Category: Uncategorized

Outside, there is still the gritty facade of what was most recently Vinalhaven’s public works garage; preceding that, it was the net factory, with much older roots. Now the building houses the island’s Swap Shop, an intown facility relocated from the dump. Especially for those familiar with the old one, the surprise is inside—an interior resembling a department store, various sections stocked with the different categories of goods—but no price tags on anything because all of it has been donated and is free.

Maine has a long and celebrated history of shipping by sea. It’s ingrained in our history, culture, and economy. Through the centuries, ships have transported granite, lumber, ice, shoes, canned sardines, and numerous other products from Maine to markets in the U.S. and around the globe. They’ve brought cargo to Maine as diverse as coal, cotton for our mills, guano for fertilizer, and even molasses for rum distilleries.

On a chilly evening last year, Elaine and I were invited next door to the Chambers’ to enjoy their company and that of a dozen or so others of our broadly interesting neighbors and island visitors, all gathered around an outdoor woodfire. After a while our host, David, offered me a martini, a “Killer Botanist Gin Martini,” to be precise.
I’ve suffered the occasional martini in the past but given a choice I’d customarily prefer a Scotch and soda or perhaps an Old Fashioned.

Like most organisms, fish require a strict regulation of salt within the body to function, so if a fish’s habitat is either too salty or not salty enough, it dies. Diadromous fish, however, challenge this conventional wisdom in that they thrive in both salt and fresh water. This superpower lies in the gills, where special cells detect the salinity of incoming water. The fish’s biology reacts accordingly, either by secreting salt out of the body or by bringing more in osmotically, allowing it to travel between salt and fresh water…

Altvater, 20, a Passamaquoddy tribal member and resident of the territory at Sipayik near Eastport, played a key advocacy role in for the passage of LD 906, a state law granting Passamaquoddy people the right to access clean and safe drinking water.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944) was among the most famous illustrators in the world. His idealized modern woman, who came to be called the Gibson girl, brought him tremendous fame and fortune. Off the southern end of Islesboro lies an island, spruce-clad and sprawling—not precisely 700 acres as its name would have you believe, but close enough. In 1903 a famous New York City artist, the creator of an iconic image of modern woman, discovered this northern domain and bought a piece of it—11-plus acres—with the proceeds from his illustrations. The place became a retreat, a kind of Penobscot Bay nevernever land where he and his family could spend their summers far from the maddening crowds and the heat of their home in New York City.

The 2002 Gulf of Maine Expedition was a sea kayaking journey organized to raise awareness and caring about the ecological and cultural legacy of this vast international watershed and to promote low-impact coastal recreational practices, safety, and stewardship principles.

Over the course of five months, our team paddled the perimeter of the Gulf of Maine from Provincetown, Mass., on the tip of Cape Cod, along the Massachusetts coast through Boston Harbor, north along the 18-mile New Hampshire coastline, the entire coast of Maine, across the Canadian border and around the Bay of Fundy from New Brunswick to Nova Scotia, finally finishing at Cape Sable Island, the very end of the Gulf of Maine.activity, and over time, it grows its own values and learns to identify threats.

This year marks the Institute’s 40th year. Maine’s islands and coast were very different places in 1983, yet as we reflect on those four decades, it’s satisfying to see consistent themes threading through the years. These days, we often describe ourselves as a community development organization. What does that mean? It means we recognize how essential those units of human congregation are; community coalesces around shared economic and cultural
activity, and over time, it grows its own values and learns to identify threats.

I have been looking back at what fishing was like in 1973, the year I founded Commercial Fisheries News. The differences are stunning, even to someone like me who reported on those changes, sold ads for the new gear, was part of creating the new lobster laws in the 1990s, and tried to connect fishermen… Read more »