The Working Waterfront - Feb/Mar 2023

Towns fear, fight aquaculture expansion

Large-scale operations trigger moratoriums

By Stephen Rappaport

There’s a new war brewing along the Maine coast, and the enemy is what some perceive as the uncontrolled spread of aquaculture.

According to the Department of Marine Resources, between 2017 and 2021, aquaculture leases in Maine waters increased from about 110 to approximately 185. The total acreage encompassed by active leases increased from less than 1,300 to about 1,750—an area slightly larger than Rockland Harbor.

The region has also seen the growth of aquaculture on an “industrial scale.”

Recently, four extremely large fish farming operations—three land-based and one in the waters of Frenchman Bay off Mount Desert Island—have been proposed or are in development in eastern Maine:

• In 2018, Whole Oceans announced plans to invest $250 million to build a land-based recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) and grow 11 million pounds of Atlantic salmon annually on the site of a former Bucksport paper mill. The project

received approval from the State and town but, except for some preparation work construction has yet to begin.

• Also in 2018, Nordic Aquafarms announced plans to build a 66-million pound salmon RAS in Belfast. Nordic’s plans, approved both by the state Department of Environmental Protection and the

city, generated substantial local opposition and the project is mired in litigation.

• In Jonesport, the Netherlands-based Kingfish Maine has received state and local approval for plans to build a $110 million RAS that could ultimately raise more than 18 million pounds of

Bees crucial to blueberries in good shape Damage by Florida hurricane mitigated for Maine

By Sarah Craighead Dedmon

Honeybees play an integral role in the pollination of Maine’s wild blueberries, and most of them spend their winters in the South. So when news broke that

Hurricane Ian destroyed upwards of 150,000 Florida hives last September, many Mainers wondered—will the blueberries be OK?

The answer is yes, says Lincoln Sennett, owner of Maine’s largest beekeeping company, Swan’s Honey.

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“We actually winter our bees in south Georgia,” said Sennett, speaking from the American Beekeeping Federation Conference held in Florida last month. “That topic of the hive losses has come up here. There are people struggling, but it won’t impact blueberry pollination.”

“And we lost a big contract in California because we couldn’t split the bees,” said Alderman. “By splitting them off, that 500 hives might have made 1,000 or 1,500 hives in just a few weeks.”

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Hurricane Ian, a Category 4 storm with sustained winds greater than 155 mph, passed over 15 percent of the nation’s hives, delivering financial losses and wreaking havoc for beekeepers. Steve Alderman, who in years past delivered his bees from Florida to Washington County each spring, now assists a Florida beekeeper who lost 500 hives in the storm.

A beekeeper’s ability to generate more hives through splitting is one reason Maine’s blueberry crop is safe and sound— pollination won’t begin here until mid-May, leaving beekeepers plenty of time to recover.

But circumstances in California mean that not only blueberries but all of the nation’s crops will likely have enough honeybees to go around this year, even with Florida’s steep losses.

“The thing that is different this

by

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CAR-RT

Mark Brown, left, and Ron Fitzgerald working aboard the F/V Erica Jade off West Harpswell in March of 2018, dragging for scallops. The boat is owned and operated by Tom Butler. The scallop season this year ends March 30.

PHOTO: KELLI PARK

Native pollinators like the bumblebee play a large role in wild blueberry production, contributing around 40 percent of the effort.

On the record with…

Former Project Puffin director Steve Kress

Lessons from a lifetime of puffin protection

By Stephanie Bouchard

Last fall, Dr. Steve Kress, PhD, received a lifetime achievement award from the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Kress, 77, has a long list of credits to his name, but undoubtedly he is best known for the work he spent much of his career doing: restoring and managing breeding populations of Atlantic puffins and other seabirds on Eastern Egg Rock, a small island six miles from New Harbor in Knox County.

Kress founded Project Puffin 50 years ago with six puffin chicks from Canada. The populations of nesting pairs vary year to year, but in 2017, for example, there were 172. The seabird restoration techniques that he and Project Puffin staff and volunteers established are now used in seabird restoration projects around the world. The Working Waterfront talked to him about his Lifetime Achievement Award, Project Puffin, and wildlife conservation.

Working Waterfront: You retired from Project Puffin in 2019. What is your involvement now with it?

Kress: I don’t have any kind of formal arrangement, but I’m available to help in any way that people are interested in having my help. One thing that I continue to do is to teach at Hog Island [Audubon Camp]. I have two sessions coming up next summer, and I create online educational courses for the Hog Island Seabird Institute as well. And I’m writing up some research about seabirds. These are kinds of things that I enjoy doing and they seem to be still helpful.

WW: What are your thoughts on the evolving attitudes about wildlife conservation? It seems that people are more willing to champion particular animals, such as whales, but have no problem with letting other types of species go extinct.

Kress: It’s easier to identify with creatures similar to ourselves, and so even though a whale doesn’t look similar to us and lives in a foreign environment, we know that they are mammals. We know that they share all the mammalian traits and they are big and they are rare, and big and rare are very appealing things to humans. They leave us in awe.

Whales leave us in awe. I think that losing something like that—even the thought of losing something like that—and being accountable for losing that other animal, causing its extinction, is a terrible thing. To know that they’re still with us gives us hope that we can actually make a difference here even if we never see one.

I think that those kinds of things drive people to care and to have opinions and to look for action that they might take so we don’t lose yet another species on our watch.

WW: The Project Puffin story is well-known; is there something about it that isn’t as well-known?

Kress: A question that I get less now than in the beginning is why bother to save a very common species and to invest in saving common animals? I think it remains a very important question. One of the things that seabirds have shown us is that populations of animals can disappear very rapidly and in huge numbers.

WW: I remember going to Popham Beach as a child and seeing piping plovers everywhere. Now it seems like a miracle when I see them.

Kress: That’s one of the success stories in Maine. But your memories of them being super abundant

are really important because it’s hard to know when we have enough to back off of something. Certainly, when something is very common, often people aren’t paying attention to it.

WW: What are your hopes for Project Puffin going forward?

Kress: The interns on the islands have a dual role: one is to manage invasive plants and to have a presence that discourages predators from impacting the islands, and to clean up plastics and other kinds of things that wash up on the beach that aren’t good for the birds. The other role is to learn about the fisheries that are changing and learn about the effects of climate change on fish and birds. So, the interns who live on the islands now spend much of their time in these kinds of ongoing studies that are very informative about how the ocean, particularly the Gulf of Maine, is changing.

One of the very exciting things that’s changed since Project Puffin began is the technology for tracking animals. We didn’t even know where puffins went in the winter until recently. Now we are learning about where they are going.

What we do with that information is the bigger challenge that moves into political-economic decisions that people are going to have to make. It’s so exciting to see this sort of unveiling in front of our eyes and it just gets more and more amazing and more daunting because the places where they’re going are often the other ends of the world.

WW: It’s been a few weeks since you received the Lifetime Achievement Award. What are your thoughts about it?

Kress: I am very appreciative. It’s recognition that I think could help to inspire other people to do similar kinds of projects.

A recent photo of Steve Kress holding a puffin.

Kress working on Eastern Egg Rock.

‘Women Behind the Lens’ reveals new perspectives

Maine Maritime Museum exhibits three photographers

By Stephanie Bouchard

Much of the maritime industry and its history has been dominated by white men. A new photographic exhibit at Maine Maritime Museum in Bath seeks to take a look at that male-dominated legacy through the lens—literally—of three women intimately connected to it.

“Women Behind the Lens” displays together for the first time a selection of photographs by Maine photographers Emma D. Sewall (1836-1919), Josephine Ginn Banks (1863-1958), and Abbie F. Minott (1874-1944). The 50 photographs in the exhibit come from the approximately 2,000 photographs created by these three women which the museum has in its collection of 100,000 photographs.

The exhibit, said Catherine Cyr, the museum’s exhibition coordinator, “shows that we can broaden the scope and narrative of what maritime history is and how we tell maritime history.”

The photographs in the exhibit document the day-to-day work of shipbuilding in Maine at the turn of the last century and the seafaring people and communities supporting those shipyards in the Midcoast and Penobscot Bay.

Some are of places and scenes that are still recognizable today, such as of a horse taking a drink from a watering trough at the Civil War monument across from the front of the Sagadahoc Courthouse in Bath, and some detail the hard work done in shipyards and granite quarries, while others reflect privileged white domesticity.

While the photos of this trio may present their world from the perspective of women, Cyr is quick to note that it is still a perspective from a select segment of society.

“I was very cognizant that these are women of privilege,” Cyr said. “They had leisure time, they could afford a camera. But, at the same time, it is a perspective that has not necessarily been valued or really looked upon as a source of material and of wealth of knowledge.”

Emma Duncan Crooker Sewall grew up among the shipbuilding elite in Bath, and was married to one of the city’s top shipbuilders (and a candidate for vice president of the United States), Arthur Sewall. Josephine Banks was the daughter of a sea captain from Prospect who experienced transAtlantic travel aboard with her parents. And Abbie Minott was the youngest surviving child of the founder of Minott Shipyard in Phippsburg.

All three women took up photography as a hobby, but some of their photographs were published in local newspapers and even exhibited nationally and internationally. Emma Sewall received national and international awards for her photos, some of which were exhibited in Paris in some of the same exhibits that famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz exhibited in, said Cyr.

“These are just, for the most part, average women—they’re not professional photographers— who are just happening to capture both your everyday moments but also significant moments in Maine’s history.”

Some of the scenes they photographed are today quite historically important, said Cyr.

“Some of the images are so significant [because] they’re the only ones of that type and documenting certain aspects of the shipbuilding process that we have from any Maine shipyard,” she said.

This is particularly true for the shipyard photos taken by Abbie Minott.

“She had this really unique position of being able to go onto the shipyard that was just outside of her house and take photos of it being active,” said Cyr. “That’s pretty darn cool.”

“Women Behind the Lens” is on exhibit in the museum’s Crooker Gallery until early November 2023. Maine Maritime Museum is at 243 Washington Street in Bath. It’s open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $20; $18 for seniors; free for youth age 17 and younger. Admission is free for all on weekends in January, February and March. Go to www.mainemaritimemuseum.org or call 443-1316 for more information.

John Martin, Bud Staples, and Elsie Gillespie chat around the woodstove at the annual town meeting.

Gerald “Punkin” Lemoine

Levi Moulden Bud Staples

Abbie F. Minott photo of the four-masted schooner Ada F. Brown, circa 1901.

PHOTO: COURTESY MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM

This photo shot by Josephine Ginn Banks (sometime between 1900 and 1920) shows Stonington Harbor. PHOTO: COURTESY MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM

Emma D. Sewall’s photo of a "remote bay north of Phippsburg Center" (between 1883-1900).

PHOTO: COURTESY MAINE MARITIME MUSEUM

Book Reviews

Mouth-watering recipes for a cause Cookbook inspires

boldness, supports

Catch: A Maine Seafood Cookbook Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association

Review by Tina Cohen

YOU MAY THINK Maine seafood is seasonal—as if lobsters, for example, are what you can find and enjoy only in the summer months. But Maine fishermen (and the term includes women) are hearty folk, out there working hard to provide fresh seafood throughout the year.

So if you were to read this cookbook while snow is falling, don’t let the weather deter you. And there’s plenty of inspiration to find and use local “catch,” reading the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association’s Catch: A Maine Seafood Cookbook.

fisheries

The recipes are enticing and many will astonish you with creative twists and combinations you might never have imagined.

Maine seafood as exotic? The fishermen may not think of it like that, but the cooks and chefs who provided recipes for this collection are taking a bold, fresh approach. Even standard dishes like chowders, fritters, and fried fish will surprise you with innovative iterations.

But the point of this book is not to remind us how limited our culinary efforts might have been, but as a fundraiser to support those working in Maine’s seafood industry. Sales of this book help underwrite several programs MCFA offers—one that places seafood in schools and food banks, and another that connects fishermen with mental and physical health resources.

Monique Coombs, a staffer at MCFA, and Rebecca Spear, both married to commercial fishermen, wanted to create a cookbook supporting consumption

and enjoyment of Maine’s seafood. They talked to people along the coast who love to cook—whether for pleasure at home or professionally in restaurants. Their request for recipes was met with enthusiasm. They describe the cookbook as a tribute to Maine’s fishermen, and a way to benefit “healthy fisheries and vibrant fishing communities.”

Recipes are complimented by color photographs that are motivational, suggesting the outcome is well worth the effort. Whole meals can be constructed, appetizers to dessert, with mixed drinks thrown in. I’ll be trying the cocktail called “Island Time,” which, as a phrase on Vinalhaven, serves to describe a more laid-back, “mañana” approach to life.

The drink combines a coconut-flavored rum, triple sec, and pineapple and orange juices with some Caribbean spices— nutmeg and cinnamon. Oh, and could I have that with an appy of lobster and buttermilk corn fritters with remoulade, please?

A sailing adventure enjoyed vicariously

Around the world trip in 43-foot cutter recounted

Warren-White’s recent book, In Slocum’s Wake, is a recounting of his circumnavigation in the 43-foot cutter Bahati during the period 2006-2011. The book’s name gives a nod to Joshua Slocum who is credited with the first solo circumnavigation, from 18951898, in the 36-foot yawl Spray.

Warren-White is a recreational sailor out of South Freeport and the fourthgeneration sailor in his family. After reading the book, I wrote to thank him for allowing me to vicariously sail the oceans, as it was something I once seriously considered doing but never did.

trip, which was punctuated by many island stopovers and wintering in New Zealand, plus two short-notice roundtrip flights to Maine, where both his parents passed away while WarrenWhite was on his voyage.

He is generous in his credit to all who helped him prepare his vessel, which was built in 1988 in Cape Town, South Africa. Portland area yacht services and sailmakers are particularly singled out.

Next, I’d like the main dish “Maine Halibut with Three Sauces and Pickled Vegetables,” incorporating the Asian flavors of cilantro, ginger, and miso. And to finish this feast, why not some Wild Maine Blueberry Shortcake. Here, the cake is actually a buttery lemon thyme scone topped with blueberry compote, then slathered with whipped cream and blueberry syrup.

There are a few recipes calling for ingredients I wouldn’t have on hand routinely and wouldn’t likely find in the Vinalhaven grocery, like wonton wrappers, poblano peppers, or Asian fish sauce.

And while fresh-picked crabmeat can sometimes be just as difficult to come by, when you can get some, indulge! The recipes here for crab dip, crab-topped haddock baked with a blueberry sauce and finished with a sprinkle of potato chips, and crab and corn chowder with smoked shrimp sound beyond delicious.

Hungry now? Order a copy on the website mainecoastfishermen.org, or use its link to find the bookstores along the coast that stock it.

Tina Cohen is a seasonal resident of Vinalhaven.

By

Review by Bob Gerber

GARRISON KEILLOR once said something like, “We need to write because, otherwise, nobody will know who we are.” I think others write to find out who they, themselves, are. Having known Nat Warren-White since the 1960s as a casual acquaintance, I think there is a little truth for him in both these statements. He writes about becoming a flaneur, or idler of the oceans, looking for interesting islands to visit.

This is an excellent book for anyone who enjoys sailing and has ever contemplated what it might be like to sail through the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, the South Sea islands, cross the Indian Ocean, and round the Cape of Good Hope to return to Maine by crossing the Atlantic.

He sailed his vessel in a generally westerly direction, taking advantage of the trade winds as much as possible, and mentions continuous spinnaker runs of up to six days.

Besides his wife and son who were frequent crew members along the way, he had many “20 somethings” come and go to help with the hard work and keep up the energy and spirit on the

Warren-White also describes what it takes in time and money to fit out the boat and live for years on it. There is a thorough bibliography and lengthy topical index, and throughout the book he names people and places along his route that provided repair services, weather predictions, clean fuel, provisions, and the many other types of assistance a long-distance sailor would need.

A voyage that spans five years predictably has its share of disasters and neardisasters and he does not spare the reader from these. His nighttime collision with a fishing vessel in the Malacca Strait while doing a two-day solo run is probably the scariest tale and highlights the problem of sleep deprivation when piloting alone or with small crews on an ocean filled with other vessels, shipping containers that have fallen off ships, long fishing trawls, and other garbage and debris.

The casual writing style can be disconcerting to someone looking for a travelogue; Warren-White intersperses many long asides about such things as relations with crew members, lessons from his father, battles with his own depression, and his frustrating dealings with foreign customs and immigration agents.

And the map graphics could be improved. But there are lengthy descriptions of the gorgeous beaches, breath-taking waterfalls, wildlife, camaraderie with other sailors in the anchorages, and the general good-natured behavior of the South Sea islanders they encounter that welcome him and crew into their homes and lives.

Warren-White is a gregarious person who easily greets and befriends people and the descriptions of his encounters with the native islanders and other sailors are some of the most fascinating parts of the book. Again, if you never plan to do your own long-distance voyage, you can still take one with In Slocum’s Wake.

Bob Gerber is a former sailor and island-owner in the Freeport area, now residing most of the year in Eagles Mere, Penn., and experiencing sailing vicariously.

In Slocum’s Wake

Nat Warren-White Outskirts Press, Inc. (2022)

Whole meals can be constructed, appetizers to dessert, with mixed drinks thrown in.

Book Reviews

Listening to the landscape

with it, until it becomes a voice inside you and some of the boundaries between you and it dissolve.”

Many of the 32 short essays recount those conversations and subsequent voices.

Cashes Ledge, a protected “hope spot” in the Gulf of Maine.

Notes on the Landscape of Home

By Susan Hand Shetterly Down East Books

Review by Carl Little

Notes on the Landscape of Home confirms Susan Hand Shetterly’s status as one of Maine’s and this country’s finest environmental writers. Like Terry Tempest Williams, who lives nearby on the Blue Hill peninsula, Shetterly weaves personal life experience into outward-looking essays that focus in large part on nature and our interactions with it.

In the opening piece, “Children of Orion,” Shetterly offers her MO for regarding the world: “If you pay attention to the land where you live,” she writes, “…you enter into a conversation

Shetterly takes us along to some of her favorite places. There’s Little Moose Island, a 54-acre land-bridged (at low tide) retreat adjacent to the Schoodic Peninsula. A visit in late fall of “the COVID year” leads to reflections on climate change and the crucial role horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay play in the successful annual transit of birds along the Atlantic flyway.

The perambulation also inspires a charming description of a greater yellowlegs “tipping— forward and back—as if it were a pitcher of cream at a busy tea party.”

Among the creatures Shetterly celebrates are elvers, alewives, frogs and salamanders, bluefin tuna, turkey vultures, and the woodcock whose call she likens to “some sort of bizarre electrical malfunction.” She also honors forests, an apple tree, seaweed, and

A number of pieces pay homage to individuals who have made stewardship a part of their lives, among them, botanists Pam Johnson and Kate Furbish, farmer Bill Thayer, biology professor Gayle Kraus, whale disentangler Joe Howlett, writer E. B. White, and bald eagle restorer Mark McCullough.

Of special resonance are Shetterly’s remembrances of Passamaquoddy scholar Wayne Newell, who dedicated his life to preserving his people’s language.

In several pieces, Shetterly records the challenges, rewards, and sometimes setbacks to saving the land and waters. In recounting the creation of the Carter Nature Preserve in Surry she describes the ups and downs of the process, from the Blue Hill Heritage Trust accepting title to the property to the subsequent arrival of unleashed dogs, campfires, cairn-builders, and rude foragers.

Like so many of us isolated by the pandemic, Shetterly found relief in

Coastal Maine airports get funds

SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS, the ranking member of the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, announced that several Maine airports will receive a total of $14.7 million to make critical infrastructure improvements.

The funding comes from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport Improvement Program. Collins co-authors the appropriations bill that funds this program each year.

“Maine’s airports are vital pieces of our state’s transportation network that promote job creation and economic development. Throughout the state, airports play a critical role not only in carrying residents and visitors, but also in facilitating medical services for those in rural communities in emergencies when seconds count,” said Collins.

Maine airports will use the funding to support airport improvement projects, such as runways and taxiways. Among award winners are the following coastal airports:

outdoor-oriented activities, from joining a Social Distancing Bird Club (“birds are a way into the world outside ourselves”) to mapping out new gardens in her yard. The shutdown also leads to fresh riffs on literature (Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs) and art (Winslow Homer’s The Artist’s Studio in an Afternoon Fog).

One of the longer pieces, “The Map,” appears near the middle of the book, a fitting spot as it is the beating heart of the collection. Here Shetterly recounts her mother’s coming-of-age walking trip on Cape Cod following in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau who traversed the peninsula in the mid-1800s.

Thoreau is one of the guiding spirits here; he is the focus of another essay, “The Art of Sauntering” and makes other cameos in the collection. You can hear echoes of him in Shetterly’s immaculate and lyric prose as when she writes, “We’re nourished by what’s left of wildness.”

She carries on his message and spirit with panache and plentitude.

Carl Little writes about art and literature for several publications and has published several books on art in Maine and New England. He lives on Mount Desert Island.

• Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport, $650,000 to improve airport drainage and erosion control

• Brunswick Executive Airport, $147,000 to seal its taxiway pavement surface and joints

• Eastport Municipal Airport will receive $136,375 to install a runway vertical and visual guidance system

• Portland International Jetport will receive $11,249,447 to rehabilitate its runway.

• Princeton Municipal Airport will receive $60,000 to seal its apron pavement surface and joints

• Knox County Regional Airport in Owls Head will receive $600,000 to acquire snow removal equipment

• Sanford Seacoast Regional Airport will receive $150,000 to update its airport master plan.

Maine delegation wins regulatory ‘pause’ Lobster industry gets six years before new rules

MAINE’S congressional delegation has won a regulatory “pause” before new rules are implemented to further protect North Atlantic right whales.

The delay was crafted by Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and House members Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden and was included in the omnibus appropriations bill passed by Congress.

“Maine’s lobstermen and women have long demonstrated their commitment to maintaining and protecting a sustainable fishery in the Gulf of Maine,” the delegation and Gov. Janet

Mills asserted in a joint statement. “They have invested in countless precautionary measures to protect right whales, including removing more than 30,000 miles of line from the water and switching to weaker rope to prevent whales from being entangled.”

Also noted was that no right whale death has been attributed to Maine lobster gear.

“We will pursue any and all policy solutions to protect our hardworking lobstermen and women,” the statement continued. “Our provision,

which relies upon the expertise of the professionals at the Maine Department of Marine Resources, will enable our lobster fishery to continue to operate while still complying with the National Marine Fisheries Service’s most recent right whale rule.”

Specifically, the provision in the omnibus:

• Deems the current right whale rules sufficient to ensure the continued operation of the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries for six years (through Dec. 31, 2028)

• Provides that new regulations for the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries would take effect in six years (by Dec. 31, 2028)

• Authorizes a new grant program that could fund innovative gear technologies and the monitoring necessary to support the dynamic management of fisheries. Fishermen and other participants within the maritime industry would be eligible for this funding.

Essays encompass memoir, natural history, tributes.

Shetterly recounts her mother’s coming-of-age walking trip on Cape Cod following in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau…

BEES

year is that the amount of [almond] acreage that requires pollination will stay level or drop, instead of expanding,” said Sennett. “You’ll have more bees chasing fewer acres.”

The majority of the nation’s hives—2.1 million last year—are transported to California for the start of almond pollination season, usually around Valentine’s Day. As beekeeping conference attendees learned last month, a drop in almond prices against the backdrop of California’s drought means that almond production could scale back in 2023, leaving some bees looking for work.

California’s almond industry is the single largest pollination event in the nation, but Maine State Apiarist Jennifer Lund believes Maine blueberries could be the second largest, or at least in the top four. She agrees with Sennett that Maine growers won’t be at a loss for bees this year.

“We get about 50,000 hives that come up for blueberry pollination and a lot of ours do come out of Florida, but by then they will have built back up,” said Lund, also speaking from a beekeeping event in Florida, the annual meeting of the Apiary Inspectors of America.

Soon Lund’s office will begin preparations to receive those 50,000 hives for Maine’s blueberry pollination season, which begins when blueberries begin to blossom in May and lasts for about three weeks.

Native pollinators like the bumblebee also play a large role in wild blueberry production, says Lund, contributing around 40 percent of the effort. And because the bumblebee has “co-evolved” alongside the wild blueberry, unlike the honeybee which originates in Europe, the bumblebee is extremely efficient. Using a technique called “buzz pollination,” one bumblebee can fully pollinate a blueberry blossom in about two trips, whereas a honeybee might need 12.

“The bumblebee will hang upside down from the flower, then vibrate its body at a certain frequency to release the pollen and nectar, which falls on their undersides,” said Lund. “And then they bring it back to the nest.”

Tim and Lydia Beal, who co-manage Josh Pond Farm in Whiting, rent honeybees to pollinate their organic wild blueberries, but have also supplemented with bumblebees in the past. They would do it again if honeybees became scarce, but from a business perspective, honeybees make the most sense.

“With honeybees, you can get this large volume of pollinators,” said Lydia. “Bumblebees are

more equipped to get into the blossom than the honeybee and very efficient, but you don’t rent them, you buy them, and they are very expensive,” she added.

“You really see an uptick in pounds per acre with honeybee pollination,” said Tim, who estimates honeybees increase Josh Pond’s per-acre production by as much as 33 percent.

Dr. John Gaddis, who manages his family’s Downeast blueberry land, rents Swan’s honeybees to pollinate his berries and agrees that honeybees increase his crop.

“Some people don’t want to spend the money but those who do usually find that they get a better yield, the bees pay for themselves,” said Gaddis.

If he couldn’t get honeybees from Swan’s, Gaddis says he’d work hard to find them somewhere else, because they’re superior pollinators. But he doesn’t have to worry this year, says Sennett.

“There are going to be plenty of bees that will be happy to get a pollination contract because some of those bees aren’t going to get one in California,” Sennett said. “Overall, I’d say the total number of colonies is holding good now. Beekeepers are getting better at managing and mitigating stressors for honeybees, and things are looking positive.”

Farnsworth marks 75th, announces exhibits

Hopper, Wyeth, Katz all represented

The Farnsworth Art Museum has announced its 2023 schedule of major exhibitions in celebration of the museum’s 75th anniversary.

From Feb. 11 through June 17 the museum will open a series of important shows that will transform every gallery and feature beloved favorites, as well as dozens of new acquisitions to the collection.

Exhibitions feature: an exploration of Rockland by Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, a collection of Andrew Wyeth’s watercolors traveling to Maine from Japan, and a new mural by Rachel Gloria Adams and Ryan Adams.

In preparation, the Farnsworth will close its galleries and reopen on Saturday, Feb. 11 with the first two of these exhibitions: “The Farnsworth at 75: New Voices from Maine in American Art,” and “Maine in America 2023: A Celebration of the Alex Katz Foundation.”

Drawn from the museum’s collection, Farnsworth at 75 is a two-part exhibition. The first part reexamines a selection of objects that underscore Maine’s important artistic contributions to American art during its early defining moment, and allows viewers to explore how a collection comes into being.

Founded as a bequest of Lucy Copeland Farnsworth in honor of her father, today the museum’s collection includes more than 15,000 works by approximately 1,300 artists, as well as two historic sites—the Farnsworth Homestead and the Olson House. The Farnsworth’s collection is nationally recognized as one of the finest repositories of American paintings.

New Voices from Maine in American Art unveils new acquisitions to the museum’s collection from the last two years and offers a window to the future of

art in Maine. Organized thematically, the new acquisitions revisit histories, narratives, and myths about the sea, industry, identity, community, and both real and imagined places.

Artwork—in all media and dating from the 20thand 21st-centuries—offers new perspectives when viewed in dialogue with beloved favorites.

“Founded as a small art museum, the Farnsworth of today serves a national audience with its outstanding collection, and plays a vital role in our community, our state, and the nation,” said Christopher J. Brownawell, the museum’s director. “We’re planning a spectacular year—one that tells our incredible story and will delight and inspire.”

The Farnsworth Art Museum will also celebrate the Alex Katz Foundation for its years of philanthropic contributions of artwork by emerging artists. “Maine in America 2023: A Celebration of the Alex Katz Foundation” showcases a selection of the more than 60 works the foundation has given to the Farnsworth.

On May 27, the museum opens “Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth: Rockland, Maine,” which runs

through Aug. 27. One of Hopper’s most productive summers occurred in 1926 in Rockland; Wyeth, on the other hand, found inspiration in the town’s architecture, schooners, and environs for decades. The exhibition features the artists’ watercolors depicting places throughout Rockland, a city much loved by both of these prominent American artists.

On June 17, the Farnsworth opens “Alvaro’s World: Andrew Wyeth and the Olson House,” at the Wyeth Center, with works from the Marunuma Art Park in Asaka, Japan that are rarely seen in the U.S.

Also, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary, the museum invites Portland-based artists Rachel Gloria Adams and Ryan Adams to create a new mural on Museum Street, extending art beyond the interior galleries. The pair will combine their signature styles of vibrant colors, “gem” (or geometric) letters, and flowers to paint a tailormade mural for Rockland.

For more information regarding Farnsworth programming, or to sign up for the museum’s newsletter, visit www.farnsworthmuseum.org

“Lake,” 2020, by Erin Johnson

yellowtail annually in a facility on the shores of Chandler Bay. Some local residents have filed suit to overturn the town’s permit approval.

• In 2021, the Norway-based American Aquafarms applied to lease two 15-pen, 60-acre sites in Frenchman Bay to grow as much as 66 million pounds of Atlantic salmon annually. The company also purchased a one-time Stinson Seafood Company cannery in the Gouldsboro village of Prospect Harbor to use as a nursery and processing facility. Last winter, the Department of Marine Resources rejected the company’s application and the project is on hold, if not dead. The ferocious opposition the plan engendered, and the unrest over the three large RAS projects, continues unabated.

Recently, several towns have considered adopting 180-day moratoriums on large new aquaculture operations to allow voters to consider ordinances regulating these projects on shore as well as in tidal and sub-tidal waters. The proposed moratoriums and ordinances largely followed a model from the Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation, a Portland-based nonprofit formed about four years ago by opponents to a proposed 40-acre shellfish aquaculture lease in Maquoit Bay, between South Freeport and Brunswick. So far, at least eight eastern Maine towns have voted to put a hold on new “industrial scale” aquaculture projects: Addison, Beals, Cutler, Machiasport, and Roque Bluffs, all in Washington County; and Gouldsboro, Winter Harbor, and Penobscot, all in Hancock County.

The ordinance defines “industrial-scale” as “a commercial facility on, in, or over Maine’s coastal waters (including submerged lands and intertidal lands) for the culture of finfish in nets, pens, or other enclosures or for the suspended culture of any other marine organism, that … occupies an aggregate surface area…greater than five acres.”

Gouldsboro has twice extended its 180-day moratorium, most recently last November, while the planning board labors over a comprehensive aquaculture

ordinance. The latest draft runs to 16 pages.

Gouldsboro resident Becky O’Keefe supports a town ordinance, though she would limit it to finfish operations. She said DMR doesn’t do enough to protect local interests during the leasing process and that there’s “a thumb on the scale” favoring applicants, in part because of pressure on DMR to encourage economic development.

“American Aquafarms felt like a giant walking into our community that would crush us,” O’Keefe said. “Many of us did not trust the DEP or DMR would be well funded, well-resourced enough” to challenge the company’s science and experts.

Acceptance of a moratorium hasn’t been universal. Last summer, voters in Lubec rejected the proposal, and Jonesport voters rejected a moratorium by a ratio of better than 2:1. Hancock, Stonington, and Deer Isle all discussed moratoriums but have not put the issue before voters.

One question confronting towns is whether they have any legal authority to control aquaculture or whether that is entirely within the state’s jurisdiction. Protect Maine has been telling the towns they do. DMR has warned the towns they do not.

On its website, the foundation contends that while DMR may have sole authority over aquaculture leases, towns have “broad authority” under the “home rule” doctrine to regulate activities—including aquaculture both on shore and within the town’s waters— occurring within their boundaries.

“The towns are being misled into believing they have the resources or authority to effectively manage aquaculture in state waters,” Sebastian Belle, Executive Director of the Maine Aquaculture Association, said recently. “This could cost towns millions over the years” in legal fees and the expense of staff needed to administer the complex provisions of the ordinance.

And, Belle said, it’s unnecessary. Towns already have an “elevated” position under DMR’s lease rules. “I can’t recall any lease that’s been granted where the town objected,” he said.

ReVision wins $300,000 clean energy grant

Workforce,

training efforts

targeted

THE MAINE Governor’s Energy Office has awarded ReVision Energy a Clean Energy Partnership Workforce Development grant.

ReVision Energy, an employee-owned solar company with offices in South Portland and Montville, will be awarded $300,000 to advance workforce development and training for the clean energy field.

Funded by the Maine Jobs & Recovery Plan, the Clean Energy Partnership is an initiative focused on preparing more Maine people for jobs in the growing clean energy and energy efficiency fields, advancing innovation in the clean energy sector, and achieving Gov. Janet Mills’ goal of 30,000 clean energy jobs in Maine by 2030.

With this grant, ReVision Energy will increase the visibility of clean energy careers, develop tools to assist job-seekers and students in the identification of solar career pathways, develop and deliver trainings and apprenticeships resulting in industryrecognized credentials, provide hands-on experience

opportunities to trainees, and address barriers to participation for underrepresented populations.

ReVision aims to engage 850 students via its Tiny Climate Classroom, engage 100 job seekers through statewide webinars, support 110 participants in attaining NABCEP PV Associate certification, and support 16 participants in attaining a newly developed PV Design certification.

“Our ability to respond meaningfully to the climate crisis now depends on our ability to build a robust workforce that can design, build, and service clean energy systems,” said Vaughan Woodruff, director of ReVision’s energy training center.

The company hopes to “make these careers more visible to existing workers and to young people who are seeking to find meaningful work but lack familiarity with the opportunities within the solar industry,” he added.

The state needs to attract and train 6,000-7,000 new electricians during the next decade to meet climate goals, Woodruff said.

Advertise in The Working Waterfront, which circulates 45,000 copies from Kittery to Eastport ten times a year.

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Bound

More hands on the wheel for young adults

Turning

them loose in college is risky business

By Tom Groening

IN THE WEEKS before Christmas, two tragedies hit close to home. Four Maine Maritime Academy students were killed in a vehicle crash while returning to the Castine campus in the early morning hours, and a University of Maine at Presque Isle student’s body was discovered on the shore of Sears Island in Searsport. The young man’s vehicle was left near the Penobscot Narrows Bridge. You probably speculated about the same contributing factors as I did, and out of respect for the families and the ongoing inquiries, I won’t share those here. But this terrible loss reminds us of the precarious nature of life between, say, the age of 17 and the age of 23.

In my mind’s eye, I see that passage looking like a rickety catwalk spanning a deep ravine. On one side are the confines of high school and living at home with parental guidance. On the other side are unprecedented freedom and risky temptations.

Despite what the popular media implies, these are not the best years of one’s life. It’s a point I made to students and the young adults I knew during my brief careers as educator and then employment counselor.

Consider life’s milestones from age 17 to 30—choosing some kind of posthigh school training or education; moving out of your childhood home; beginning to have serious romantic and sexual relationships; narrowing career goals; managing the trials of part-time and summer jobs, or that first full time position; finding a place to live.

There’s a lot to navigate.

Alcohol and drugs are more easily available at that time of life, especially when our young adults are away from watchful parental eyes. And often, it’s in those years that mental illness emerges. Or just the powerful emotions of the age. To this day, I remember the story of a young man returning home to the Midcoast after a first year at college to learn his high school sweetheart had broken up with him. He bought a gun at Walmart and shot himself.

collectively, unwilling to devote the requisite resources to these roles.

But let’s focus on post-secondary institutions, which become second homes to our students.

So much has changed in college life since my time. Campuses no longer look like the real world…

When I was in college in the late 1970s, the state university I attended in New York had allowed each dormitory to open a small pub in the basement of the buildings. Students stocked beer, kept the books, and staffed the bar as a kind of business practicum. But the driving idea was that it kept students on campus and walking, not driving distance from their rooms.

about their alcohol use, with parents being able to monitor that drinking.

Should colleges strike a more realistic posture on alcohol and drug use, perhaps sponsoring AA meetings, testimonials from those who have made a wrong turn because of substance use, or even helping coordinate ride services?

When our kids went to UMaine, my wife and I attended the joint student/ parent orientation, and at one point in the day, parents were separated from their children and we listened to university counselors describe the issues that would likely emerge, especially when our children came home for visits. Good stuff. But couldn’t such sessions also offer warning signs of mental illness or hormone-driven depression?

I don’t want to suggest that educators and counselors who work with this demographic are somehow derelict in their duty. Their jobs are challenging on many fronts, and as is the case with so many social problems, we are,

Reflections

Of course, alcohol was legal at age 18 back in those days. Which raises another point—should the legal age be lowered? A dozen or so years ago, a letter signed by 100 college presidents argued that it should, giving young adults the opportunity to become experienced and hopefully mature

So much has changed in college life since my time. Campuses no longer look like the real world, but rather as an institution with rules. More of that approach, I think, would help keep our young folks safe.

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

Ferry hurdles don’t stop island competitors

competition would turn into a threeday ordeal.

By Kaylin Wu

OVER THE COURSE of three months, I worked with nine elementary/middle school students to build and program a LEGO robot that accomplished a series of tasks and challenges in under two and half minutes. It was months of hard work as I learned along with my students, many of whom had never worked with LEGO robotics or coding before.

After hours spent working as a team to build, tinker, troubleshoot, and overcome obstacles, we were ready for our competition in Jay where we would compete against teams from across Maine.

Something I didn’t consider before living on Vinalhaven, one of Maine’s unbridged islands, were the additional steps needed to participate in a competition in another part of the state. Specifically, how a one-day

Growing up, I attended sporting events and National History Day meets for school. These usually took an afternoon or a day, at most. Because of the ferry schedule and the distance from Rockland to Jay, it was impossible for us to make it to the competition at 8 a.m. and make it back to Vinalhaven after 4:30 p.m., so we needed to arrive on the mainland the day before the competition and leave the day after.

On the day we left, I was too nervous to do anything at work besides send updates to parents and pack the vans. The Vinalhaven School has two vans for transporting students, on the island and off the island. I remember putting water bottles and snacks in the back seats and asking myself if I was being thorough enough.

Later that day, I collected the kids and got in the vans with my two other chaperones. As we waited in line for the boat, a full hour before our departure time, I triple counted our ferry tickets, making sure we had enough for each student in the vans and enough for the students we were meeting in Rockland.

Due to a gale warning the day before, a 7th grade field trip to Boothbay was pushed back a day, meaning it now overlapped with the day we were leaving for the robotics trip. The three 7th graders stayed in Rockland with our school librarian instead of leaving for Vinalhaven on the 3:15 p.m. boat. Our plan was to pick them up at 4:30 p.m. once our boat reached Rockland.

Part of living on an unbridged island is planning around the boats. While mostly reliable, they add another layer of planning to each trip you take to the mainland. Whether it’s checking

weather forecasts, calling in for a line number, or waiting in the stand by line, it can feel like a stroke of luck when all of these logistics seamlessly fall into place.

I’m happy to report that all of our travel plans went smoothly that day. We made it to our hotel in Waterville and the kids got to spend all evening swimming in the hotel pool and eating at Five Guys. The competition was a blast for the kids and even though they didn’t win, their sportsmanship and teamwork alone were enough to be proud of. I can’t predict if we’ll have good luck with boats next year, but at least I have this year’s trip under my belt.

Kaylin Wu works with the Vinalhaven school supporting technology integration from pre-K through 12th grade. She also fosters a growing LEGO robotics club and other technology centered after school experiences. She graduated from Simmons University with a degree in English and studio art.

As we waited in line for the boat, a full hour before our departure time, I triple counted our ferry tickets…

WAITING FOR A CHAINSAW—

We’re not sure if chainsaws were in common use when this photo was taken, but a few surely were needed to cut up this massive downed tree. Judging by the Rockland police truck, the photo probably was taken in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Can any reader help with more information? Contact Tom Groening, editor, at tgroening@islandinstitute.org.

Op-Ed

Jonesport fish farm threatens Downeast

Details of land-based project should worry residents

By Anita Herrick

THE PRISTINE and productive marine environment in Chandler and Englishman bays where Jonesport, Roque Bluffs, and Roque Island are situated is now threatened by the plans of Kingfish Maine to build an industrial-sized, land-based fish farm in Jonesport.

I am part of Roque Island Gardner Homestead Corporation, a family community, which owns Roque Island. Preservation and responsible stewardship have been the focus of its management since 1806. We have worked hard to preserve the traditions of Maine saltwater farms, and to conserve the land and water around us. We have striven to be an educational resource by providing access to scientists and students to do research on all aspects of the environment. We have also provided apprenticeships to young farmers interested in all around farming.

Understandably, our group is concerned about developments in the neighborhood. We have joined

Island Institute Board of Trustees

Kr istin Howard, Chair

Douglas Henderson, Vice Chair

Charles Owen Verrill, Jr. Secretary

Kate Vogt, Treasurer, Finance Chair

Carol White, Programs Chair

Megan McGi nnis Dayton, Philanthropy & Communications Chair

Shey Conover, Governance Chair

Michael P. Boyd, Clerk

Sebastian Belle

David Cousens

Michael Felton

Nathan Johnson Emily Lane

Bryan Lewis Michael Sant

Barbara Kinney Sweet

Donna Wiegle

John Bird (honorary)

forces with a local group, Protect Downeast, which was formed by fishermen and residents similarly concerned about the economic, environmental, and cultural impacts that this plant will have on the community.

Kingfish Maine describes the plant as a recirculating aqua system, or RAS, which is a misnomer unless one counts the sea as part of the plant. On the intake, the water will be filtered and heated, circulated through the plant, and then released into the bay. The plant will draw in 28 million gallons of sea water every day.

That water will have been altered during its journey through the plant.

First, the initial filtration and heating will kill most of the microscopic phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish eggs, lobster, and shellfish spat. Secondly, what will be added is 6.5 million gallons of “fish culture or process” water, 1,580

pounds of nitrogen, and other unsavory things such as formaldehyde.

The state Department of Environmental Protection has made an exception to allow Kingfish Maine to release an excessive amount of nitrogen into the bay, above the proscribed limit. To put this in perspective, it is more than twice the amount of nitrogen the entire city of Portland releases into the roughly 1,000 square mile Casco Bay. By comparison, Chandler Bay is 14 square miles.

The effluent from the plant will spread throughout the rivers, inlets, and bays in the vicinity and beyond. Increased nitrogen causes eutrophication, which causes algal blooms, reduces water quality, and degrades commercial fisheries. Ocean acidification impacts the bottom line for fisheries and Kingfish Maine is also proposing to significantly

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increase the acidification of the water.

This project is a threat to the entire Maine coast. Should it be allowed to proceed as proposed, it will open the gates for many more like it. Furthermore, nothing is assured about the employment being promised. According to the current plan, Kingfish Maine will inevitably cause environmental problems in this very rich and productive fisheries area.

It would be far better to encourage multiple smaller aquaculture projects which would not have a negative impact; in fact, would have a positive impact (think kelp, oysters, mussels), and would provide employment more in keeping with the coastal culture in this part of the state.

I urge readers to think of the Maine coast and its traditions, and not let Maine sell its abundant natural marine resources, yet again. Consider the fate of cod, herring, and sea urchins. Now is it going to be the sea itself?

Anita Herrick is a seasonal resident of Roque Island near Jonesport.

Editor: Tom Groening tgroening@islandinstitute.org

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The plant will draw in 28 million gallons of sea water every day.

Greenland’s lessons for climate crisis

Resilience and self-reliance characterize nation

By Peter Neill

Iwas in Greenland last year and travelled north to south along the western coast from Baffin Strait to the Atlantic Ocean, visiting the four major coastal towns of Illulisat, Sisimuit, Nuuk, and Narsaq/Narsasuaq. We travelled by coastal ferry and by internal air, at low altitude to see what is called “sea ice melt.”

This dissolution of the glaciers that cover most of Greenland was dramatically visible. As one of my travelling companions observed, “It was like looking back in time,” suggestive of glacial melt and retreat in other periods of global warming, beautiful, foreboding, and stark evidence of the source and volume of melt water, sea level rise, and temperature increase, now observable, measurable, and implicative of serious consequence for a future that arrives inexorably every day.

There are additional consequences that have become apparent to me. The

first is research studies that reveal that rapid loss of sea ice exposes the sea to the atmosphere, increasing take up of CO2 at a faster rate than elsewhere, and contributing to amplified acidification of ocean water, circulated by natural currents that distribute the consequence worldwide.

Given the enormous volume of the ocean, perhaps this seems insignificant, but the studies released by the Polar and Marine Research Institute at Jimei University, China, and the School of Marine Policy at the University of Delaware in the U.S. indicate the amplification measured between 1994 and 2020 shows a change of three to four times that of other ocean basins. This will add to the already critical ocean acidification challenge with increased saturation and negative impact on ocean species, especially plants and coral reefs. We have reached the point when incremental change is critical change and without compensating action to reverse or

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A view of Greenland’s glacial landscape.

PHOTO: PETER NEILL

Greenland has long been a focal point for potential mineral extraction, especially rare earth metals such as uranium, gold, and zinc.

reduce the CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, we have done nothing but accelerate the problem.

A second consequence pertains to the sediment output of the meltwater flows, the release of cobbles and pebbles and grains of silt, previously frozen into the ice, now descending from the glacial face into ice floes, open streams, coastal deltas, and the open ocean. This phenomenon was dramatically visible from the air.

Greenland has long been a focal point for potential mineral extraction, especially rare earth metals such as uranium, gold, and zinc. Some of the identified sites are in some of the most beautiful and biodiverse areas in the world. Narsaq, the town adjacent to the Kujataa World Heritage Site, is downwind and downstream from a proposed uranium mine that has generated local and national opposition because of air quality and water quality issues, impact on tourism, social consequence of imported workers, and financial consequences of royalty payments and exported profits. The argument revolves around revenue and independence just as it does with proposed deep-sea mining projects adjacent to small island nations in the Pacific.

There is a different option, suggested by the study published in a 2019 issue of Nature Sustainability—taking from the newly revealed coastal sediment deposits of sand and gravel, not rare earth metals, but nevertheless a necessary

element in basic road construction and infrastructure rebuilding, in critical demand worldwide, located in the near shore zone to be mined and pumped by pipeline to offshore dry-bulk carriers by local employees, and traded by Greenland for perhaps comparable revenues.

There are always related problems, of course, specifically to fisheries and tourism, the other two major sources of Greenland’s financial security—the residues from extraction affecting adjacent fishing grounds, for example, or the industrialization of an otherwise wild Arctic coast. We have here again another one of those offsetting choices: to do or to don’t?

Greenland, by its location, has built a community of self-reliance, resilience, and independence. The Inuit population has escaped the worst of colonization, retaining generational strength, language, and cultural traditions.

Demark provides a large percentage of the annual budget, but there is a separate constitution and legislature. Young people typically are educated abroad and many return and are now emerging in leadership positions in government and management.

But still, it is a place apart. There are no roads connecting the towns. Subsistence has been reliant on hunting and fishing, travel by dog sled or small boats. No country on earth is dealing

with the impact of global warming, glacial melt, and sea level rise as directly. There, the implications are facts; the future we envision is now. I felt great hope there, confidence in the people to meet, adapt, and invent a future built on history, values, and community. We could learn so much from our past mistakes, so much from Greenland.

Peter Neill is director of the World Ocean Observatory, which produces weekly radio essays heard on WERU-FM, 89.9, on podcast at apple.com/us/podcast/world-oceanradio/id425361249, and at www. worldoceanobservatory.org/worldocean-radio. He lives in Sedgwick.

A view of a glacier. PHOTO: PETER NEILL

Scallop’s sweet season

Harvesting that other white meat

PHOTO ESSAY BY KELLI PARK

WHEN WINTER settles in and many in the lobster industry stay ashore, some seafood harvesters take advantage of the lull to pursue scallops, which are hauled up with a dredge, or drag, or are retrieved by divers on the bottom.

These photos, shot in March 2018, capture the scalloping done by Capt. Tom Butler’s F/V Erica Jade, a 46-foot Jarvis Newman. Butler’s crew includes Ron Fitzgerald and Mark Brown.

Butler’s family has lived and worked along the shores of Harpswell for six generations. In the early 1900s, his great, great grandmother purchased the 14-acre peninsula known as Basin Point, which eventually led to his grandparents establishing The Dolphin Marina and Restaurant in 1966.

In 2011, Butler and his wife Andrea started Erica’s Seafood, named for their daughter, and have earned a reputation for mouth-watering seafood.

As a diversion from his usual fishing pursuit, Butler enjoys the thrill of the chase in scalloping.

“It’s like a treasure hunt. You never know what’s coming up in the dredge. You never know what you’re going to catch,” said Butler, who has hauled up bicycles and antique snake oil bottles.

Our Island Communities

Remembering Capt. David Allen

Long-time Sunbeam captain honored by successor

By Mike Johnson

Starting in 1971, Capt. David Allen made thousands of trips visiting islands along the Maine coast, first aboard the Maine Seacoast Mission’s Sunbeam IV and later the Sunbeam V. David and his wife Betty, who joined him aboard the Sunbeam as the steward in 1978, were the personification of the Mission for many islanders.

David, who captained the Sunbeam until his retirement in 2007, passed away on Oct. 3 with his family by his side. The Sunbeam V’s current captain, Mike Johnson, who started on the Sunbeam as Allen’s engineer shares his reflections on his time with David.

“I recently unrolled an old paper chart from the Sunbeam and noticed course lines and dead reckoning plots written in Capt. David Allen’s handwriting. I realized that when Dave began his career for the Maine Seacoast Mission in 1971 that the only piece of electronic equipment on the Sunbeam was a basic radar.

“During Dave’s remarkable 35 years as captain, he had seen the biggest jump in marine navigational technology in human history. When I was his first mate, I was in awe of his ability to both understand the past and embrace the present. If there was a new piece of equipment available, he researched it and learned to use it. It was not unusual for him to have a full course plotted on the computer, but still stop in the fog to listen for a particular bell buoy.

“He was the perfect blend of old and new. He was also unflappable when he encountered difficult weather. He rarely showed any outward sign of stress and could often maintain a lighthearted conversation with others in the pilothouse.

“Dave knew being a crewmember on the Sunbeam meant much more than the job at hand. He made deep friendships in the island communities and was always available in the salon to share a laugh or a fishing story. Of particular significance to Dave were funerals. He was aware of the Sunbeam’s importance in this role both symbolically and practically, and he was proud to transport mainland residents back to their islands to pay their respects. Another quality of Dave’s, and one that resonated greatly with me, was his ability to understand the prominence of the Sunbeam. When we were in small harbors, he knew that we could be in somebody’s way. We frequently moved to allow lobstermen to hoist traps or for the mailboat to unload passengers.

“At sea, he never insisted on his right-of-way, be it with a yacht in the summer or a scallop dragger in the winter. He would always open the pilothouse door to give an enthusiastic wave. ‘Keeping it friendly’ was forever his motto.

“I consider it an honor to have served with Dave for seven years. This was a period of growth for me as I transitioned to a larger year-round vessel, and Dave could not have been a better mentor. He was not always academic in his teaching but would let me know in a respectful manner if I was making a mistake.

“I sometimes wish he were still standing next to me so I could ask his advice about a particular docking situation or rough offshore passage. One of Dave’s complaints was that many of his good friends that

he made during his career were passing away and making him sad. I hear you, Captain. This is clearly happening to me as well.”

Allen’s full obituary can be seen by searching the Mount Desert Islander website for obituaries and David Thurston Allen. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in Allen’s name to the Mission. The Sunbeam will be taking his ashes to sea, for a final resting place, in early spring.

The late Capt. David Allen photographed aboard the Sunbeam at Northeast Harbor. PHOTO: COURTESY MAINE SEACOAST MISSION

“During Dave’s remarkable 35 years as captain, he had seen the biggest jump in marine navigational technology in human history.”

Capt.

David Allen in the

Sunbeam’s wheelhouse.

PHOTO: COURTESY MAINE SEACOAST

MISSION

North Haven’s Calderwood Hall evolves

Brewery takes over first-floor restaurant space

By Courtney Naliboff

It started with an email with the subject line, “This is a crazy idea.” Fortunately, Liz Lovell, the 38-year-old manager of the North Haven Brewing Company, likes crazy.

Lovell and brewers Ben Lovell, her brother, and Jesse Davisson will be leasing and operating the first-floor restaurant space of North Haven’s historic Calderwood Hall building, taking the baton from building owner and original restaurant general manager Cecily Pingree.

Pingree purchased the building in 2012 from Herbie Parsons and converted it from a gift shop, studio, and storage space to three year-round apartments and a now-wildly popular pizza restaurant, which opened for its first season in 2014.

“My intention was to build out the space and make it sustainable and pass the torch to somebody else,” Pingree said. “It feels like it has surpassed anything that I had sort of thought the building or the space could be. The building is thriving, it’s busy, people are in here year-round, the lights are on all the time.”

The time to discuss a transition felt right to Pingree this winter, when she sent Lovell that email.

The North Haven Brewing Company began operating out of Calderwood Hall’s first floor in 2016, with the brewery and a small tasting room opening onto a roped-off courtyard with limited outdoor seating. The business originally included sales to mainland restaurants, but the pandemic helped clarify the brewery’s priorities.

“Post-pandemic, we wanted to lean into the tasting room and provide a space for our community members, our patrons,” Lovell said.

North Haven Brewing Company already revitalized one beloved North Haven institution in 2022—Fox

Island Printworks. The company was founded on North Haven in 2011 and sold its catalogue of Maineinspired designs to a mainland company in 2017.

“I was ready for another challenge and somewhere else to take the business, so we also purchased Fox Island Printworks this past year so we could use all of those amazing island designs for our cans and then print T-shirts and things like that we felt were really missing,” Lovell said. “It was a great opportunity to bring back some designs we really love.”

For the brewery and its patrons, as well as devotees of Calderwood Hall’s pizza, the brewery’s expansion into the upstairs space will bring benefits. Lovell said they are looking forward to using the original space exclusively as the production area, while the upstairs restaurant space will serve as their tasting room in the afternoons. Calderwood will still serve pizza and other favorites in the evenings with new kitchen manager Stephanie Brown, an islander with previous Calderwood kitchen experience, at the helm.

“For Cecily to be handing me the kitchen was a huge honor and super humbling,” said Brown. “I love the hall

and I love what Jessie and Cecily have done there so much and so to be sort of sworn in as the new generation taking it over is amazing,” said Brown, who accrued additional restaurant experience in Burlington, Vt., after graduating from Champlain College.

Beer aficionados will also have access to expanded outdoor seating, as the brewery’s license will now cover the entire Calderwood lawn.

Year-round island residents can look forward to something special.

“If all the licensing comes in on time, we’re hoping to be open one night a week February to April, then be closed ‘til June,” Lovell said. The off-season menu won’t include pizza but will include other freshly made items. The North Haven Brewing Company’s tasting room is currently open one night each week.

“It’s an important time to have space to connect to our community, have some version of a livelihood, where we don’t need to be having potlucks in our homes to see people,” Pingree said. “We could never figure that out upstairs. The brewery offers up such a better year-round fit.”

Remembering the colorful Kirstie Alley

One-time Islesboro resident made an impact

By Craig Olson

Lime green.

That’s what I think of when I think of Kirstie Alley. Odd, I know. But when your first encounter is her pulling up in front of the Island Market in a lime green Suburban with a bubble gum pink leather interior you can’t get certain images out of your mind.

But it goes well beyond lime green. When Kirstie died unexpectedly last month of cancer Islesboro lost a great friend—she was also a respected and valued community member. And yes, out here, she was simply known as “Kirstie.” I didn’t know her very well. A few chats over the years, a hearty wave whenever we passed on the road. Other friends on the island had deeper relationships and great stories of her kindness, spontaneity, and great love of the island.

Before we moved here I’d never met many celebrities. In more than two decades on Islesboro I’ve met quite a few, from statesmen and billionaires to cast members from "Friends." Kirstie was the first.

I’ll never forget that first meeting. The lime green Suburban pulls up to my bookstore, in she swooshes, I’m a bit tongue tied showing her books on interior decorating, and then all is normal. She was normal.

Don’t get me wrong, there certainly was a presence about her. It was also the voice. At first, it seemed so out of place here, when we were so used to hearing it on television.

What I quickly began to learn was that the thing about Kirstie was, to me, that what you saw on television or films was how she was in person. Funny, quirky, and kind. Only Kirstie would overnight a Marilyn Monroe costume and wig from Hollywood so she could sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to John Mitchell at the annual talent show to celebrate his retirement as president of the Islesboro Historical Society.

Kirstie and her former husband, Parker Stevenson, spent a lot of time on the island in the early years. They hosted softball games on the diamond on their lawn next to the Alice L. Pendleton Library, ice skating on their pond, and acts of kindness that were personal. I don’t think she was one to write a check to a charity and leave it at that. No, Kirstie rented a bus and took as many kids and parents as could fit to the mainland for a movie—and paid for it all. A friend lost a dog, Kirstie found her a new one.

Those are just a few of the memories that were shared on our Islesboro Facebook page in the days following our loss.

She was as integral to this community as any other resident in those years.

And there was no whiff of celebrity. She waited in line with everyone else at the Island Market and when she was here she always had a fabulous float in the Fourth of July Parade that always seemed to involve water guns. What I found for her and other residents like John Travolta was that it’s a place for them to relax, to not be fussed over, and people respect it.

And she respected us. In the midst of the COVID pandemic Kirstie sold her house. It was before vaccines when the pandemic was raging and we were all hyper-sensitive.

Although not personally on Facebook, Kirstie had a friend post a long note on her behalf alerting the island that she was flying privately to Rockland, taking a rental car to the island, had food with her, and was coming to pack things she wanted to keep before the closing. She was being very careful not to do anything that would endanger anyone on the island. She also thanked them for their friendship and kindness over the years.

Kirstie didn’t have to do that, she could have come in and gone about her business and few would have known. She felt an obligation to be honest with her community. She didn’t want anyone to think she was flouting the rules.

I will never forget that last time I saw Kirstie. It was a summer Sunday morning around 7:30. Quiet at our house, I was enjoying a book and into my second cup of coffee. All of a sudden I started hearing loud music— it was getting closer and louder.

By the time I got up from my chair and looked out the window, the source of the noise was on the street in front of my house. It was Kirstie, in a powder blue retro bicycle with a boombox in the oversized basket, peddling slowly up the road, blasting “My Way,” and singing her heart out with Frank Sinatra.

That’s how we’ll always remember her.

Craig Olson owns Craig Olson Books, a used and rare bookstore in Belfast. He and his family have called Islesboro home since 2001.

The counter at Calderwood Hall. PHOTO: COURTESY CALDERWOOD HALL

Kirstie Alley

Stonington’s past carved in granite

Museum celebrating industry ready for next step

By Stephanie Bouchard

When Frank and Denie Weil

first visited Stonington by sailboat in the mid-1960s, they fell in love with the place and were particularly fascinated by the granite quarries on nearby Crotch Island.

As the decades passed, the Weils watched as the remnants of those once-booming quarries—the derricks, the power plant buildings and drafting offices, the steam-generating boiler, and the railroad system—disappeared through a combination of decay and purposeful dismantling.

Moved to share the community’s granite history with visitors and future generations, they created the nonprofit Deer Isle Granite Museum. In the summer of 1996, they opened the museum in the Webb Building, a former general store on Main Street that the Weils own.

Now in their early 90s, the Weils are handing over the reins of the museum to a new generation. Last summer, the museum created an expanded board of directors that places its future firmly in the hands of Stonington residents.

“They understood that in order for this to be a local institution and less a ‘Denie and Frank’ thing, that eventually they would have to hand control of the museum to a group of locals,” said the Weils’ son, William, who is the only member of the family (and a seasonal Stonington resident) on the newlyexpanded board of directors.

In addition to William Weil, board members are Sally Richardson, who has been involved with the granite museum

since its earliest days; Linda Nelson, Stonington’s economic and community development director; and Kathleen Billings, Stonington’s town manager.

While two town employees are on the new board of directors, that does not mean the town is now responsible for the museum, Nelson said.

“The fact that we’re on the board does not mean that the town is taking this over, or funding this, or anything like that,” she said. “It’s still an independent 501(c)(3) and we just happen to be new board members.”

The new board of directors has many ideas about the future of the museum, said William Weil, but they aren’t

ready to announce those just yet. They will say, however, that they want to get the museum’s star attraction—a large model of a quarry circa 1900 on Crotch Island—repaired so that it’s fully operational again; refresh the exhibits every year; and have the museum open more often—it was only open three days a week last summer.

What won’t change is the commitment to celebrating Stonington’s history, said Nelson.

“I really think it’s about how do we keep our heritage alive, and how not only do we keep it alive for our local year-round residents, but how do we really advance cultural heritage

tourism, which is much more sustainable than ordinary tourism, and really use the assets we have and strengthen existing assets in order to do that.”

If you don’t live in or near Stonington, you may be surprised to learn that the community that is today known for its fishing industry (for five years running, from 2017 to 2021, Stonington was the most lucrative fishing port in Maine, coming in at a whopping $73.27 million last year) was once a graniteproducing powerhouse.

While fishing has always been an important industry in Stonington, from the mid-1800s to the first decades of the 20th century, granite was king.

Workers on Stonington’s Crotch Island in the early 20th century. PHOTO: COURTESY DEER ISLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

A 1950s aerial view of Crotch Island, just off Stonington, where a major granite quarry operated, and still operates.

PHOTO: COURTESY DEER ISLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The granite quarries of Stonington (so named because of those quarries) and its surrounds, including Crotch Island, were prized for producing high-quality granite, and particularly for two types of granite that were pinkish in color, called “Sherwood pink” and “Goss pink.”

Town meeting, painting lines, eating doughnuts, and throwing rocks

As winter winds down, islanders mix prep work and gatherings

By Barbara Fernald

ACTIVITY on the islands, at the end of February and into March, is like a mirror image of the action at the end of August into September. Just as the summer residents of the Cranberry Isles end their vacations right before fall, many year-round residents end their winter breaks just before the spring equinox.

It’s time to get back to work and reconnect.

In the days before glass, steel, and concrete became the primary fabrics of construction, Stonington granite was used in many ordinary and not-so-ordinary building projects, such as the approaches to the Brooklyn Bridge; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the 20-foot, 8-inch bowl of the Oceanus Fountain at the Rockefeller family’s Kykuit estate in New York’s Hudson Valley; Sing Sing Prison; the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan; and the John F. Kennedy Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Our annual town meeting takes place on the second Saturday in March. For selectmen and town employees, winter has been anything but a vacation. They have been working steadily, gathering information to write the warrant for town meeting. It’s the time of year we come together as a town to decide on projects and spending and how much money is to be raised by property taxes.

The granite boom times were long over by the time Frank and Deni Weil sailed into Stonington in the mid1960s. Today, one quarry on Crotch Island is in operation. Run by New England Stone Industries/Granites of America of Smithfield, R.I., the quarry supplies Maine granite for projects big and small. Two recent projects include the Art of the Americas Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which

Discussion of the school budget alone can take well over an hour. The islands take turns hosting the meeting and the luncheon. This year, town

opened in 2010 and the Philadelphia Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, dedicated in 2016. While the granite industry in Stonington today is a shadow of its heyday, its heritage is critical to the community now as it faces likely upheaval in its fishing industry, said Nelson.

meeting will take place on Islesford. What’s for lunch? Homemade pizzas, salads, and desserts. Life gets busier as we volunteer to help prepare the first community meal of the season.

Town meeting is a great opportunity to hear about winter from friends and neighbors. “How was your trip to ...?” “Who knew grand-parenting was so exhausting or that there were so many cold germs involved?” “You did all that painting?” These same questions could be asked in September at a school board meeting in a large suburb. (Preferably not during the meeting while someone else has the floor!)

“We were able to transition from granite to fishing, so if we have to transition in the future, it’s not like we don’t have the resilience and the capacity in this community to make those big changes because we’ve done it,” she said. “I think that’s why history is important and why telling these stories and thinking about what our cultural heritage is, is important because it gives people possible new ways to think about change.”

piece of purple rope to the end of the buoy line or toggle, but all attachments

I know it’s a stretch to

ei-

To learn more about the Deer Isle Granite Museum, go to https:// deerislegranitemuseum.wordpress.com.

Watch the museum’s video about Stonington’s granite history at https:// youtu.be/qFVrYqBh-no.

In January and February, Bruce and I got to spend a lot of time with our grandchildren in Southern Maine. Visiting them was the main goal of most of our winter travel. We considered trying to paint our kitchen, but we kept catching odd coughing viruses and experienced more down time than we wanted, so we never got to it. Maybe I’ll paint it in May, when I can have the windows open.

To learn more about the granite industry on Deer Isle, read Denie Weil’s book, Stone Slabs and Iron Men: The Deer Isle Granite Industry.

Bruce saw more than enough paint, anyway, this winter. During his “time off” he painted 600 buoys (white and

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Contact us for a free review of your home insurance.

“Yeah, we got doughnuts at The Cookie Jar and then walked to the

Eating homemade donuts and throwing rocks at the beach—if that hood summers on Islesford, I don’t

and experimented with purple paint. The latest whale regulations require all Maine lobster fishermen to use new markings on the ropes they attach to lobster traps. Depending on how close

cient brush and latex paint. Some fishermen will add a 3-foot

compare following Maine whale rope requirements with a plein air workshop, but a person could return home from

ther and say that they’d been painting in their spare time. If Bruce were writing an essay on how he spent his winter vacation, painting would be a part of it. Another part would be the description I heard him tell his brother Mark about walking to get doughnuts, in February, with our son Robin, and our grandchildren Henry and Cora. I was away with friends in Portland, and Stephanie was away with friends in

Barbara Fernald lives on Islesford (Little Cranberry Island) with her husband Bruce.

A model depicts Stonington’s granite industry past. PHOTO: COURTESY DEER ISLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

“How do we really advance cultural heritage tourism, which is much more sustainable than ordinary tourism…”

The 20-foot, 8-inch diameter bowl for the Oceanus Fountain for the Rockefeller family estate, Kykuit, in New York’s Hudson Valley, cut from a single, 200-ton piece of granite in 1913-1914. PHOTO: COURTESY DEER ISLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Saltwater Cure

Building community by starting small

Once united,

By Courtney Naliboff

a group takes on its own identity

THE MUSIC BLASTING from the preschool alternated between the Islands and Mamma Mia! soundtracks. The cast of Little Women, our fall show, sang along as they got into costume, makeup, and hair in the Waterman’s preschool, our de facto green room.

There were 13 of them, plus a handful of crew members. Some were as young as nine (the run crew) and some were adults with kids of their own. I buzzed in and out, running upstairs to the booth to set up the sound board, then back down to make sure the stage was set for the top of the show.

I was separate from this scene, neither putting on a costume nor helping someone with an 1860s up-do. But I thought to myself with satisfaction—this is a space that I helped create. As the director of the show, I put the people together, designers and actors, gave them a framework within

which they built trust and a genuine enjoyment of each other’s company, set the timeline and sense of urgency.

In any community, but perhaps especially in a geographically isolated area, creating opportunities for shared spaces and experiences is imperative. Without them, we’re like neighbors in a city apartment building, adjacent but disconnected. But with a little structure—a gay/straight/trans alliance, a church, a coffee shop—people can organize themselves into interconnected networks.

This was illustrated very clearly at the season’s first Bus Line league basketball game in early January. Our co-ed team, consisting of six, fifth and sixth graders, went up against St. George’s 16-deep bench of seventh and eighth grade boys.

Within the framework of that valiantly fought basketball game, which naturally brought together the players and their coach, two high school

students were drawn in as bookkeeper and timekeeper, my run crew kids made a reappearance running the livestream camera, and the stands were filled with parent and student spectators.

By paving the way for the students to have a team, the coach, athletic director, and administration created an entire ecosystem for people with shared enthusiasms.

When you’re part of the creation of a space, watching it take on a life of its own can feel a little like watching your child become more independent. Pride and possessiveness fight for supremacy—what was once yours is now part of the wider community.

Your name may not be associated with your creation anymore, you might feel like you no longer “get credit.” But through that new independence, there’s so much more room for growth. The ownership others feel, the empowerment that allows them to continue to grow the space, can only make it

Journal of an Island Kitchen

Shrinkflation and reformulation woes

By Sandy Oliver

SHRINKFLATION and reformulation are messing with our recipes.

This past year, inflation along with supply chain problems sharpened our attention to price increases. Did you notice, though, the few ounces sucked out of a package of your favorite products?

Coined around 2009 or so, “shrinkflation” refers to the reduction of the net weight of goods (like cereal, chips, tuna, soup) while prices remain the same.

Another term for shrinkflation is downsizing.

“Downsizing is really a sneaky price increase,” says Edward Dworsky, formerly an assistant attorney general in Massachusetts. He dedicates himself to consumer advocacy and maintains the website Mouse Print where you can read about the sly effects on our groceries (and many other things) caused by downsizing or shrinkflation. Really worth a look!

Manufacturers also tinker with weight to offset increases in ingredients and have done it for decades. There has been a conscious use of the practice this year to test consumer resilience: how high a price will we accept before squawking or refusing to buy?

Another dodge, reformulation, is when producers alter a product’s recipe to use a cheaper ingredient or to use less of one.

All this compromises recipes.

Well, not all recipes, but many from the 20th and now 21st centuries. Lots of our favorite family recipes call for one can or package of something or other but the can or package you buy isn’t your grandmother’s anymore, and recipes flop unless a savvy family member tinkers with it.

And then reformulation, especially the kind that substituted corn syrup for sugar, can wreak havoc because the syrup doesn’t react in a recipe the way sugar does. The problem is most acute in baking where proportion and chemistry matter more than in assembling a casserole.

Manufacturer’s test kitchens are the proximate cause of this. Industrious recipe developers are cooking up the recipes you see on packages, and over time some of those recipes slipped into family recipe files. Or even into cookbooks, especially community cookbooks, assembled to raise funds for many worthwhile institutions and causes. The more venerable the cookbook the more likely it is to have unusable, extinct, recipes in it.

A young friend, a teacher in western Maine, told me about a class project a colleague instigated. She asked her students to bring a family recipe from home so they could assemble a cookbook.

“Most of the recipes were hacks,” she told me, a dish produced by using a selection of pre-mades. For example, a quiche made with pre-made pie crust, pre-cooked bacon, and pre-grated cheese. It tastes just fine, of course.

I have a cinnamon bun recipe that needs frozen bread dough plus a package of vanilla pudding as well as milk, butter, sugar, and raisins. It’s delicious though I haven’t made it for several years.

Does any of this matter, really? What’s the loss of a recipe? I don’t know. Old farts like me shake their wattles over these things. Thing is, I’ve seen folks recollect fondly the flavors of their youth, flavors we didn’t care about 30 or 40 years ago, but somehow become more precious whenever connection seems more important.

It’s as if we are holding onto something we care about, but various forces—in this case, commerce—are prying our fingers off of it.

stronger and more sustainable.

As curtain time drew nearer, actors departed the hair and makeup stations, leaving the green room quiet and littered with makeup-covered applicators, cotton balls, glittering piles of hair pins, street clothes, and the silenced speaker. I walked through the room on my way to the stage, observing my feelings of separation and of ownership, proud of what had become of the space I helped create.

Courtney Naliboff teaches music, theater, and writing at North Haven Community School and lives on the island with her husband and daughter. She may be reached at Courtney. Naliboff@gmail.com.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a Vienna Finger tasted the way it did at my grandma’s house? I bought some quite a few years ago and they had already changed so much I didn’t recognize them. Oddly, now that I am a little older than my grandma’s age when she was passing them out, that connection matters more.

Even though modern grains and fruits and some vegetables don’t taste quite like they did a couple centuries ago, we can still recreate early dishes and get a taste of the past. Seldom in human history has that been flat-out impossible, even with reverse engineering, a practice I employ when I feel too obstinate to buy some pre-made something or other—salad dressing, or packaged seasonings, for example. (I can mix my own damn spice blends, thank you!)

The cure? Cook from scratch— actual flour, sugar, butter, eggs. And try to remember Grandma’s home cooking and, if you’re the cook, make sure to leave the kids your from-scratch recipes.

Sandy Oliver is a food historian who gardens, cooks, and writes on Islesboro. She may be reached at SandyOliver47@ gmail.com

How to combat changes in product ingredients, size

The more venerable the cookbook the more likely it is to have unusable, extinct, recipes in it.

Cranberry Report

Stormy times on the island home front Illness, power outage, and fire mar holiday

By Barbara Fernald

TWO WEEKS before Christmas I came home from a weekend spent in Cape Elizabeth with two of our grandchildren. The next day, Bruce started to have a bad sore throat and cough. A number of others on the island were sick with the same symptoms. We heard it was bad and lasted at least two weeks.

Though I kept my distance from Bruce and washed my hands a lot, within a week I had a cold coming on. Mild symptoms. I still felt good enough to be with our kids and grandkids for Christmas after two years of missing out. Meanwhile, a powerful storm was due to arrive on Friday, the day we were going to leave. Predicted 70 mph gusts meant no boats and probable power outages.

I suggested leaving on Thursday but Bruce was not comfortable leaving the island at all. I was still fixated on finally being with our grandkids on Christmas Day. What if the power didn’t go out and we stayed home “for nothing?” Then again, what if it did?

By evening I was coughing, my chest hurt, I ached all over, and I had no energy or appetite. We were not going anywhere. The decision made for us.

The storm was nasty and power outages were widespread.

We lost our power and landlines around 3 p.m. on Friday and they stayed out until Versant could barge their trucks to the islands. By Christmas Day the temperatures were dropping, and we were hearing that Versant might not get to the islands until Tuesday.

Thanks to generators on both islands, we had internet service so we weren’t completely cut off during the outage, but by Monday night, one of them had run out of fuel and by daybreak on Tuesday our internet was out.

We learned through text messages that the store on Great Cranberry had burned to the ground overnight. It was an odd feeling to know something so devastating had happened on the big island and yet we knew so little of the story.

It was Richard Howland, our town fire chief, who first saw the orange glow as he was heading out from Islesford at 2:30 a.m. to haul traps. He quickly called

911 and alerted both island fire crews. Firefighters came to help from Northeast Harbor and Southwest Harbor. The fire was out around 7:30, but the Cranberry General Store was a total loss.

There is no official word yet on the cause, but many speculate the generator may have developed a problem. The loss leaves a big hole in the community. It was a gathering place for so many. The good news is no one was hurt and the owner plans to rebuild.

Versant restored power on Great Cranberry by 3:30 Tuesday afternoon, but we waited tensely on Islesford. They couldn’t find the cause of the outage and it was getting dark.

For a few minutes they thought the cable between the islands had finally let go. The new one was trenched in place five months ago, but not yet hooked up. They found the problem elsewhere and our lights were on by 5 p.m. Many thanks to the Goodwin Barge for blocking out a whole day to wait for the Versant trucks to find the problem. They connected the new cable two days later.

It’s a new year and I’m finally recovering from my bout of the nasty virus.

Institute implements resiliency program

Gouldsboro, Swan’s Island, Cranberry Isles served

THE ISLAND INSTITUTE, publisher of The Working Waterfront, will be working with Gouldsboro, Swan’s Island, and the Cranberry Isles to oversee implementation of the state’s Community Resilience Partnership (CRP).

The CRP, a program of the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, is designed for communities considering energy transitions and wish to become more resilient to extreme weather, flooding, and rising sea levels.

“These three communities have unique challenges, and we’re excited to assist them as they move through the community process of developing and enacting energy transitions and climate resilient strategies,” said Abby

Roche, Island Institute community development officer.

Through grants and direct support to municipal governments, the CRP assists communities in becoming more resilient to extreme weather, flooding and rising sea levels— and making smart choices about future energy production. In addition to grants, enrolled communities have access to a regional coordinator through the Sunrise County Economic Council. This coordinator helps develop future project ideas and then aids in researching and applying for grants, especially federal grants.

“The town of Cranberry Isles is at an important juncture in our climate resilience journey with a solar energy project

in the planning stages and an interest in developing other related projects,” said Jim Fortune, administrative assistant to the Cranberry Isles Select Board. “We are grateful for this collaboration with the Island Institute to provide capacity to our community to make progress on these important priorities.”

Over the next year, the Island Institute will collaborate with the select boards, municipal employees, and citizen committees within the three communities to:

• Support the creation or sustainability of a citizen committee or municipal employee position to coordinate activities to reduce energy use and costs, transition to clean energy, and

St. Croix fish habitat restoration funded

SENS. SUSAN COLLINS and Angus King announced that Maine is receiving $5 million to improve fish migration at the Milltown and Woodland dams on the St. Croix River in Washington County.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources’ project will expand aquatic connectivity for river herring and other at-risk species. The project will also help enhance watershed health and economic vitality in the St. Croix

River and Bay of Fundy regions.  The project will significantly improve fish passage in historic spawning habitat and continue collaboration between U.S. federal agencies, Canadian agencies, tribal nations, the state of Maine, and other conservation partners.

“The St. Croix River and its watershed play a key role in sustaining the health of the ecosystem and the economy in Eastern Maine,” said Collins and King

in a joint statement. “By improving fish passages along the river, this project will help restore critical habitat to protect native fish populations, while also supporting migratory birds and other wildlife. We welcome this investment to preserve the environment and benefit current and future generations of anglers.”

These grants support projects that conserve, restore, and connect

I’m ready to let go of the disappointment of Christmas 2022. From my nest on the couch I had watched Bruce come and go many times a day to keep an eye on his mom and on other houses where friends were away. Should a storm like this ever again coincide with plans to go away, I won’t argue about staying home to help in case we lose power.

I’m so grateful to live in a place where people check on the homes of friends who are away; where people are willing to build a fire in another’s wood stove to keep their pipes from freezing. I’m grateful to live where people find a way to keep each other informed when all the usual means are not working. I can be happy to be starting a new year with some fresh viral antibodies in my system. So 2023—bring it!

Barbara Fernald lives on Islesford (Little Cranberry Island). She may be reached at Fernald244@gmail.com.

make the community more resilient to climate change

• Complete two self-assessments to assess progress and identify potential next steps related to community climate resilience

• Gather key stakeholders to facilitate community workshops to review the self-assessment results and prioritize projects for implementation

• Enroll the community in the statewide Community Resilience Partnership program so it has access to regional climate resilience support and funding opportunities

• Apply for a $50,000 community action grant through the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future.

habitats for wildlife while improving community resilience and access to nature.

Collins, the ranking member of the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, was part of a group of ten senators who negotiated the text of the bipartisan infrastructure law. The law will deliver billions of dollars to Maine for investments in roads, bridges, broadband, and more.

In Plain Sight

One photograph, two stories

A master photographer captures master boatbuilder

By Kevin Johnson

MAINE

BOAT building icon Ralph

Stanley looks directly into the camera in his boat shop in Southwest Harbor. He sports a soft natural smile and his eyes still have a spark despite his 77 years.

His working days were not done at this time though his boatbuilding days were mostly over. He would spend another 15 years sharing his wisdom on the board of the Penobscot Marine Museum and his memory with the Southwest Harbor library.

Over the course of his career, he built or restored more than 70 boats. From lobster boats, Friendship sloops, sailboats, and dories, the boats he built all had one thing in common. They were made of wood.

Before he died in 2021 at the age of 92, his skills and career were recognized with numerous awards including being recognized by the National Endowments of the Arts as a National Heritage Fellow.

Not bad for the humble son of a Bar Harbor lobsterman and a nurse.

The second story told in the photo of Stanley included here is that of the person behind the camera. Peggy McKenna was a career photographer who moved to Montville from New York City in 1971. She worked as a photojournalist for the Republican Journal and the Waldo Independent as well as doing freelance work for Down East magazine, among other publications.

She also passionately pursued her own photographic interest which was the photo portrait. A strong portrait like the one included here demonstrates not only her skill with a camera but also her ability to connect with her subject.

She made them feel relaxed and willing to share a bit of themselves. They trusted her. While she made thousands of portraits of all types of people, some of the most memorable are those she made of the artists and craftspeople of Maine. She preferred

Fathoming

to photograph them in their studios or workshops, adding a layer of intimacy to their portraits. A master craftsperson herself, she respected her subjects and treated them accordingly, and it shows.

The Penobscot Marine Museum now has the Peggy McKenna collection of more than 100,000 slides, negatives,

and prints and is in the process of cataloging and digitizing them.

Kevin Johnson is the photo archivist at The Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport. See PenobscotMarineMuseum.org to view its extensive photo collections.

Climate is the real culprit in whale saga Warming waters disrupted food chains

By Susie Arnold

IN FOLLOWING the rollercoaster of how new regulations designed to protect the North Atlantic right whale will impact Maine’s lobster fishery and the communities the industry supports, two recent announcements stuck out to me.

One is the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) five-year review of the species. The whales are still endangered, which is no surprise and not good news for anyone. The other is Congress’s 2023 appropriation which includes a pause on new federal whale regulations until the end of 2028 and allocates funds for more data and research.

At face value, these may seem juxtaposed. But within the fine print are advances that should allow us to more effectively monitor and protect an endangered species in the face of a rapidly changing environment. The NMFS report acknowledges that climate change is a factor in the decline of the NARW and poses a significant threat to its recovery, and Congress gave us the time and resources to adapt.

It is well known that the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than most water bodies on the planet due to arctic warming changing our region’s ocean

circulation. The weakening of a major current system called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is shifting the warm Gulf Stream northerly while the cold Labrador Current retreats, resulting in warmer water entering the Gulf of Maine through the northeast channel.

This phenomenon explains the 2010 “regime shift” when the rapid warming of the Gulf of Maine progressed in earnest; 2021 was the hottest year on record in the Gulf of Maine, and the top five warmest summers all occurred in the last decade.

We know how warming impacts marine species like lobster, but it is also causing disruptions in predatorprey dynamics, particularly due to impacts on species at the base of the marine food web, such as Calanus finmarchicus, the copepod that is the preferred prey source for right whales.

The copepods are no longer occurring in dense patches where right whales once fed. These climate-driven changes lead to less favorable foraging, reducing the calving rate, and exposing them to greater mortality risks from ship strikes and entanglements as they seek food in areas where precautions are not in place.

Since 2015, more right whales are foraging in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Long term acoustic monitoring indicates the daily occurrence of right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence quadrupled after 2015 in comparison to 2011-2014. Coinciding with this change is an unusually high mortality rate since 2017, in part due to ship strikes and interactions with fishing gear, like snow crab gear with heavier traps and thicker line than used in Maine fisheries.

In the NMFS five-year review, mortalities and serious injuries from ship strikes and entanglements are considered “human caused,” and rightly so. But there is another human cause leading to the decline of not just right whales, but most endangered species on the planet—climate change.

We’ve all played a role in pushing species to the brink. Undoubtedly serious injuries and deaths are attributed to ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear, but it’s critical to acknowledge and consider the underlying stress from climate change that threatens every single whale, particularly reproductive females.

These announcements, for me at least, come with some hope—hope that we can do better. Funds have finally been allocated to fill serious information gaps and enable regulatory and

business decision-making based on facts and current data rather than worst case scenarios and data that no longer applies due to rapid ocean climate change.

Rather than continuing to document the decline of things we care about, let’s work together to solve the problem.

The challenge shouldn’t fall on hardworking fishermen engaged in one of the most sustainable fisheries in the world to support their families, communities, and the backbone of an entire state’s economy. The North Atlantic right whale is just one acute example. The fact is we are living in a global biodiversity crisis, with a common thread— climate change. All of us can play a role in reversing this trend. Now, more than ever before, there are multiple pathways for action.

Susie Arnold is a senior ocean scientist at the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront, working on the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification on marine resources and fisheries-dependent communities.

Ralph Stanley, as photographed by Peggy McKenna. PHOTO: PENOBSCOT MARINE MUSEUM

She made them feel relaxed and willing to share a bit of themselves. They trusted her.

field notes

Working waterfronts ‘speak’ in podcast

Common themes emerging along Maine coast

By Amy Rawn

GALEN KOCH WANTS you to get curious about your local dock.

Maine’s working waterfront is iconic, and foundational to the culture and economy of many island and coastal communities. From bustling wharfs to lobster co-ops, to seafarms, boat builders and mechanics, the working waterfront is made up of the infrastructure, businesses, and access points that make it possible to make a living on the water.

But these critical institutions and links to the sea—like your local dock— are easy to overlook or take for granted and they are not always guaranteed.

With producer, writer, and educator Galen Koch at the helm, the Island Institute’s new iteration of its podcast “From the Sea Up” explores the past, present, and future of Maine’s working waterfronts. It examines challenges around access, infrastructure, workforce, housing, and investment in six episodes, each featuring a different community.

By uncovering the forces that have created these distinct working waterfronts, Koch sheds light on ways that Maine communities can have a hand in actively shaping—and preserving— their working coastlines.

“Trying to tell the story of a really mundane thing like a pier is challenging,

but it is also really fun,” Koch explains, but there is a lot below the surface.

Through a human-centered approach, Koch connects the threads between infrastructure, people, policy, and place. The episode on Eastport explores a transition from a waterfront of empty factories to a vibrant multi-use working coast positioned to respond to an uncertain future.

In the second episode, we hear about how the historic fishing town of Gouldsboro has grappled with questions about what kind of future it wants for its working waterfront. In the Southwest Harbor episode, Koch examines how the community has maintained and supported its commercial fisheries through zoning, municipal planning, and town decisions.

Though each working waterfront community is distinct, Koch identifies themes that have emerged visiting towns along the coast. Upkeep, funding, and investment in local infrastructure are ongoing challenges, and some obstacles and options are explored in the upcoming episode on Boothbay Harbor. A shrinking workforce and lack of housing are also issues impacting many working waterfront communities. In the upcoming episode on Deer Isle, Koch “digs into the domino effect of the housing crisis on a hyper-local level.”

Koch grew up on Deer Isle, where she was steeped in the stories and history of her community. She remembers making fiction movies with her brother using their family’s analog video camera and was a frequent cast member in productions at the Stonington Opera House.

Pivoting from her background in theater, she went on to attend Skidmore College where she pursued the visual arts. After moving to Portland, Oregon after college, however, she found herself called back to the narratives of her home state.

“Being from Maine, I had this strong sense of place and purpose growing up,” she says. “I knew the stories of my community.” She returned to attend the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies and began creating audio stories.

In addition to telling the present-day stories of Maine’s working waterfront, Koch is also devoted to preserving the voices of the past. For many years she has worked with Hugh French at the Tides Institute in Eastport digitizing interviews he conducted in the late 1970s and early ‘80s with folks who were employed in the former sardine industry. You can hear one of these interviews in the Eastport episode of the podcast—Alice Blaine shares about her 64 years as a fish packer.

Drawing from her deep experience with storytelling on the Maine coast, Koch reminds us that our history can be a helpful reference when navigating future changes, for Maine’s working waterfront has a legacy of adaptation, creativity, and resiliency.

“Remembering that fisheries and industries have changed and weathered it, is this really wonderful reminder of how strong coastal Maine is and has been,” says Koch.

With a deep knowledge of the coast, stories of the past close at hand, and a determination to unravel the web of political, ecological, and economic complexities that shape Maine communities, Koch asks the podcast audience to ponder the future of the working waterfront and the role we can have in shaping it.

Listen to the “From the Sea Up,” podcast at islandinstitute.org/podcast.

Amy Rawn is a marketing specialist with the Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront, creating and sharing content across communications platforms.

Observer

Childhood by neighborhoods and houses

Growing family meant moving around the island

By Phil Crossman

ON NOVEMBER 14, 1948, Mom, Dad—the man she’d married in Massachusetts four years earlier and who’d just been discharged from the army after a grueling couple of years in Germany—four-year-old me, and my two-year-old brother, moved back to her island home on Vinalhaven. We moved into a second story downtown apartment just above the street level Sim’s Pool Hall.

My industrious and artful Mom immediately established a gift emporium, The Seadrift Shop, in an empty space next to the pool hall, and my dad joined with my grandfather, Mom’s dad, in establishing a carpentry business, Crossman & Maddox, that lasted 33 years. Our apartment had an ice box, replenished with a big block of ice carried up the stairs once a week by—who else?—the iceman. Soon I entered kindergarten.

In February 1951, we moved, with a new ten-month-old baby brother, to a cozy little rented house in a nice neighborhood with lots of nearby children.

It had a real refrigerator instead of an ice box, but no plumbing. We used an outhouse in the back yard and bathed once a week in a big galvanized tub in the kitchen where Mom could continually refresh the water, heating on the stove in four big pots. This was a big event.

My baby brother slept in a dresser drawer in my parent’s room. I entered the first grade.

In October 1952, we moved to a house closer to town on Clam Shell Alley, another nice neighborhood right on the shore but with far fewer kids my age. One day my six-year-old brother was plucked up out of the yard and tossed overboard by a mentally ill islander, then rescued by a neighbor. My two younger brothers and I walked regularly with Dad the 200 yards to town to get groceries or the paper. I entered the second grade.

We were only there for a few months before moving to a nice house high up on a hill on Lane’s Island, connected to the main island by a draw bridge which was being replaced by a conventional structure. I was nine years old and so walking to school to the third grade

while the bridge was being built, I had to “walk the plank.” The workmen always reminded me of the unfriendly troll who lived under the bridge.

In October of the same year we moved to “The Bucket,” short for the Bucket of Blood. It had been referred to thus for so long no one really knew what horrific event it referred to but there was such an event, make no mistake. We stayed there for five years to the day and, during that time, grew very well and comfortably acquainted with a ghost whom we lovingly called Uncle Tim.

This was a great little house, great neighborhood, right on the shore of Indian Creek, lots of water activity, often rowing across the creek to build treehouses in the spruce of Armbrust Hill.

Dad used to climb a ladder to the roof and maneuver rabbit ears antennae so the reception would be sufficient for we three boys to watch the Lone Ranger.

A fourth brother was on the way and arrived in 1956.

In 1958, Mom and Dad said they had a surprise for us. They’d been saving money and had just purchased

the Moses Webster House. We were to move in that weekend. The Bucket had been cozy but really tiny; four brothers in two very tiny bedrooms. The Moses Webster House was a magnificent 12-room Victorian that lorded over the village below. I had just entered my freshman year. Each of the four brothers had a room of his own. So did Mom and Dad. It was astounding. There was one bedroom left.

In 1959, some close acquaintances were involved in a very messy and tumultuous divorce. They had a lovely 14-year-old daughter and asked Mom and Dad to take her in for a year or so. She took the remaining bedroom and pubescent and adolescent four boys who’d only known brotherhood were— well—awakened.

Phil Crossman lives on Vinalhaven where he owns the Tidewater Motel. He may be reached at PhilCrossmanVH@ gmail.com.

Down at the Monhegan Dock with Alison Hill

By Carl Little

The dock on Monhegan is the center of that farout-at-sea island’s universe.

“It’s our lifeline,” writes painter Alison Hill. “It’s the first thing we see when we arrive,” she notes, “and the last thing we see when we leave.”

For Hill, who moved to Monhegan in May 2002, the setting conjures a range of images: the summer ritual of jumping off the dock, fishermen and women hard at work, the Monhegan Boat Line crew out in all weather, “and the way everyone pitches in to help unload or load whatever is needed.”

She is always impressed by the landing’s steadfastness and structure—it was first built in 1908—and has been inspired to paint it on many occasions.

In her 2015 exhibition “Castaway” at Archipelago, the Island Institute’s store in Rockland, Hill included several paintings of dock activities. One of them, “Coiling the Ropes,” depicts Chris Rollins, a ninthgeneration Monhegan islander on the deck of the Laura B, which is moored pierside. The painter

Doc Martin meets All Creatures Great and Small sets the tone for Dr. Chuck Radis’s unique medical practice on the Casco Bay Islands. “With his truelife stories, (Radis) joins the ranks of writing physicians such as Abraham Verghese and the late Richard Selzer.”

Lloyd Sachs, book critic, Chicago Tribune and Kirkus Reviews

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wanted to represent island life in the off season by showing this lone figure at work.

Hill’s view looks past the Laura B’s pilot house toward the bow of the boat where supplies are piled. Her brushwork is loose yet sure as she renders the dock and its shed and the jacketed Rollins, coiling ghostly rope that snakes across the wooden deck.

Hill works from life when she can but says the action paintings are “mostly from photos and sketches, and some memory.”

A note about the Laura B: the 65-foot vessel started out as a U.S. Army T-57 carrying troops and supplies—and a pair of 50-caliber machine guns and a 20 mm cannon—in the Solomon Islands during World War II. After its move to Maine in 1946, the boat transported lobsters to Boston and New York City before beginning its halfcentury-and-counting tenure as a year-round passenger ferry and freight and mail boat between Port Clyde and Monhegan.

her skills at the Art Students League in New York City and Lyme Academy.

Over the ensuing 20 years Hill has painted the island from edge to edge, capturing a diverse inventory of Monhegan motifs in all seasons and weather: the surfdashed coast, Fish Beach, the Sheridan shipwreck, cottages and gardens, the church, the lightkeeper’s house, the Island Inn. While she occasionally goes offisland, for “fresh paint” events in Cape Elizabeth and Camden, Monhegan is her main muse.

Hill manages a seasonal studio/gallery, open between Memorial Day and Indigenous Peoples Day. That schedule allows for a “good stretch of time” for painting commissions, including portraits, and creating new work for the gallery. Even in high season she manages to get out every day before she opens and after she closes.

Her brushwork is loose yet sure as she renders the dock and its shed and the jacketed Rollins, coiling ghostly rope…

Hill’s first trip to Monhegan aboard the Laura B took place in February 2002, at the invitation of her boyfriend and future husband, painter Ted Tihansky (19532019), who wanted to introduce her to the island. Smitten, she sold her home in Newport, R.I., and moved lock, stock, and easel to Monhegan.

Hill held degrees in psychology, art therapy, and art education from, respectively, the University of Rhode Island, Leslie College, and Rhode Island College, and had worked at a variety of jobs, including body builder, carpenter, and telephone lineman. Taking up painting full time, she furthered

Hill is well aware of the island’s art history and turns to predecessors like Jay Connaway, Alexander Bogdanov, Andrew Winter, Alice Stoddard, and Don Stone for inspiration. She also admires many contemporaries, among them David Vickery and Ralf Feyl. The island provides her with subject matter, but also community. And it all starts at that iconic dock.

You can see more of Alison Hill’s work at www. alisonhill.net.

Islandport Press will be publishing Carl and David Little’s The Art of Penobscot Bay in the spring.

Feds fund Camp Ellis fix

$45 million authorized for erosion

U.S. SEN. SUSAN COLLINS announced that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes a provision she championed authorizing $45 million for a permanent solution to the severe, ongoing erosion at Camp Ellis.

The annual defense spending authorization bill sets the U.S. military’s priorities and policies.

The $45 million authorized would ensure that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has the funding necessary to construct a 750-foot spur jetty off the existing jetty and replenish 365,000 cubic yards of beachfront.

“For generations, the residents of Camp Ellis and the city of Saco have had to contend with a relentlessly receding shoreline that has claimed dozens of homes,” said Collins. “The devastating erosion impacting this community was caused by the jetty constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers more than 150 years ago at the mouth of the Saco River, and it is long past time to rectify this mistake.

More than 150 years ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a jetty extending out from the Saco River, adjacent to Camp Ellis Beach, and expanded it in the 1950s. This jetty altered the pattern of currents and sand deposition and is the primary cause of the severe erosion of Camp Ellis, washing away 38 homes. The 1998 shoreline was 400 feet from where the shoreline stood in 1908.