public.”

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The Working Waterfront . may 2022

Coatsworth and husband Henry Beston in the kitchen at Chimney Farm in Nobleboro. PHOTO: COURTESY GARY LAWLESS

Lincoln County’s prolific lady of letters, Elizabeth Coatsworth (1893-1986).

PHOTO: COURTESY GARY LAWLESS

Remembering Maine’s lady of letters, Elizabeth Coatsworth She and husband Henry Beston lived in Nobleboro at Chimney Farm

By Laura McCandlish

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hough less renowned than Damariscotta’s late Barbara Cooney of Miss Rumphius fame, prolific poet and writer Elizabeth Coatsworth penned an estimated 127 total titles while living for decades in an early 19th-century house at lakefront Chimney Farm in Nobleboro. There Coatsworth and her pioneering nature writer husband Henry Beston (contemporaries of close friend Rachel Carson and Anne Morrow Lindbergh) raised two daughters, Meg and Kate (Beston) Barnes; Barnes was Maine’s first poet laureate. In 1931, Coatsworth won the Newbery Medal for The Cat Who Went to Heaven, practically her sole work still in print.

After marrying relatively late in life in 1929, Beston and Coatsworth first spent an idyllic season on an unspoiled Damariscotta “Pond” (no motorboats, fewer waterfront cottages then), living among loons on a rustic houseboat owned by local artist Jake Day. She wrote that adventure into another admired children’s book, Houseboat Summer (published by Macmillan Co. in 1942, illustrated

by Marguerite Davis). Transcending genres, Coatsworth’s books ranged from poetry to memoir to a Random House four-book adult fantasy fiction series set in Maine.

She penned young adult novels about Vikings coming to North America, Native-Americans in the Southwest, and the Away Goes

Sally children’s historical fiction acres remain permanently protected: series featuring an ox-sled-drawn log fields and eastern shore by Midcoast cabin in a family’s wintertime move Conservancy, and woods and western from Massachusetts to Maine just shore under private protection.

Coatsworth’s civilized, sociable spirit before the War of 1812.

Coatsworth reviewed her own rich still infuses the property. Neighbors life in Personal Geography: Almost an recalled her inviting the mailman in for afternoon tea, or Autobiography (1976). more likely, sherry.

“There are certain Upon graduafigures in 20th century tion from Vassar literature that disapCollege during the pear, and shouldn’t,” first World War, said poet Gary Lawless, Coatsworth journeyed who with his wife, to Asia, including the Beth Leonard, owns “There are certain Philippines, Japan, Gulf of Maine Books figures in 20th China, and Mongolia’s in Brunswick. “Kids’ Gobi Desert. Those books are timeless.” century literature travels inspired her In 1986, when that disappear, and first book of poetry, Coatsworth died at shouldn’t.” nominated for both age 94 (Beston died in the Yale Younger Poets 1968), daughter Kate —GARY LAWLESS and the Borzoi prizes, invited Lawless and Lawless recounted.

Leonard to caretake her (As a teenager prodigy, late parents’ 90-acre protégé daughter Kate property, effective had her first poem immediately, furnishpublished in the New ings and books left on Yorker.) site. Once hayed with Coatsworth later traversed Morocco oxen who waded into the farm’s 6,000 feet of shore frontage, Coatsworth and Tunisia on camelback and kept horses that Lawless and Leonard Guatemala on a donkey. Then she took replaced with two cheery donkeys, her young daughters throughout Europe.

“They loved to travel, and when they named Clementine and Mavis, who did, she’d gather material for a kid’s inhabit the barn.

The couple inherited the farmhouse book,” Lawless said.

Now, with the recent release of the plus three acres when Kate, who phoned the couple almost daily, reciting poetry novels of Mount Desert Island’s Ruth at all hours day and night, died in 2013. Moore, Islandport Press and others told The rest of Chimney Farm’s almost 87 Lawless of their interest in reintroducing

readers to Coatsworth. Someone, even a high school student, should also write a proper Elizabeth Coatsworth biography, Lawless urges. Husband Henry Beston has one, but not her.

As an elderly Coatsworth grew ill, daughter Kate returned to Maine.

Before her mother’s death, Kate asked Lawless to republish her mother’s prize-winning chapbook of poetry, Fox Prints.

“So her first book was her very last, too,” he jokes. And at the end of Coatsworth’s funeral in the pasture next to the farmhouse, Kate asked Lawless to read two of her poems “so that she had the last word.”

“I have always hated to wait for things,” Lawless read from Personal Geography. “I think I will go to meet whatever it is.”

Visit the gravesites of Coatsworth, Beston, and Barnes in the family cemetery at 617 East Neck Rd., Nobleboro The University of New England’s Maine Women Writers Collection maintains Coatsworth’s (and Kate Barnes’) voluminous correspondence, photographs, and books. And the Lincoln County Historical Association (with support from the Lincoln County News) will celebrate the county’s many historic and current women writers through exhibits and lectures starting in June, throughout the summer.

Reporting here based on an interview with Gary Lawless.

www.workingwaterfront.com . may 2022

7

Essay

COVID, islands, and the illusion of sanctuary Two years later what would our communities do differently?

By Tina Cohen WE ALL, NO DOUBT, have a vivid memory of the spring of 2020. Life changed radically as we adapted to the reality of a pandemic and how to avoid getting or spreading COVID-19.

For me, the March 15 vote by the North Haven Select Board stands out. In a statement raising more questions than it answered, the board warned: “People who do not reside on the island full-time may not travel to the island due to the significant increase in risk associated with the transmission of COVID-19.”

Shutting down borders and avoiding non-essential travel were policies at that time. But how could it come to be that island officials would see those who were likely part-time neighbors as interlopers, and in the heat of COVID fear, identify them as the most likely conduit for bringing the virus to the islands?

Isolation worked as protection from COVID, but unfortunately fell in line with an attitude already displayed by national leadership—divisiveness as acceptable or even advantageous, a rejection of collaboration. North Haven’s was, at best, a knee-jerk reaction, “better angels” set aside.

From the survival of the species perspective, humans are wired to seek attachment; with it, they thrive. Feeling “held”—which can mean feeling connected, understood, seen, and valued—brings out the best in us. How quickly the benefits of a connected

community got set aside in spring 2020, seemingly better served with assumptions and finger-pointing.

None of us knew a lot about COVID at that point. What we were experiencing was unexpectedly high numbers of people becoming ill, hospitalized, and dying.

One of the biggest fears for island communities was their limited ability to care for people requiring medical attention. As Rob Snyder, then-president of the Island Institute wrote, it was understandable to worry about health services as the population on Maine’s islands is older, and COVID has a disproportionate impact on seniors.

But he also recognized the effect North Haven’s negative-sounding message had: “For seasonal residents who thought they were neighbors and friends, the move to close off the island may seem like distrust and animosity, and could have a long-term detrimental impact on the community’s social fabric.”

On March 19, North Haven rescinded the ban. Rick Lattimer, town administrator, issued a clarification.

New policies included making sure the medical center and EMTs were able to test, and those who had exposure would self-quarantine. People arriving on North Haven would quarantine at their island home for two weeks.

Contractors coming to the island would scale back or postpone jobs.

Penobscot Island Air was screening passengers, crew, and support staff.

Lattimer explained the restriction of all non-essential travel had not been meant to harm anyone.

The Working Waterfront in April featured an interview by Tom Groening, editor, with four island-based columnists.

One columnist worried that a seasonal resident, opening their house that spring, “greeted the plumber as he came to turn on their water” and concluded, “It isn’t responsible to risk infecting us.”

Another columnist warned, “If anyone who has not been here thinks they’ll just come to the island to find sanctuary from the virus, I would urge them not to come.

Yes, they might pay more taxes than I do.

Yes, they have a right to be in any property they own. But they are endangering lives by coming here... Most of us miss you and can’t wait to see you, but please don’t burden us with a visit at this time.”

By May, the looming summer intensified islander fears.

A column headlined, “Our island communities value our seasonal residents, but we worry,” appeared in this newspaper, written by the co-chairs of the Maine Islands Coalition, Donna Weigle and Roger Berle. They acknowledged that tourism and tax dollars from summer residents play a large part in boosting island economies. But, anticipating summer, there were concerns about demands on island grocery stores, medical care, and EMS services.

Summer residents and visitors were asked to stay away from the islands for now: “We are sure no one wants to be the

person who brings the virus to an island.”

My own experience that summer on Vinalhaven was that those from away got the message: don’t come and put a strain on our limited resources, don’t come and not take COVID precautions seriously.

Island concerns were understandable and public health guidelines important.

COVID science—how it was transmitted and how to protect from it— was nascent. Understandably, people wanted to feel some control of this mysterious and deadly pandemic.

Yet some initial attempts strained community ties. An approach of collaboration and inclusiveness would have best honored the true interdependency of seasonal and year-round residents. Meetings on Zoom might have been utilized.

But that March, people felt pressured to act after earlier, more critical delays by the government. Especially on a local level, we all benefit when concerns and responses are calmly shared in respectful dialogue. Hard as it is during a crisis, we need to stay alert to possible over-reactions and remember that anxiety and fear can affect thoughts and behaviors.

As Rob Snyder reminded us: “It is important that we pull together, rather than create divides. Our actions today will speak volumes on how we interact with each other the next time we need the care and support of our neighbors.”

Tina Cohen is a therapist who lives seasonally on Vinalhaven.

Book Review

Understanding a man’s hidden fear Author argues that men are afraid of women

Hidden in Plain Sight: How Men’s Fears of Women Shape Their Intimate Relationships (2021), by Avrum Weiss

Review by Phil Crossman I READ Hidden in Plain Sight: Men’s Fears of Women and immediately asked myself “What is he talking about’?”

I’ve not been in as many relationships as lots of men my age, but I’m fortunate to have enjoyed a few and endured a

few others—the reverse is doubtless true—each heterosexual, and I don’t recall feeling afraid of my partners in any of them.

Still, I read this book because if nothing else is apparent, it is certainly true that there is more to everything than meets the eye and that very likely includes me. And, so, I read it again.

Author Dr. Avrum Weiss is a psychologist and well-regarded practicing psychotherapist with a particular interest in understanding and illuminating the subtleties that nearly always define relationships between men and women. He is the author of four books and articles in professional publications and argues persuasively, and well, that while opportunities for women to fear men abound, men are just as often afraid of women.

Men’s fear lies in far less transparent reasons, reasons that are usually buried so deep and unacknowledged that they’re not on his radar—or hers. Those reasons, frequently cited, include the

fear of being dominated and controlled by women, of being entrapped, the fear of being responsible for women, of being inadequate or feminized, and the fear of being abandoned by them.

For as long as I can remember, just about the worst thing one man could say to another is that he’s hen-pecked.

That could mean all sorts of things but the notion that men might actually be frightened—not simply subservient or obedient, but afraid—of women was quite a leap for me and will be, I’m sure, to thousands of contemporaries.

It initially begs incredulity. We’re men, after all—what’s there to be afraid of? Certainly not her.

Yet, that is the essential message of Weiss’ book, that most men are, in fact, afraid of women. On the other hand, although I am in a happy and fear-free relationship presently, others failed quite decidedly.

Perhaps destiny, long ago, smiled on me during those liaisons, foresaw my present circumstances on a

distant horizon and benevolently took the helm.

Truth be known, however, there were likely other reasons for the collapse of those earlier relationships, more than met the eye. Perhaps it wasn’t that she was simply being difficult! Perhaps I did, in fact, harbor a fear of those women but, at the time, having recognized only that something was wrong, didn’t explore further.

It was easier to simply abandon ship. What, after all, might have been the impetus for entertaining such an uncomfortable alternative as delving into my deepest feelings to discover my distressed reality? There wasn’t one.

Hidden in Plain Sight offers that impetus, reveals many possibilities and invites the prospect of a less stressful, more truly loving and comfortable relationship.

Phil Crossman lives on Vinalhaven and is the author of Away Happens and As the Crow Flies.

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The Working Waterfront . may 2022

Rock Bound

Cape Cod dreams in Maine’s mud season The sandy peninsula inspires much written contemplation

By Tom Groening THIS TIME OF YEAR has me thinking about Cape Cod. The Cape is mostly a summer vacation destination, but for about 12 years my family spent the April school vacation there, always on the outer Cape.

Let’s face it—Maine doesn’t do spring well. I become a bit dour enduring our mud, rain, and wind. For most of those dozen years, we found spring on the Cape, about three weeks ahead of Maine. We loved to walk the ocean beaches, miles of sand and surf, dunes blocking the civilized world on one side, the endless horizon on the other.

Or, as Henry David Thoreau put it, “A man may stand there and put all America behind him.”

Often, we wouldn’t see another human once we got away from the parking area, and we do see migrating whales, spouting a mile or two offshore.

We’ve actually jumped in the ocean and swam a bit in the bay when temperatures, a few times anyway, hit the low 80s.

But climate change brought a different spring pattern, now often marked by windy weather with temps topping out at 50. Oh, well.

The Cape remains a fascinating place, though. It’s the canary in the coal mine for some of the Maine coast’s challenges. Housing, for one. Health care workers, police officers, teachers, and retail, lodging, and restaurant workers must commute an hour or more from off-Cape to their jobs, because housing is so expensive.

Sea level rise and storm surge are more damaging there, given that the Cape is essentially a sand bar.

The key moment for the Cape was in 1961 when President John Kennedy signed the act creating the national seashore there.

I’ve read newspaper clippings reporting on contentious community meetings about the seashore proposal.

Locals predicted young adults would flock to the Cape and camp out in the dunes, leaving litter and worse behind and that tacky T-shirt shops and hot dog stands would proliferate.

Neither played out, but outside the national seashore, motels, miniature golf, and ice cream shops did sprawl.

Some towns wisely implemented strict zoning on Route 6. Eastham, just east of the “elbow” in the flexed arm of the peninsula, removed the

zoning on Route 6 and predictable sprawl followed.

And so I marvel at the foresight of preserving those 40 miles of ocean beach and 44,000 acres of land.

In preparation for our April visits, I often would read about the Cape.

Henry Beston’s The Outermost House (1928) is on par with any nature writing. Beston, recovering from the horrors of what he witnessed in World War I, built himself a small cottage on land his family owned on the beach near the Nauset Inlet and ended up living there for close to two years.

His contemplations are wonderful, observing the patterns that reveal themselves in waves, the habits of shore birds scurrying along the sand, and his visits on winter nights by “coast guardsmen” patrolling the beach, on the lookout for ships foundering on the ever-changing shoals.

A biography of Beston, Orion on the Dunes (2016) by Daniel G. Payne, is well worth reading and covers Beston’s life in Nobleboro, where he wrote Northern Farm (1948).

Thoreau’s Cape Cod (1865) is interesting as a historical travelogue. He takes a train from Lexington, then a

horse-drawn coach to Orleans and, with a companion, walks the ocean shore all the way to the Cape’s tip at Provincetown.

He mistakenly predicts the Cape would end at Orleans by 1960, and he indulges in some snarky descriptions of the people he stays with at night.

My Own Cape Cod by Gladys Taber (1971) also has its share of snarkiness, with the fussy older writer taking aim at hippies visiting the area. And Becoming Cape Cod: Creating a Seaside Resort (2002) by James O’Connell provides more history, with its best bits on the late 19th century through the 1930s era, as Americans learned the art of the summer vacation One more pick: Richard Russo’s novel, That Old Cape Magic (2009).

If money and a job were not issues, I think I would visit the outer Cape for the entire month of September. No bugs, water still warm, most businesses open, but teens and college kids back in school. Maybe I’m becoming snarky.

Tom Groening is editor of The Working Waterfront. He may be reached at tgroening@islandinstitute.org.

Reflections

The key question: Where is home?

Housing challenges must spur innovation Reflections is written by Island Fellows, recent college grads who do community service work on Maine islands and in coastal communities through the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront.

By Mia Colloredo-Mansfeld WHEN I ARRIVED on North Haven as an Island Institute Island Fellow, the first question asked of me as I was introduced around the community was: “Where are you living?”

The first time I answered, I used my street address and received only confused looks. I tried again. “It’s the house right behind the post office.” This still didn’t do the trick. “Who owns the house? Who lived there before you?”

The third time someone asked me this question, I managed to get it right on the first try. When I answered with the name—not of the landlord, nor the family who rented it last, but one of the earlier owners, I was rewarded with a nod then the statement, “That house has a great kitchen.”

Responses like this were normal. “I lived there once” or “I used to hang out in that house all the time.” Even the Spectrum man who came to fix my

internet had stories about visiting the house under previous tenants. It seems almost everyone I speak to has a personal connection to the house I am living in.

Through answering the (not so) simple question, I learned a lot about different aspects of island living.

This question illuminated a way of understanding place, of connecting to people and memories across space and time. Official place names and reference systems don’t hold much weight here. What matters is a knowledge of place and history, understanding the movements of people and events from decades ago through today.

For longtime residents, knowing where I lived seemed to be a way they could fit me into the broader fabric of the island, attaching me—a stranger— to a familiar landmark.

Beyond fitting me into the island landscape, knowing my housing situation and, importantly, how I came by it, helps update people’s knowledge of available housing on the island.

Housing on North Haven is a major problem, one that extends across Maine’s islands and coastal towns. Asking me where I live is a fact-finding mission, a means of filing away information for a future date—knowing the owner is

willing to rent, finding out if it is yearround housing or just for nine months of the year, learning when I am moving out and if it will be available afterwards.

I learned how tenuous housing on the island is—the revolving doors of some homes, welcoming tenant after tenant until the day someone is lucky enough to find a permanent yearround living situation. Or, until they give in and move off island.

This question highlights the ways information is shared or kept secret, and the invaluable advantage of having deep ties and connections to place and people in order to find housing.

But even then, as I have learned, you must get lucky. There is no guarantee for anyone anymore, regardless of how strongly connected you are in North Haven; year-round housing seems to come down to luck, and a lot of it.

My work on North Haven has me diving into the housing crisis here.

Housing is central to so many challenges North Haven and similar towns and islands are facing.

How do you continue supporting a school when no families can find a place to live? How do you sustain a year-round economy or keep up with seasonal demands if you can’t house

a workforce? How do you ensure sustainable, affordable housing?

As I begin working more closely on North Haven’s housing crisis (a task I am nowhere near the first to tackle, nor will I be the last), there seem to be endless questions and challenges. However, North Haven has a unique opportunity too. We are a small community with a wealth of local, regional, and state resources to look to. We have an opportunity to innovate and think creatively about how the tools at our disposal can be used in new ways to help us.

While I am not naive enough to believe the housing crisis will abate during my short tenure here, I do hope the question of “where are you living” is easier to answer for the next generation of North Haveners.

Mia Colloredo-Mansfeld works with the town of North Haven developing webpages and communications. She graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in geography and environmental studies.

www.workingwaterfront.com . may 2022

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PLAY BALL!— Belfast’s baseball team poses for a photo in 1899. Many Maine towns had their own amateur or semi-pro baseball teams when the sport was indeed the national pastime.

PHOTO: COURTESY BELFAST HISTORICAL SOCIETY AND MUSEUM

Op-Ed

Maine delegation can lead to climate safety It’s time to charge big users of carbon fuels

By Peter Dugas BOTH MY WIFE and I grew up in Maine, but it wasn’t until we married that I adopted her family’s tradition of buying pounds of wholesale Maine shrimp and spending New Year’s Day (my mother-in-law’s birthday) shelling and freezing them for the coming months. It was an annual ceremony straight out of a Robert McCloskey book: rolled up sleeves, aprons, buckets, and the briny smell. When my daughter was born it meant another generation would enjoy this tradition and presumably carry it on to future generations. Presumably. But when she was only a few years old, Maine’s shrimp harvests were ended as rising water temperatures decimated numbers.

It was a modest family tradition but a $13 million industry for a small state with a heritage of hardworking families. The loss caused us to question how our impacts on the environment could drive from our state a resource that had been native for millennia, what else this meant for the natural bounty we all rely on, and what else we would lose without a change of course.

Scientists tell us that although climate change is accelerating all over the world, the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans.

Those of us who live and work on the ocean can see it firsthand, as can every Mainer who remembers longer childhood winters, or barefoot summers without any concern for ticks and the diseases they carry.

Island Institute Board of Trustees Emily B. Lane, Chair Kristin Howard, Vice Chair Charles Owen Verrill, Jr. Secretary Douglas Henderson, Treasurer, Finance Chair Carol White, Programs Chair Megan McGinnis Dayton, Philanthropy & Communications Chair Shey Conover, Governance Chair Michael P. Boyd, Clerk Sebastian Belle David Cousens Michael Felton Nathan Johnson Bryan Lewis Michael Sant Barbara Kinney Sweet Kate Vogt Donna Wiegle John Bird (honorary)

Maine should be proud and encouraged by recent exempt from carbon pricing), renewable energy, and work in our towns, governments, and businesses to revitalized forestry. Benefits like these have inspired create a more sustainable future. But with only 3% over 28 Maine communities and hundreds of Maine business and community leaders to of U.S. carbon dioxide pollution, endorse this policy.

Maine can’t solve this alone.

Because it relies on market innoFortunately, we have a tremendous opportunity for public good As the only state with vation without picking winners and losers, carbon fee and dividend has even in these fraught times. As the both of our senators the support of business advocates only state with both of our senators on the 14-member bipartisan Senate on the Senate Climate like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the Climate Solutions Caucus, Maine Solutions Caucus, Commodity Futures Trading can do more than any other state Maine can do more…

Commission, and more than 3,600 to guide national policy that would economists (which is more than not only protect the climate but also any other such policy). But because benefit working Mainers, grow local businesses, and disadvantage high-polluting out-of- it has been shown to be tremendously effective and equitable, it has also earned the support of Maine state competition.

A national carbon fee and dividend policy applies Conservation Voters, the World Resources Institute, a gradually increasing price on carbon pollution at the American Federation of Teachers, and the chair its industrial source (coal mine, oil well, gas site, or of the Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Black port of entry) but returns that money to every U.S. Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, and many others.

Sens. King and Collins and Reps. Pingree and taxpayer as a monthly dividend check.

Carbon pricing has been shown to do more to reduce Golden should be thanked for their climate leadercarbon pollution than any other policy. Returning that ship. Please take 20 seconds to ask them to champion revenue creates jobs and spurs economic growth while effective and equitable climate policy through cclusa. monthly dividend checks exceed energy cost increases org/action. Maine’s future thanks you. for all but the wealthiest earners.

Maine’s rural areas are projected to especially benefit Peter Dugas is an EN-ROADS Climate Ambassador, from carbon cash back payments and economic growth 2021 Portland Press Herald Source Award winner, and in sustainable agriculture and aquaculture (which are Maine state co-coordinator of Citizens’ Climate Lobby.

THE WORKING WATERFRONT

Published by the Island Institute, a non-profit organization that works to sustain Maine's island and coastal communities, and exchanges ideas and experiences to further the sustainability of communities here and elsewhere.

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The Working Waterfront . may 2022

Belle elected head of national aquaculture group Director of Maine aquaculture group has long ties to industry

SEBASTIAN BELLE, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association, has been elected president of the board of directors for the National Aquaculture Eastport’s breakwater and anchorage at dusk. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING Association.

Since 1984, Belle has established best practices and advised commercial aquaculture ventures around the world, bridging private and public sectors. He has dedicated his career to demonstrating global leaderJohn Martin, Budship Staples, and Elsie Gillespie chat aroundfor theawoodstove in aquaculture and advocating sustainableat the annual town meeting. working waterfront.

Sebastian Belle Prior to joining the Maine Aquaculture Assocation—a private non-profit trade association representing Maine shellfish, fin fish, and seaweed farmers—Belle was the state aquaculture coordinator for the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

Belle also serves on NOAA’s Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee and on the board of directors of the Maine Fishermen’s Forum, The Island Institute, and The

By Tom Walsh Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center. He also serves as vice president of the International Salmon Farmers Association.

WHEN A CARGO SHIP en route to Montreal from Russia with 8,000 tons of “Now more than ever, aquaculture needs to unify as a sector to balance innopetroleum product recently found itself in need of some short-term parking, the vation with long-term sustainability,” said Belle. “Our seafood farm families, in shippers involved contacted Washington County’s Eastport Port Authority.

Maine and across the nation, and the working waterfront depend on it.”

The North Atlantic’s deepest ports include Eastport’s cargo terminal and downMaine’s aquaculture industry currently represents nearly 200 farms and more town breakwater dock, which in June 2020 accommodated short-term cruise than 700 farmers who produce premium seafood—fin fish, shellfish, and sea ship storage in response to ever-changing COVID-related regulations affecting vegetables—in Maine’s cold, clean waters. The sector has been steadily growing cruise ship operations. The 785-foot,15-deck Oceania Riviera tied up in Eastport in recent years, and its total economic impact has nearly tripled. for 56 days before the ship and its skeleton crew were cleared to head to Europe.

The Maine Aquaculture Association was established in 1978. Its mission is to As a response to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Canada blocked imports support the state’s aquatic growers in developing economically and environmenof all Russian cargos. That action left the small cargo ship and its 8,000-tons of tally sustainable business practices, to promote the benefits of aquaculture in the “solid pitch” in need of a port other than Montreal. It was four days out from local food system, and to preserve Maine’s heritage of a vibrant working waterfront.

Eastport, but given U.S. import restrictions on Russian cargoes, could the small The National Aquaculture Association is a U.S. producer-based, non-profit trade cargo ship legally tie up in coastal Washington County? Nobody knew. association founded in 1991 that supports the establishment of governmental “We were operating in a complete fog,” said Eastport Port Authority Executive programs that further the common interest of its membership, both as individual Director Chris Gardner said Friday, March 11. “We looked into it, but nobody producers and as members of the aquaculture community. For over 31 years seemed to know what the current rules were.”

NAA has been the united voice of the domestic aquaculture sector committed After consulting with the stevedores union that handles cargo at Eastport’s to the continued growth of the industry, working with state and federal governdocks, it was decided there would be no parking available.

Levi Moulden ments to create a business climate conducive to success, and fostering cost-effec“No one felt comfortable taking on such a project, not with four days’ notice,” tive environmental stewardship and sustainability.

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Eastport turns down Russian ship request

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ISLAND CONNECTIONS—

Andy Burke (left), special representative for broadband for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, greets Abigail Hiltz, Isle au Haut’s third selectwoman, at the island’s town landing. Burke traveled to Maine on April 4 from Washington D.C. to highlight a $28 million federal grant awarded to Maine in order to connect 11,000 rural households to high-speed, reliable, and affordable internet, including the homes on Isle au Haut and most of the Blue Hill peninsula. The Island Institute advocated for the remote communities and provided technical assistance throughout the grant application process. PHOTO: JACK SULLIVAN

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The Working Waterfront . may 2022

Stonington tip-toes into spring

Fishing town and seasonal home haven braves April chill PHOTO ESSAY BY TOM GROENING WALK INTO STONINGTON from the parking area by the old high school and the beauty of Penobscot Bay rolls out before you. It is stunning, made more so by the sturdy old New England houses anchored into granite outcroppings that provide your foreground.

My photos will never be mistaken for those of a fine-art photographer, but you can’t go too far wrong with Stonington as a subject. The views down the bay are the star attraction, but my eye is drawn to the built environment and how it relates to the abundant beauty of nature.

A century before lobster—Stonington is the perennial top-landing port in the state—the town’s bread and butter came from granite, quarried on the islands just offshore. That material is still evident in yards and walls.

Though it was once a rough fishing town, in the last decade or so, Stonington has become home to seasonal residences, and so on my visit in early April, it had an abandoned feel. The bones of that 19th century architecture are in good shape, thanks to new owners.

www.workingwaterfront.com . may 2022

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The Working Waterfront . may 2022

Our Island Communities

North Haven to offer ‘offshore year’

North Haven village and waterfront. PHOTO: JACK SULLIVAN

School recruits high school sophomores for program

By Tom Groening

I

slanders sometimes wryly refer to the mainland as America. If that were true, a mainland student attending an island school would be like studying abroad.

North Haven Community School is not pitching its revamped magnet program that way, but it is highlighting the surrounded-by-water nature of the experience.

The school is recruiting high school sophomores from mainland and other island schools to attend its “offshore year” program.

The program, explains principal Shaun Johnson, offers “an intensive, inter-disciplinary, experiential marine science, and civic engagement” curriculum.

Students will “tackle questions that are relevant to North Haven,” including climate change and shifting economies.

The school launched a magnet program in 2017 and it drew a handful of students. But the pandemic, and the challenges of being a 75-minute ferry ride from the mainland, hampered the school in sustaining and growing the student body.

Magnet schools are permitted by Maine law and allow publicly funded schools to accept students from outside their service area.

The program needed a focus and theme, the principal said.

Islesboro Central School, with the island a 20-minute ferry ride from the mainland with boats running almost hourly from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., has enjoyed decades-long success with its magnet program.

North Haven’s original magnet concept highlighted its status as Maine’s smallest K-12 school, with 50 students currently enrolled, providing a high teacher-student ratio, now at one teacher to every five students. The “more personalized, individual experience” was attractive, Johnson said.

The school, built in 2007, also boasted of its facilities, which include a projects building (to be remade as a “maker’s” space), a greenhouse and gardens, and a new gymnasium. Programs include: art, theater, and

North Haven Community School. PHOTO: WILLIAM TREVASKIS

music; carpentry and small engine repair; personalized research projects; AP courses; extracurricular wilderness expeditions; and access to the Eastern Maine Skippers Program, aimed at students planning careers in the fisheries.

“It’s an extraordinarily well-resourced school,” Johnson said. “The community provides an overwhelming amount of support for this school.”

Despite these assets, the magnet idea failed to gain traction. School officials hope the offshore sophomore year, designed around a science theme, will be more appealing.

The curriculum will bring in several partner organizations, including Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership. The hands-on portion of the program will put sophomores in contact with fishing and aquaculture and engage them with field research, Johnson said.

“Science is going to be a critical component,” he said, but the multi-disciplinary approach means that humanities and other subjects can easily be woven into the curriculum.

The sophomores from off-island would likely take the 9:30 a.m. ferry from Rockland on Monday, and

then take the 3:45 p.m. boat back to the mainland on Friday. Students would live on the island during the week.

“There’s a house in town where they’ll live with a house parent,” he said. Up to eight students can be accommodated.

Sophomores completing the year are welcome to stay on through subsequent school years.

Annual tuition, which includes room and board, will be set at about $20,000. Some municipalities in Maine do not operate a high school and routinely pay tuition for their students to other schools, both private and public. The average per-student funding is $12,500, Johnson said. The remaining cost— $7,500—would cover room and board.

“We will be fund raising for scholarships,” he added.

Johnson took over as principal in August, moving to the island from Washington D.C. His teaching experience ranges from kindergarten to college courses.

The school hopes to host evening information sessions about the offshore year program. For more information, see: northhavencommunityschool.org.

www.workingwaterfront.com . may 2022

15

Isle au Haut teacher brings experiential learning Marcella Carroll has taught in small schools in New England, Caribbean Editor’s note: This profile first appeared on the Upper Valley Educators Institute’s website and is published here with that organization’s permission.

By Kristen Downey

I

n the first few minutes of our Zoom call, Marcela Carroll had to get up to make sure her students were transitioning to their independent activity.

Elementary teachers are always being pulled in different directions, but perhaps this is more acute in a one-room schoolhouse.

Carroll is in her third year teaching on Isle au Haut. The community has between 30 and 40 full time residents, including Carroll, her husband, and their daughter. She teaches just four students—a pre-K student, a first grader, a fifth grader, and her own child, who is in third grade.

While Maine has seen people relocate to the state during the pandemic, and some seasonal families considered moving to the island full time, a migration did not follow.

“It takes a different kind of person,” Carroll said of those who choose island life. “You have to rough it. It’s really cold out here, you have to go shopping [off-island] for supplies, the doctor is not able to come right away, you are committing to seclusion.”

Carroll is a science teacher by training, having earned her life science endorsement in 2008 from Upper Valley Educators Institute (UVEI), and although she is working towards elementary certification so that she can stay at the 100-year-old schoolhouse, she finds ways to incorporate science into much of what she teaches.

In some ways, teaching science is easy when the natural world around the schoolhouse begs to be explored through a place-based education model, which is central to Maine’s island schoolhouses. For example, park rangers from Acadia National Park taught a lesson about moss, then Carroll took her students into the park—part of which is on Isle au Haut—to collect moss and make scientific drawings.

Last summer Carroll expanded the community garden and used it for students to set up a working farmstand where they not only sold food they harvested, but calculated costs according to weight and decided how to spend their tips. (They bought books.)

Carroll relies on volunteers and nonprofits to make experiential learning possible. Last year her students learned about reforestation and raised money to plant trees through a Vermont non-profit called One Tree Planted. This year they are learning about Native American history and raising money for the Wabanaki Alliance. She also wants them to learn traditional Native American skills.

“Ideally I’d like to build a canoe with them,” she says.

Carroll says she draws on her experience at UVEI for the hands-on, cross curricular teaching she loves to do.

“The best part of the UVEI teaching program is the hands-on learning, the internship under the wing of an experienced teacher. You learn how to work as a team and how to plan lessons ahead of time,” she says.

The Isle au Haut post is not the first time she’s taught several subjects to a few students. For two years she taught at the now closed Rochester Middle and High

Carroll, at right, poses with her class. PHOTO: COURTESY MARCELA CARROLL Marcela Carroll teaches at Isle au Haut’s one-room school.

PHOTO: COURTESY MARCELA CARROLL

School in Rochester, Vermont. The school struggled to maintain enrollment, with just three students in the high school in its final year. Carroll taught Spanish, health, family and consumer science, finance, and science.

Her next teaching position was in the Bahamas where she taught middle school science and Spanish to Bahamian students.

“It was one of the best teaching experiences. The culture was very similar to my Hispanic heritage,” she says.

One of the biggest challenges to one-room island school teaching? “I’m basically the principal and the teacher,” she jokes. “I miss other teachers.” Although the PE and art teacher come in occasionally on a boat, Carroll and her assistant are the only full time educators. She collaborates with other teachers through the Island Institute which connects her with other island educators.

A technology like Zoom allows an early literacy teacher to instruct Carroll’s students while Carroll teaches Spanish and science to students on another island.

“It’s a lot of work,” she admitted about the island experience, but when her older students help teach her younger ones, “it’s pretty great.”

Kristen Downey is director for teacher education programs at the Upper Valley Educators Institute, an experiential graduate school of education in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

LIVE BAIT— The North Haven-based band Bait Bag performed at Thresher’s in Searsmont on April 2 to an enthusiastic audience. From left, Fiona Robins on vocals and guitar, Courtney Naliboff on bass and vocals, and Claire Donnelly on drums. PHOTO: TOM GROENING

16

The Working Waterfront . may 2022

www.workingwaterfront.com . April 2020

cRanBeRRystatewide RepoRt policies Housing commission recommends Local control responsible for stifling affordablepainting housing Town meeting, lines, eating doughnuts, and throwing rocks

By Tom Groening

A

COMMISSION studying affordable housing in Maine had a narrow focus—how local zoning and land use rules could be changed to create more housing. But

By Barbara Fernald one of its recommendations would cut to the core of how cities and ACTIVITY on the islands,byat pushing the end towns currently function of February and into March, is like a municipalities toward state standards. mirror image of the action at the end The “home rule” principle, estabof August into September.

Just as the lished in 1969, gives local governments summer residents of the Cranberry broad latitude in adopting ordinances, Isles end those their that vacations right before including regulate housing— fall, many year-round residents end minimum lots sizes, single-family their winter breaks just before the districts, and secondary housing units. spring equinox.

The commission noted that exceptions to get back exist, to work to It’s thattime principle already suchand as reconnect. state rules on shoreland and subdiviOur annual town meeting takes sion development. place on the second in March.

Local control is aSaturday two-edged sword, For selectmen and town employees, affordable housing advocates have winter has been anything but a vacasaid, and the current example of the tion. They have working cruel side of thatbeen sword came steadily, late last gathering information to apartment write the year in Cape Elizabeth. An warrant for town meeting.

It’s the time complex planned for lower-income of year we come together as to households was blocked by aa town citizen decide on projects and spending and referendum there. In the absence of a how much money is to bewith raised by statewide policy on housing teeth, property taxes.communities can close upper-income Discussion of the school budget their doors to such developments. alone can take well over hour. The The legislatively created an commission, islands take turns hosting the meetwhich issued its report in late winter, ing and the luncheon. This year, town

met through the second half of 2021 and focused on:

Maine, 72% of housing units are owned while 28% are rented.

That median purchase price is “unaffordable for median income households” in all the coastal counties except bright red with a black stripe) and, like Washington County. every otherrental lobsterprices fisherman in Maine Median are unaffordthis winter, he read about, talked about, able for median incomes in all Maine and experimented with purple counties except Franklin County. paint.

The latest regulations require Before thewhale pandemic, demand for all Maine lobster fishermen to use new housing was strongest near urban markings onthe thecoast, ropes and theyalong attachthe to areas, along lobster traps.

Depending on how close I-95 corridor, but now the preference shore they fish, they to will have to add istofor areas with access broadband.

2-4 marks on eachthat buoy line.

Thepurple commission asserts zoning On warps that are 100-feet or less there and land use rules “have a direct must beon onethe 12-inch purpleofmark withimpact availability housing, ” in a few fathoms of the trap and a 36and cites early laws that limited popuinch purple mark within 2 fathoms of lation density which were “used to the buoy.

If the warp is longer that 100 prevent people of color from living in feet, the requirement ”is for a 12-inch certain neighborhoods. purple the trap, athat second 12Alongmark withnear the argument “home inch purple markmay halfway to theaffordbuoy, rule” authority inhibit and housing, a 36-inchthe mark near the offers buoy. able commission Bruce figures he will be putting a carrot, recommending that any 1,500 new to 1,800 markings on hisbe rope in all;with two state housing mandates linked to three weeks of extra work if he does technical and financial assistance to it without hiring implement them.help. A number of fishermen are applying paint to their ropes Another incentive recommended by resting them in 3-foot gutters was creating a three-yearlong program made from lengthwise-halved PVC pipe. through which communities would Bruce’s first attempt was with spray paint review their land use regulabut heand soonthen moved on tochanges the morethat effitions adopt cient brush and latex paint. promote affordable housing. A Some fishermen will add a 3-foot

financial reward would be issued to complying communities.

Among the report’s recommendations are that accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, be allowed in all zoning piece of purple to the end of the districts that rope allow single-family buoy lineAn or ADU toggle,might but allbe attachments homes. an apartmust be made with a splice or a tuck. ment attached to a single-family home I know it’s a stretch to compare folor a cottage in the backyard of that lowing Maine whale rope requirehome. Such units might be rented by ments with a plein air workshop, younger people or single seniors. but a person could return home from eiAlso recommended is eliminating ther and say that they’d been paintsingle-family zoning in all residential ing in their spare If Bruce were zones so that up time. to four residential writing an essay on how spent lot. his units would be allowed onhe a single winter vacation, painting would be That provision would be guided bya part it. Another be the septicofand drinking part waterwould availability. description I heard him tell his brother The commission recommends Mark about walking to get doughnuts, prohibiting municipal growth caps, in February, with our son and which limit the number ofRobin, construcour grandchildren Henry and Cora.

I tion permits that may be issued. was away withdensity friends in Portland, was and Creating “bonuses” Stephanie was for away with friends in recommended all residential zones Florida.

Father and son were in charge. in Maine, allowing low- to middle“Yeah,projects we got2.5doughnuts at The income times the density Cookie Jar and then walked to the of the established rules in that district. beach for a picnic and to throw rocks.”

Similarly, the commission recomEating communities homemade identify donuts areas and mended throwing rocks at the beach—if that where multi-family housing is permitted isn’t a mirror image barriers. of many childwith limited regulatory hood summers on Islesford,calls I don’t A final recommendation for know what is. q creating a state-level appeals board to review affordable housing projects Barbara lives on Islesford (Little denied atFernald the local level.

Cranberry Island) with her husband Bruce.

As winter winds down, islanders mix prep work and gatherings • housing shortages for low- and middle-income Mainers meeting will that takeaffect placelocal on housing Islesford.

• state laws What’s for lunch?

Homemade pizzas, development rules salads, and desserts.

Life gets busier • efforts in other states to reduce as we volunteer to helptoprepare the zoning impediments affordable firsthousing community meal of the season. meeting is municipal a great opportu• Town measures such as incennitytives to hear about winter from friends and state mandates related to andhousing neighbors.

“How was your trip to density ...?”

“Who • the role knew racismgrand-parenting plays in zoning was so policy exhausting or that there were so many cold germs involved?” “You did allThe that painting?” same quesreport is bluntThese in explaining the tions could be asked in September at problem. a school board meeting in a large sub“Maine is facing an affordable urb. (Preferably during meethousing crisis” it not asserts and the acknowling while someone else has the floor!) edges that “changes to zoning alone In January and February, Bruce and will not address the challenges of Ihousing got to spend a lot of time our Maine residents.”with While grandchildren Maine. zoning changes in will Southern help affordability Visiting them theinitiative main goal of and equity, that was policy is just most of our winter travel.

We considone thrust, the commission conceded. ered trying to paint kitchen,“the but In part because of theour pandemic, we kept catching odd coughing virussupply of homes for sale is at a record es and experienced more down time low, ” while low interest rates have than we wanted, so we never got to it. boosted purchases.

Maybe I’ll paint it in May, when I can The state has the eighth oldest housing have open. stock the in windows the nation, the commission BruceInsaw more enough reports.

2020, thethan median homepaint, price anyway, this winter.

During histhat “time was $256,000. The report notes in off” he painted 600 buoys (white and

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17

Whaling ship remains found in Gulf of Mexico Fate of crew confirmed by newspaper research

N

OAA and its partners have discovered the wreck of the 207-year-old whaling ship Industry on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. The remains of the 64-foot, two-masted wooden brig opens a window into a little-known chapter of American history when descendants of African enslaved people and Native Americans served as essential crew in one of the nation’s oldest industries.

“Black and Native American history is American history, and this critical discovery serves as an important reminder of the vast contributions black and Native Americans have made to our country,” said U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves. “This 19th century whaling ship will help us learn about the lives of the black and Native American mariners and their communities, as well as the immense challenges they faced on land and at sea.”

The discovery will tell the story of how people of color succeeded as captains and crew members in the whaling industry, said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad. “It reflects how African Americans and Native Americans prospered in the ocean economy despite facing discrimination and other injustices.”

With guidance provided via satellite connection from partner scientists on shore, a team aboard the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer piloted a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, to explore the seafloor at a suspected location first spotted by an energy company in 2011.

Armed with extensive research on Industry and the video from the ROV, the team of shoreside scientists has confirmed the wreck is most likely the brig Industry.

The whaling brig was built in 1815 in Westport, Mass., and hunted whales across the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean, and the Gulf of Mexico for 20 years. It was lost when a strong storm snapped its masts and opened its hull to the sea on May 26, 1836.

Industry primarily was hunting sperm whales more than 70 miles off the mouth of the Mississippi River. It is the only whaling ship known to have been lost in the Gulf of Mexico out of 214 whaling voyages from the 1780s to the 1870s.

While Industry eventually sank, there was some mystery about what happened to the crew. Thanks to new research by Robin Winters, a librarian at the Westport Free Public Library, the crew’s fate is finally clear. Winters tracked down a June 17, 1836 article in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror that reported the crew of Industry was picked up at sea by another Westport whaling ship, Elizabeth, and crewmen were returned safely to Westport.

“This was so fortunate for the men onboard,” said James Delgado of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), who worked closely with Winters and

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several other local historians to confirm the identity of Industry. “If the black crewmen had tried to go ashore, they would have been jailed under local laws.

And if they could not pay for their keep while in prison, they would have been sold into slavery.”

While the crew list for the last voyage of Industry disappeared when the ship sank, lists of crews from previous voyages describe crewmembers and officers as including black, Native American, white, and multiracial people.

The brig is connected to the life of Paul Cuffe, a mariner and entrepreneur whose father was a freed slave and mother was a Wampanoag Indian. Cuffe started whaling as a teenager and rose to become a successful ship builder, merchant, abolitionist, philanthropist, founder of an integrated public school, and among the leaders of a project to settle freed black people in a new colony in Africa.

His son William was a navigator on Industry and his son-in-law Pardon Cook was an officer on the brig and believed to have made the most whaling voyages of any black person in American history.

“The news of this discovery is exciting, as it allows us to explore the early relationships of the men who worked on these ships, which is a lesson for us today as we deal with diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.” said Carl Cruz, a New Bedford-based historian and a descendent of the family of Paul Cuffe.

Though searchers had a strong hunch about the identity of the whale ship prior to NOAA’s ROV dive, they needed a more thorough look and the expert documentation that NOAA could provide. ROV pilots from the Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration captured high-resolution video to fully document the wreck site found 6,000 feet below the Gulf ’s surface.

The ROV hovered over the telltale tryworks, a cast iron stove with two large kettles used to render whale blubber into oil. The NOAA team confirmed the shipwreck’s measurements matched those of Industry in historic documents and determined that the location of the shipwreck, 72 nautical miles from the last recorded location off the mouth of the Mississippi River, could be attributed to the still-floating ship within the Gulf of Mexico’s Loop Current.

“That there were so few artifacts on board was another big piece of evidence it was Industry,” said Scott Sorset of BOEM. “We knew it was salvaged before it sank.”

A whaling ship from the tight-knit Massachusetts community of whalers had visited the sinking Industry and removed 230 barrels of whale oil, parts of the rigging, and one of the four anchors before it sank.

Shell midden research wins preservation grant A UNIVERSITY OF Maine archaeological survey team has received a grant from the Maine Historical Preservation Commission to use technology to update the status of four prehistoric coastal shell middens in Lincoln County that are now on the National Register of Historic Places.

The $23,000 grant, which has been matched by UMaine, supports a threepart project led by geo-archaeologist Alice Kelley, an associate research professor in the Climate Change Institute.

Kelley’s team, which includes four UMaine professors and students in a School of Earth and Climate Sciences course, uses geological and remote sensing techniques to study past and present erosion rates of the state’s shell middens and cultural spaces on mainland and island coasts created

by Maine’s indigenous people during thousands of years of coastal occupation. Additionally, the grant supports expanding the reach of the ongoing Maine Midden Minders program through travel funds for outreach.

The Midden Minders program, a citizen science project based at UMaine, documents and monitors erosion of Maine’s shell middens and the valuable archaeological and environmental information they contain. Middens are primarily composed of shells—oyster, clam, mussel—and archaeological material and faunal remains—mammal, fish, bird, and reptile bones and teeth.

Botanical remains, primarily seeds, also are preserved in middens. Sea level rise and coastal erosion are two of the leading threats to these fragile sites.

The four sites on the National Register were first surveyed by Kelley and the UMaine team in 2020 and 2021. One focus of the project is to fine tune last year’s pilot drone study that created 3D images of the sites at the centimeter scale. This effort will resurvey the sites judged to be the most at risk to measure change and develop a plan for prioritizing the monitoring and documentation of other listed and eligible middens.

A second focus of the study is to use nearshore sediment cores to determine the original extent of an eroded midden.

Archaeologists have long suspected that many of the middens seen today represent the uneroded portion of much larger features. This effort hopes to estimate the former size and rate of loss of these important features.

Assessing sea level rise-driven coastal erosion informs understanding and preservation efforts of all of Maine’s approximately 2,000 shell middens. With the help of Midden Minder volunteers, up to 100 acres may be surveyed or resurveyed.

“These features are an important part of Maine’s pre-European history and a touchstone for the state’s Indigenous communities,” according to Kelley. “The undocumented loss of these resources represents a loss of an important component of the state’s history. ”

18

The Working Waterfront . may 2022

Saltwater Cure

How can I keep from singing?

The joy of resonating voices is returning

By Courtney Naliboff

So, no singing. No school choir, no musical theater, no Christmas Eve A WHILE AGO, I joked to someone Lessons and Carols. Recording sessions online that my pandemic memoir held behind plexiglass.

Singing returned eventually, in small would be titled The Year Without Singing. Although nobody has asked ways at first. Some of my elementary me to write a pandemic memoir (yet!), students wrote verses for an original it occurred to me in the moment that blues song, which they practiced spread the directives prohibiting singing, or out on the playground, then performed restricting it to 16 feet apart, outdoors, at an outdoor spring concert.

Our band Bait Bag played outdoor and masked, were for me the most onerous and upsetting changes we shows, then indoors, with fully masked audiences. Chorus class were asked to make during came back, with masks, a generally onerous and but better than nothing. upsetting time.

Some of my The winter concert While nobody was stophappened, also masked.

So ping me from singing elementary did Lessons and Carols. by myself, in my home, students wrote Masked singing is better singing in an ensemble has verses for an than no singing, without a a special resonance. Quite doubt. But something about literally—a group of people original blues the layer of fabric between singing creates a shared song… our mouths and the world vibration that affects prevented that real sonic everyone involved, body magic from happening. and spirit. It also apparently involves the spreading of many This, of course, is because the masks air-borne particulates, with unpleasant worked—they were preventing a large percentage of what was coming from our and occasionally deadly results.

singing mouths from entering the collective air we were breathing.

In addition to filtering particulates, they were also absorbing some sound waves, or something harder to pinpoint but just as real.

Then, suddenly, magically, in March, the masks became optional. I could see my chorus and voice students’ faces for the first time in two years and correct their embouchure. I could see them smile when they realized how good they sounded, and laugh when we went through a particularly silly warm-up.

I held auditions for our spring musical soon after masks became optional. The last musical we had planned started with Zoom auditions in March 2020, and fizzled out after a few weeks of rehearsals marred by digital lag, and our growing clarity that we weren’t going to be seeing each other in person any time soon, let alone singing. In-person auditions felt exaggeratedly significant.

A small crowd, some students and some adults, gathered on the Waterman’s stage to learn the audition song. I taught it quickly—it was a pretty well-known

tune—and then banged out the chords while they sang it in unison.

The air vibrated. Their voices resonated. It was back, that special feeling!

I got a little weepy, I’ll admit. As we’ve been rehearsing, the singing magic has only grown stronger.

“We just sound so GOOD,” the cast regularly says to each other. I say it to them too, and the Waterman’s staff have told me how pleasant it is to be in the building when we’re rehearsing.

I hesitate to make any predictions about the future—masks, no masks, singing, no singing—so who knows what the rules will be when you read this. But at least for the moment, we’re able to lift our voices together. I, for one, won’t take that for granted.

Courtney Naliboff teaches music, theater, and writing at North Haven Community School and plays in the band Bait Bag.

Journal of an Island Kitchen

We spoil our food with best-by dates Common sense and a good eye and nose serve best

By Sandy Oliver HUNG IN BUNCHES in the cellarway, our onions sprout. Apples stored in spackle buckets soften. So do beets.

Our carrots sprouted feathery tops but we ate them all before they had a chance to grow hairy rootlets. Keeping an eye on the potatoes means spotting white shoots before they get leggy.

Newspaper-wrapped cabbage stashed on a hanging shelf made of an old window screen benefitted from the cellar’s cold this year, and shows only a little spoilage on outer leaves. Peel those away and a lovely light green to white cabbage resides within.

In past times, calculating how much to store and when to use it made the difference between comfort and hardship. Visits to the cellar and an eagle eye on the pantry storage constituted good housekeeping.

These days we look at the “best used by” or “sell-by” dates on packages. My onions don’t have a best-used-by date on their golden cheeks but they show signs that it’s time to use them or convert them to another useful form. Unlike earlier times, the present offers alternatives, like artificial freezing—electrically generated cold vs. natural outdoor cold—to preserve some foods past their nature-imposed best-used-by date.

So I’ll knock off the onion’s green sprouts and pretend they are scallions, then I’ll slice up the rest of onion and package it in the freezer for future and convenient use.

I could even caramelize it and stash a canning jar-full in the fridge to add to whatever dish might benefit from it.

Or I could make onion jam for savory meat or cheese sandwiches, or to spread with cream cheese on crackers for an appetizer.

The onions aren’t spoiled—yet. A truly spoiled onion sends a clear stinky, slimy message of “please compost me.”

We’re so reliant on dates stamped on groceries that sometimes I think we are thrown off by food that doesn’t need or come with a date. Food trapped in tin, cardboard, plastic, or glass, all invisible to the eye or undetectable by smell, does need a date. (You’d think I’d be better at dating my canned tomatoes or jelly jars.)

A friend of mine had a roommate, however, who used to throw out any eggs remaining after a week in the fridge because she was convinced that they had gone by. The poor soul never had a chance to see a hen lay a clutch of a dozen or more eggs that she intended to hatch but which took her a week or more to assemble, eggs that not only didn’t go bad but which, employing egg-wisdom,

knew how to wait until the whole clutch was ready to become chicks. At any event, had she opened a truly bad egg, she’d know right away. Bad eggs look very funny and/or smell awful.

The problem with stamped-on dates is that they are mostly invented by the manufacturers guided by some assumptions, and, I fervently hope, testing, and are meant to suggest to customers that the food is at peak quality before the expiration date, not that it is poisonous to eat it afterwards.

There are no legal, standardized guidelines to these recommendations.

The food we really need to pay attention to, according to consumer experts, are deli meats, unpasteurized dairy products, ready-to-eat refrigerated foods, and hot dogs and sausages that aren’t fully cooked. Even so, some of the best cheeses in the world are made from unpasteurized milk and travelers to a foreign country reveling in the flavor of country cheese, freak out at the idea of eating unpasteurized milk cheeses. Bear in mind that generally the longer a cheese is aged, the less it poses danger. That wouldn’t be true of sliced baloney.

You can safely consume most packaged food for weeks or months after the date. Everything else tends to get moldy, or slimy and smelly. If I see blue

spots on cheddar, I slice it off. I scrape off a film of mold on jam stored in the cupboard and forge ahead.

Humans had strategies around spoilage for millennia. I read in early cookbooks about testing an egg by putting it in water: a rotten egg floats and a good one sinks. Historically, cookbooks recommended a bath in vinegar to clean up a piece of meat that was sliding into slime-dom. Gotta say, I wouldn’t try that with modern meat that comes from goodness-knowswhere but I would venture it with home-grown.

We waste so much food because we can’t distinguish between good or bad, and sell-by dates foster mistrust. Here is a website you can visit to advise you on home storage: savethefood.com, a public service campaign sponsored by the National Resources Defense Council and the Ad Council.

Buying fresh, cooking from scratch, and keeping house saves us money and worry, don’t you think?

Sandy Oliver is a food historian who gardens, cooks, and writes on Islesboro.

www.workingwaterfront.com . may 2022

19

Cranberry Report

Poetry sprouts from shift into spring Inaction, distraction, and other rhyming words

By Barbara Fernald THE BUSY SEASON on the island begins. Lobster boats are being launched after their winter on dry land and the harbor starts to fill with familiar names and colors. All around the island stacks of lobster traps, either new or repaired, are ready to hit the water in the weeks to come, accompanied by bundles of freshly painted buoys.

Lobster fishermen do not lack direction at this time of year. After two years of isolation, COVID fears, masks, waiting for vaccines, and scrambling to find at-home tests, pandemic numbers seem to be heading in the right direction.

In the before times, I would have been flat out busy making jewelry for summer galleries by now. Today I timidly approach my work for the first time in two years. I’ve lost my focus and I get easily discouraged when my ADD tendencies kick in and I can’t sit still for more than half an hour.

I’ve heard others express the same kind of feelings so I don’t feel alone in this. Most of my COVID anxieties have abated, only to be replaced by anxiety about the war in Ukraine and if we are on the verge of a third world war.

Life is still weird and I’m tired of feeling weird. I’m trying some different approaches to stimulate my creativity. To get myself out of a writing rut I decided to write a pantoum. I don’t write much poetry, but when I do, I like its easy-to-follow confines.

Here is the simplest definition I could find for this poetry form: “Each quatrain of a pantoum follows an ABAB rhyme scheme with lines that are eight to twelve syllables long. The second and fourth lines of the first stanza become first and third lines of the next stanza.”

So, you write your first four-line stanza, and then you need only come up with a second and fourth line for the next stanza. How to end it? Just use your original first and third lines as the second and last in the last stanza.

Writing a pantoum can take you in a direction you didn’t know you were going but you end up right back where you started. I encourage you to try it if you just can’t get going on the next right thing. It’s fun! And can’t we all use a little more of that, now?

April Pantoum 2022 It takes me forever to get around to things, Tomorrow could, as well, feel the same.

I keep searching for some kind of creative wings.

New artwork to bear my name?

Tomorrow could as well feel the same, and the calendar now says it’s spring.

New artwork to bear my name?

I start making silver beads to string.

And the calendar now says it’s spring.

I sure hope I can find some direction.

I start making silver beads to string.

It feels strange after two years of inaction.

I sure hope I can find some direction.

Fickle weather! The spring backdrop in Maine It feels strange after two years of inaction.

My mind fixates on news from Ukraine.

Fickle weather! The spring backdrop in Maine, As Bruce works outside on his gear,

My mind fixates on news from Ukraine Next week will be cold again, I hear.

As Bruce works outside on his gear In my studio thoughts flow in and out Next week will be cold again, I hear Artistically, I’m having my doubts.

In my studio thoughts flow in and out, In my garden there are crocuses and mud.

Artistically, I’m having my doubts, Yet look! Might that tree branch have buds?

In my garden there are crocuses and mud.

It’s an in-between weird time of year.

Yet look! Might that tree branch have buds?

The time for pea planting draws near.

It’s an in-between weird time of year.

Winter is over whether I’m ready or not The time for pea planting draws near, I need a more productive train of thought.

Winter is over whether I’m ready or not.

I keep searching for my creative wings.

I need a more productive train of thought.

It takes me forever to get around to things.

Barbara Fernald lives, writes, and makes jewelry on Islesford (Little Cranberry Island). She may be reached at fernald244@gmail.com.

Guest Column

Island housing squeezes working people Year-round, summer populations must work together

By Emma Fernald

the different populations depend on each other, I can put it into a simple metaphor. The year-round ANYONE WHO HAS lived, summered, or visited people are the car, and the summer people are the an island off the coast of Maine would agree that gas. Without gas, a car can’t drive, and without a car they are very special. They are incredibly beautiful, there is no need for gas.

We all depend on each other to keep this island there is a strong sense of community, and they are physically separated from the chaos of crowds and going. I am fearful of what the future of Maine islands looks like due to the lack of affordable housing. From cars on the mainland.

Though most people see living on an island as idyllic, the people in my own community, and stories I have there are challenges that come with this lifestyle and heard from other islands, it is teetering on being impossible for year-round people to find permanent, one of the biggest is finding affordable housing. affordable places to call home.

Islands have limited resources making There has been a lot of dialogue it very difficult to have everyone’s about this issue from the young needs met. Our islands have people We need to start people on the Cranberries who are from all economic backgrounds. In the trying to come up with creative winter, we have lobstermen, carpenters, having some solutions to this problem. We teachers, postal workers, caretakers, uncomfortable have a housing trust, but it has an people who work in the town office, and more. In the summer, the populaconversations as a income cap and many convenants that are based on the county’s tion triples from the wave of seasonal community… income. islanders and vacationers.

It is expensive to live on an People have lots of different opinions island. You have to pay $18 just about the change in seasons and what and who they bring. All I have to offer is my own to leave and return to the Cranberries. In order to keep up with the cost of living on the island, we yearperspective.

When I think about the island I live on, Little round people have to work overtime, which in turn Cranberry (Islesford), and who lives here and how bumps us out of our county’s income cap.

Here we are, left in an in-between of not being able to qualify for help, while also not being able to afford any of the land or houses that come onto the market. Year-round people are not going to be able to contend with people seeking summer homes.

We need to start having some uncomfortable conversations as a community to figure out a solution that will help our islands and all who inhabit them.

How can we fairly redistribute resources so that we can all continue to live together as a community?

This could look like a lot of different things, maybe a person with a surplus of land could sell off an acre to a year-round resident to build on, or if a seasonal person is only coming for a few weeks a year, making their home available for rent to a year-round resident.

I don’t have a perfect solution, but I think this is an issue worth putting a lot of time and thought into.

Unfortunately, if we don’t, I am afraid this island will only be occupied in the summer months.

We need each other. Community is the most important thing when it comes to island living. Let’s take care of our people so that we can all continue living on these islands together.

Emma Fernald is a multi-generational resident of Little Cranberry Island. She is a potter and sternman on her father’s lobster boat.

20

The Working Waterfront . may 2022

Field Notes

Navigating change focuses on relationships Institute’s Fellows program boosts hope for future

By Julia Bachelder FOR MAINLANDERS LIKE myself, a 15-minute ferry ride to Chebeague Island is a novel way to start a Thursday morning.

The parking fee and the shuttlebus ride? Economic and logistical challenges faced by islanders every day, but a welcome change from my morning routine working from home in Portland.

Throw in the opportunity to tag along with the Island Institute’s ten Island Fellows as they gathered for their retreat? As a new staff member, this was a coveted invitation on a chilly but sunny March morning.

We were greeted at Stone Pier and taken on a bus tour lead by Eliza Jane Adams, board member of the Chebeague Rec Center and advisor to our Island Fellow, Kiran Grewal, who is serving in her second year on Chebeague.

Having grown up in Yarmouth, I’ve been to Chebeague probably half a dozen times. But seeing the island from Eliza’s perspective, and in the company of our Fellows, was a vastly different experience than, say,

enjoying happy hour on the porch at the Chebeague Inn. The Island Fellows program, in its 23rd year, places recent college graduates in island or remote coastal communities for two years. They serve the communities on a project basis, helping tackle a particular challenge.

No two islands are alike, and Fellows help in different areas. It could be staffing the rec center like Kiran, working in the town office, or coordinating clean energy projects. Coming from all over the country, the Fellows bring unique perspectives to their communities and motivation to make meaningful impact.

Chatting with each of them left me with renewed optimism in the face of increasing threats to Maine’s island and coastal communities.

I listened to the Fellows’ conversations throughout the day, and side discussions centered around exchanging insight from each of their Islands. Part of the visit was a presentation by Donna Damon from the Chebeague historical society. The Fellows seemed equally enthralled by the presentation and several mentioned a desire to connect with their island’s historical society.

The history major in me was thrilled to see this generation get excited about preserving Maine’s past.

The visit also allowed time to chat with community members, many of whom are engaged regularly with the Island Institute. A series of virtual community conversations have allowed islanders the opportunity to connect with the Institute and voice their concerns and opinions. It’s become a fantastic way for us to hear from residents and know where we can plug in and support these communities.

We’ve learned that one of the most serious challenges to life on Chebeague—and many of our other coastal communities—is affordable housing. Families eager to move to or stay on the island are finding it increasingly difficult, as housing is scarce and easy solutions elusive.

We’re working to help Chebeague find a solution that works for their community and share what we learn from that island with others.

To my delight, our visit was extended by an hour when the bus that transported us to the Rec was needed to shuttle students home from

school before returning us to the ferry. An inconvenience, perhaps, but also an example of islanders’ ability to troubleshoot—and an opportunity for a windy but beautiful walk out to Little Chebeague.

I reflected on the visit and my many takeaways, foremost of which were the parting words from Donna: you can’t control growth and change, but you can change how you treat each other. I’ve found this to be a grounding philosophy at the Island Institute.

Our unbridged island and coastal communities aren’t resistant to change but how we work together—as individuals and organizations—will determine how we succeed in the future.

Julia Bachelder is a philanthropy advocate with the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront.

She may be reached at jbachelder@ islandinstitute.org.

Fathoming

Unpacking lobstering’s windfall year Dollar value set record, but questions remain

By Sam Belknap THE CLOSEST I HAVE come to regretting giving up my lobster license was this past summer. My father’s still an active fisherman, and as we had a beer and looked out at our wharf in Round Pond, he told me the boat price for lobsters. I was shocked! I will spare you the dollar value out of respect for our local harvesters and buyers, but it was significant.

As it turns out, this was the case for the industry along the entire coast last year. A few weeks ago, we learned from the Department of Marine Resources that Maine’s lobster industry set a record for the value of the state’s iconic fishery, netting harvesters about $725 million dollars in 2021.

This value shatters the previous record set in 2016 of $541 million dollars by 34%. What is more, the increase in value was not driven by an increase in the number of pounds landed. While the 108 million pounds landed in 2021 was up from 2020’s 97 million pounds—the lowest poundage landed in about a decade—it was down about 19% (approximately 24 million pounds) from 2016’s record of 132.6 million pounds.

This means harvesters were seeing about $2 more per pound of lobster

landed than they ever have before. most from this past year’s increased This is in large part due to the amazing value. Did we see an increase over previous years in landings job lobster dealers and value in the winter, indihave done over the last cating that some of the larger decade to create and Did we see an boats fishing offshore did open new markets for increase over well? Did the smaller inshore Maine lobster, both before and in response previous years fishing boats capitalize on good weather and abundant to the current pandemic.

But fuel and bait prices in landings and shedders or new shell lobsters during the summer and fall? were also up, and as we value in the These are the types of quesall know, inflation has winter? tions that fascinate me and reared its ugly head and drive my wife crazy. Just give knocked back the buying me some time, and I will power of the dollar. Even with these corrections, Maine’s lobster circle back with some answers for you. fishery, and the men and women that However, these questions tell us about break their backs to harvest these deli- the past, and I want to know about the cious crustaceans, still had a banner year. future, as my friend the stockbroker is As a student of the fishery, its history, happy to remind me: “Past profits do and cultural importance to the state, I not predict future returns.”

Patrick Keliher, Commissioner of could spend countless hours investigating this year’s landings numbers. By the Department of Marine Resources, breaking down the landings by port, I hinted at this in his comments following could start to get a sense of how this the release of this year’s landing windfall was spread out along the numbers. When he spoke of 2021 as coast, although many of you can prob- “one for the books,” he also acknowlably speak to this by the number of edged that there were still significant challenges facing the industry, specifinew trucks you see in local driveways!

When I also have the chance to cally from federal regulations intended look at how these landings came in to protect the endangered North across the calendar year, I could start Atlantic right whale.

For those of you who have read to learn a bit more about what types of harvesters may have benefitted the my columns before, you know I have

immense appreciation for the lobster fishery that raised me. I believe, truly and passionately, that the fishery can continue what it has done for more than a century—adapt to deal with whatever challenges it faces, be they from climate change, federal regulations, global market forces, or the compounding challenge of all those and more.

For now, I am left with one significant question, and perhaps it is the most important question of all: How? How is the fishery going to take advantage of this current windfall and invest in its capacity to be more than profitable, but to be truly resilient for decades to come? How this question is answered will set the course for our coast, and I look forward to playing some small part in the answer.

Sam Belknap is a senior community development officer with the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront. He serves as strategic lead of the Institute’s blue economy and clean energy teams. He may be reached at sbelknap@islandinstitute.org.

www.workingwaterfront.com . may 2022

21

In Plain Sight

Even schooners relied on tugs Capt. Bill Abbott collection featured in event

By Kevin Johnson

This photograph is from the Captain William Abbott Collection THE PHOTO accompanying this at the Penobscot Maine Museum in month’s column shows the Ross Towing Searsport. Capt. Abbott spent 50 years Co. tug Walter Ross with a four-master guiding vessels into port, notably in tow down the Penobscot River, through the challenging waters of seen from the Stockton Springs shore, Penobscot Bay and River. He was a off Verona about three miles above graduate of Maine Maritime Academy, Fort Point. Blue Hill is barely visible the founder of the Penobscot Bay & through the haze in the background. A River Pilots Association, and a mentor to countless port pilots. fish weir is seen at lower left.

He was also an avid Although we think of collector of photographs tugboats guiding large and was known to spin a combustion-powered good yarn. When Abbott cargo vessels and tankers passed away in 2014, he into and out of ports, Tugs would tow left his treasured collecthey played a vital role several sailing tion to the Penobscot in the era of commercial Marine Museum where schooners. Tugs would vessels at a time it is being digitized and tow several sailing vessels up or down the preserved. at a time up or down the During the month Penobscot River.

Penobscot River. of April, the Camden Before ship captains, Public Library will host pilots, and tugboats were the exhibit Up River: efficiently connected by Selections from the modern communication systems, pilots might wait for ships at Captain Bill Abbott Collection in the Port Clyde on the peninsula outside Picker Room Gallery, presented by the Rockland. When a vessel entered Penobscot Marine Museum.

The exhibit is part of the library’s Penobscot Bay, pilots would race out partnership with to meet the ship to offer their services; long-standing the first to arrive would get the job of PMM to highlight Maine’s rich maritime history in April as it celebrates guiding the vessel.

This image from the Captain William Abbott Collection at the Penobscot Marine Museum shows a schooner being towed by a tug.

“Maritime Month.” The exhibit was researched and curated by PMM Volunteer Liz Fitzsimmons and will return to the PMM campus for the summer season.

The exhibit will be complemented by a narrated slideshow event on Zoom, presented by Capt. David Gelinas on Tuesday, April 26, at 6:30 p.m. Gelinas will discuss the history of the Pen Bay pilots and how Maine’s state pilotage

system is practiced on Penobscot Bay. He will also share stories about Abbott, who mentored Gelinas when he was new to the work.

For more information about the Penobscot Marine Museum’s photography collections, see penobscotmarinemuseum.org/ photography-collections/.

Observer

Music to be melancholy by

Oldies show stirs memories of awkward teen years

By Phil Crossman WHENEVER I CAN listen and do whatever else I’m doing simultaneously, I tune in to At the Hop on WERU-FM (89.9) on Saturday afternoons. Host Rick Foster’s regard for the music and for those of us he supposes are listening, his ironic consideration of the mood and the music, are perfectly conducive.

As you might suspect—those of you not already in the know—the show features music from the 1950s and 1960s, those memorable years when I struggled to come to grips with my awkward teenage self, with my insecurities, with my inability to dance without hurting someone—certainly her, sometimes both of us—or play basketball— sometimes them, always me—when, in fact, those were what I wanted more than anything to do and do well.

I wanted to stroll confidently into the old town hall, which doubled as the gym, during those Friday night record hops and bask in the warm anticipation of all those girls who were trying to appear nonchalant while

Clearly, I was equipped to do those secretly hoping I would sweep them off their feet to jitterbug, twist, watusi, or things, to be that kid. I was only 14 but maybe—be still my heart—even hold 6 very long feet tall.

The problem, though, manifest in my them tight and waltz.

I wanted to dance like my classmate inability to even walk upright safely, let Joe White. Instead I lingered in the alone dance or play basketball, was that 12 short months earlier, in shadows near the entrance 1957, I’d been only 5-feet trying to screw up the tall and growing a foot in courage to ask just once, a year, through no choice just one of them, to dance, I wanted to of my own, was a struggle, at some point during the dance like my one I could do nothing long night. about except go along for I wanted to dribble, classmate Joe the ride. sure-footed and confident, White. Instead Apparently a message downcourt while opposing players, double-teaming I lingered in the traveling effectively 5 feet from head to toe was me, tried in vain to keep shadows… routine but traveling 6 feet up, then leap gracefully between the same extremthrough the air and stuff ities was like calling to the the ball in the basket. moon. It was a rough ride.

I wanted to play like At The Hop stirs all sorts of things Larry Hopkins. Instead, while eliciting oohs and aahs from strangers when I first within me, certainly melancholy, but came on court, towering over my five mustn’t there be something else? I teammates and over the opposing team, mean, melancholy is very close to it soon became apparent that I, the tallest sadness, and sadness is undeniably boy on the court, was the only second- manifest off and on during those few hours between 3 and 5 p.m. as I string player in our six man team.

remember watching other guys do well what I couldn’t do at all.

But if all I got out of it was sadness, does it seem likely I’d listen? No, surely I’d opt out, find something else to do— but I don’t. It’s irresistible.

If I’m in my shop I’m nearly always singing along—singing well I’m told by those who recognize my condition for what it is and are concerned. If I’m driving, it’s with volume up and windows down, while Buddy Holly sings “That’ll be the Day” or “Peggy Sue.” Sometimes though, during those rides, I should really pull over and get a hold of myself for the sake of others as when Johnny Tillotson sings “Without You.” I’ve heard it said that melancholy is not a good thing for someone my age but I’m only vulnerable on Saturdays between 3 and 5 p.m. The rest of the week I’m fine.

Phil Crossman lives on Vinalhaven where he serves on the town select board.

22

The Working Waterfront . may 2022

Art of the Waterfront

Maurice Freedman’s Stonington pier A moment in fishing history captured in paint

By Carl Little

T

he town of Stonington’s fish pier has a Facebook page. In addition to informational posts, the page features photos of the pier and its surroundings taken by visitors. There are views down Main Street, a shot of William Muir’s monument to local stonecutters, and a study of colorful lobster buoys. The latter image underscores Stonington’s status as one of the most active lobstering ports in the country, if not the world.

Maurice Freedman’s painting Stonington Pier brings to life this center of fishing activity in an earlier era, the 1950s. The 30-by-40-inch oil on canvas offers the full range of marine enterprise, from a fisherman cutting fish on the left, through lobster traps in the middle, to net menders on the right.

Given the period, observes Penobscot Marine Museum curator Ben Fuller, the fish are likely cod, “which would be split for drying or at least cleaned for sale.” Inshore dragging would have been the harvesting method. “Indeed,” writes Fuller, “the gents to the right would be repairing or working on the net.”

The double-ended object in the center of the painting, Stonington ocean ecologist Ted Ames believes, might be a fish keeler used for cleaning fish. As he explains: “One end of the keeler would be set perpendicular to the side of a fish pen with the other end over the combing on the side of the boat. Fish would be tossed into the keeler and dressed (cut and gutted), then tossed into a pen or the hold, if it had one. Mine

Maurice Freedman (1904-1985), Stonington Pier, 1954, oil on canvas, 30 by 40 inches. Courtesy Greenhut Galleries.

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www.workingwaterfront.com . may 2022 had a solid plywood bottom with the end on one side fastened a couple inches off the bottom, so the innards would slide out over the side of the boat.

“The one in the painting has slats nailed across the bottom, so the offal would slide out onto to deck and have to be hosed out through a scupper.”

Freedman (1904-1985) is considered an American modernist, often listed with such contemporaries as Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, and Milton Avery.

He is closest to Hartley: The simplified trees off to the left, the faceless fishermen, and the length of rope in the foreground might have been painted by the Lewiston-born artist.

Like Hartley and company, Freedman was exposed to modern art early on, studying in Paris with André Lhote and Fernand Léger. According to New York Times critic John Russell, he learned from his teachers “how to draw with a loaded brush, how to handle rich and strong color without letting it get out of hand, and how to give individuality to the objects of the everyday.”

All three lessons play out in Stonington Pier where the paint is applied with verve, the color scheme is bold but within reason, and each element is delineated with care yet with freedom of delivery.

In an interview with his son Joel, Freedman described how being sensitive to “what’s there” was “like a door that suddenly opens and then you slowly walk in.” Once inside, the painter would subsequently review the colors and forms around him and set out to discover the logic of the scene. “All this is so reassuring to your life,” Freedman noted, “that you go on living because it’s so beautiful.”

The same goes for the viewer of Freedman’s Stonington Pier. We enter this world he saw and painted and find a kind of comfort in the tableau: men hard at work, a bounty of fish, where every object is meaningful.

Carl Little’s latest book is Mary Alice Treworgy: A Maine Painter.

23

Acadia algae is recovering ACADIA NATIONAL PARK’S lakes can tell scientists a lot about the health of the environment.

New research shows that regulations to reduce human-caused sulfur in the atmosphere have made a difference for these freshwater bodies, though climate change may slow that recovery.

Research from the 1990s showed that humancaused atmospheric pollution in the 20th century caused the acidification of lakes across eastern North America, which began in the 1940s.

Acidification of lakes causes the decrease of dissolved organic carbon in lakes, which impacts lake ecology and makes water appear clearer.

Since the Clean Air Act amendments were enacted in 1990, the northeastern U.S. has received significantly less atmospheric acid depositions.

However, climate change can also impact lake water clarity, as rising temperatures drive the production and release of dissolved organic carbon, while shifts in precipitation caused by climate change also can bring in more organic matter.

Researchers from the University of Maine and the National Park Service wanted to see how these changing acidification dynamics were affecting the ecosystems in different types of lakes in Maine. In an article published in the Journal of Paleolimnology, scientists reconstructed historical pigment records of algae and diatoms—a particular type of algae with a silica shell, which is usually negatively impacted by acidification—from two lakes in Acadia National Park, Jordan Pond and Seal Cove Pond.

Despite being close geographically, the two lakes are very different. Jordan Pond is considered a “clear-water” or oligotrophic lake, meaning its waters are relatively low in plant nutrients with abundant oxygen at its depths. Seal Cove Pond is a “brown-water” or mesotrophic lake with a moderate amount of nutrients.

“Across North America and northern and central Europe, there is an ongoing trend toward ‘brownification’ of lakes,” says Rachel Fowler, who served as the principal investigator of the project for her Ph.D. in the University of Maine Climate Change Institute. “Several studies have described ecological changes in clear- vs. brown-water lakes in response to reductions in acid deposition and browning, and our paleolimnological study provides longterm context for interpreting those changes.”

The researchers took sediment cores from the deepest parts of both ponds and analyzed the concentrations of different types of algae and the way they varied over time. The results showed the algae in the lakes responded differently over time to acidification. Despite their differences, both ecosystems are recovering since environmental regulations have reduced the amount of atmospheric sulfur in the area, with many types of algae returning where they had once been pushed out by acidification.

“An exciting takeaway is that this study illustrates the effectiveness of the Clean Air Act amendments.

We can see signs of recovery in Jordan Pond and Seal Cove Pond,” Fowler said.

However, the results also suggested that clearwater lakes like Jordan Pond are more sensitive to climate warming than brown-water lakes like Seal Cove Pond. Recovery of the algal ecosystem has been slower for Jordan Pond and may continue to be hampered by the effects of climate change.

Fowler conducted the research with Jasmine Saros, associate director of the Climate Change Institute and professor in the School of Biology and Ecology; Kate Warner, Ph.D. in ecology and environmental sciences; and Bill Gawley, biologist at Acadia National Park. The research was funded in part by a Second Century Stewardship award from Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park.

24

The Working Waterfront . may 2022

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3 WAYS TO SUPPORT MAINE’S WORKING WATERFRONT: 1 - Online at giving.islandinstitute.org 2 - Call the Island Institute office at (207) 594-9209 ext. 132 3 - Mail your gift to: Island Institute, PO Box 648, Rockland, ME 04841 All gifts count toward membership