Category: History

Island Journal

When Foreign Fishing Vessels Harvested the Gulf of Maine

When Cape Porpoise gillnetters returned to the sea to haul their gear up during the week of August 11, 1974, all they found were a few shreds of their nets and some end-markers. They were fishing on Jefferies Ledge, 30 miles off southern Maine and New Hampshire. That week, 42… SEE MORE

Island Journal

The Last Fish House on Otter Creek

On a warm July afternoon, Steve Smith sat outside a fish house in Otter Creek on Mount Desert Island, telling stories. There was the time it was “Blowin’ like a bastard from the north,” and his skiff capsized. A pair of park visitors heard Smith calling for help, hopped in a nearby rowboat and rescued him. While Smith regaled me with this tale, a large gull landed gracelessly on a nearby piling, evidence that there was once a functioning dock here, now buried by debris from the 2024 winter storms. SEE MORE

Island Journal

Will Frost’s Rum Runner Boats

With Prohibition in effect from 1920-1933, a thriving trade in alcohol quickly arose in dozens of Maine and Canadian maritime communities. Researcher and writer Daniel Sheldon Lee asserts in The Maine Lobster Boat, History of an Iconic Fishing Vessel: “Due to this proximity to Canada, during Prohibition, Maine would supply… SEE MORE

Island Journal

Island Town Government: Conflict, Color, and Committment

Around 1960 I attended a Vinalhaven town meeting as part of a high school class activity dealing with civic government. One item on the town’s agenda concerned the repair of a small bridge connecting two substantial (everything’s relevant) island land masses that were a couple hundred feet apart, but which… SEE MORE

Island Journal

Everybody Has Got a ‘Bajupa’ Story

Arthur “Art” Hupper was one of the hardest workers on the St. George Peninsula. According to his son David, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, a day of work for Art was just that—nearly 24 hours of labor. He would buy lobsters on remote Maine islands like Monhegan and Matinicus and… SEE MORE

Island Journal

How Far Can a Fish Run?

It’s not rocket science. “Take a freshwater fish, put it in salt water, and you’ve killed it. Take a marine fish, put it in fresh water, and you’ve killed it.” So says Justin Stevens, a sea-run fish specialist at Maine Sea Grant while describing the wonder of sea-run—or diadromous—fish. 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. SEE MORE

Island Journal

Fisheries From 1973 to 2023 — How We Got Here

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 so that they could contribute to better science and better rules. SEE MORE

Island Journal

The Legacy of Islesboro’s Charles Dana Gibson

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. SEE MORE

Island Journal

Island Institute at 40 — Community Authenticity Remains Our Focus

You’ve probably heard the term “elevator pitch,” right? It’s mostly used in business circles, capturing the idea that an entrepreneur needs to be able to explain a business concept in a timeframe equal to the average elevator ride. That journey provides the ultimate captive audience, and so a clever pitch in that short time might land an investor. Well, here at Island Institute, we sometimes crave an elevator trip up Burj Khalifa in Dubai, with its 163 floors, to give us time to explain where the organization has been and where it is going. SEE MORE