Pretty Rugged: True Stories From Women of the Sea By Ali Farrell (Sea Street Publishing, Camden; 2020) Review by Tina Cohen This is a book about women who lobster, and it is about the grit of these fishermen (the term has become gender-neutral). Nothing is prettied up here. Author Ali Farrell interviewed 26 women working in Maine who share their…

  [caption id="attachment_25385" align="aligncenter" width="400"] #4: Colleen Rich Jones, and Alice Doughty Lefebvre at the pond in the mid-1950s. PHOTO: COURTESY DONNA DAMON[/caption] March was a banner month for the…

Mussels used to grow nearby on rocks at the water’s edge, and now there aren’t many at all. And it was getting harder about 25 years ago, but we used…

When it comes to aquaculture, it would be hard to top Sebastian Belle’s resumé. Belle, 62, earned a degree in fisheries and wildlife at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst,…

Millions of research and development dollars are being invested in a startup company in Singapore that has converted a high-rise parking garage into a production facility that manufactures lobster “meat.”…

The Second World War had a dramatic impact on the everyday lives of people across the country, and while far from the fighting, the residents of Maine’s remote offshore islands…

Carving from green wood is a whole different beast from dry-wood carving, says Danielle Rose Byrd, a Bar Harbor-based wood carver and sculptor. “It’s wet wood. It behaves differently when it dries. It wants to crack and people are super scared of that. And so I’m like … Why is that bad?” In Byrd’s new book, the self-taught carver presents step-by-step wood carving instruction, with some soul-carving instruction threaded in.

Maya Newsam has found her niche in Owls Head. That location isn’t coincidence. It’s where her great-great grandparents were rooted in the working waterfront. And as the new owner of Owls Head General Store, Newsam is here to stay.

Island winters are not for the faint of heart. My first winter on Islesboro was no exception. At the beginning of my fellowship, a wise islander gave me some sage advice: the only way to make it through winter on Islesboro is to have a really good hobby.

Birds, says field biologist Richard MacDonald of Bar Harbor, have been “a unifying theme” in his life. At age ten MacDonald was banding ducks and in college he carried binoculars wherever he went. And for the past several decades he has led birding expeditions, local and way away (Antarctica), while running the Natural History Center on Mount Desert Island.