News of Maine’s Coast and Islands
THE WORKING
volume 35, № 5 n jul 2021 n free circulation: 50,000
published by the island institute
Saving a Southwest Harbor anchor
n
workingwaterfront.com
WALK THIS WAY—
Owners want to preserve boat yard for next generation By Laurie Schreiber
J
eff and Audrey Berzinis have no firm conclusions on how to do it. But they know one thing—they want to preserve the working waterfront nature of their Southwest Harbor property for future generations. The Berzinises are the long-time owners of Southwest Boat, a marine services yard with multiple buildings, wharf, year-round dockage, 25-ton crane, 250-ton railway, 36,000 square feet of inside storage, machine shop, and welding and metal fabrication. A community sailing center and a marine supply store occupy two of the buildings. Docks are busy year-round with commercial fishing boats. The U.S. Coast Guard, which has a base two doors down, and the Maine Marine Patrol keep boats there. In typical years, the sailing center’s small-boat fleet is often out and about with races and lessons. Berzinis and his crew were recently busy rebuilding a portion of the wharf and plans were in the works to rebuild the railway and install a freezer unit for bait. Now in their mid-70s, the Berzinises are thinking about who will take over the thriving operation.
Belfast flaunted its artsy character this spring by choosing five artists to design and paint creative crosswalks. Kristyne Sanderson designed this lobster buoy-themed crosswalk, which used the actual buoy colors of the city’s lobster fleet. Sanderson and her husband John (pictured), who own and operate True Color Painting, did the work. The project was funded in part by a grant from the Maine Community Foundation. PHOTO: TOM GROENING
“How do you keep something like this going without it going to big developers of condominiums?” Jeff asks. “We want to know how we can protect our business, the tenants, the fishermen, and the use of our property in the future. Right now, it’s the only mixed-use boatyard in Southwest Harbor. We want to retain that.”
The property has a rich working heritage. Its build-out as a boatyard began in the early 1900s. Sim Mayo, the chief instigator of Mount Desert Island’s “automobile war” (he was arrested for flouting a continued on page 4
‘Natural’ salmon strategy is succeeding River-raised instead of hatchery increases return rates By Catherine Schmitt
I
n Maine rivers from the Androscoggin to the Dennys, Salmo salar, or Atlantic salmon, has been
on the Endangered Species List since 2000. At Craig Brook and Green Lake hatcheries, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service maintains the salmon lineage of each river, matching reproduction to
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maximize genetic diversity and raising on the East Machias River, where since millions to be placed in their native 2012 the Downeast Salmon Federation rivers as a long-running strategy to has been experimenting with a more “natural” approach. Fish recover the species. hatch from eggs into But only a small unfiltered, fast-flowing percentage return as East Machias River water in adults, and scientists “We can fix the including John Kocik river, but if we’re tanks with black sides and bottoms meant to mimic of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center putting in fish that the gravelly riverbed. Each fall, tens of largely blame changing won’t survive, we thousands of young marine conditions. won’t succeed.” salmon, known as parr, are “The most important distributed throughout strategy we can use to —DWAYNE SHAW the East Machias River. address low marine These conditions and survival is to get more density are modeled after young salmon to the ocean,” said Kocik. And wild salmon— methods developed by the late Peter those that have grown up in their home Gray on the Tyne River in England that river instead of in a hatchery—have are credited with restoring that river’s salmon population. better survival at sea, said Kocik. Such a strategy appears to be succeeding at the Peter Gray Hatchery continued on page 5