Working Waterfront

Listening for right whales

You might think keeping track of a 100,000 pound animal would be easy. But when its home has no boundaries and its prey moves with changing ocean circulation within the vast Atlantic, it presents a challenge. Then there’s the fact that there are only around 350 remaining and they aren’t… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Kim Hamilton named Island Institute president

The Island Institute, publisher of The Working Waterfront, named Kim Hamilton as its president, effective April 1. Hamilton has served as the organization’s interim chief programs officer since September, overseeing the Institute’s climate, economic resilience, and leadership programs and serving on its senior leadership team. The Rockland-based nonprofit’s board of… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Boothbay’s ‘hidden treasure’ is water temperature data

Maine’s Department of Marine Resources has maintained a hidden treasure in Boothbay Harbor for nearly 120 years—a daily measurement of sea surface temperatures, which provides an uncommonly long record of a warming ocean. Those daily records (more than 42,000 of them) were translated into annual averages to show the estimated… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

When admitting you’re wrong is the right move

Reading the Glass: A Captain’s View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships By Elliot Rappaport, Dutton/Penguin Random House (2023) A few of us get to know everything: doctors, editors, various experts, philosophers, TV pundits, religious gurus—and, now after reading Elliot Rappaport’s Reading the Glass: A Captain’s View of Weather,… SEE MORE

Katie Ashley, a plant science Ph.D student at the University of Maine, poses with potato bins filled with lobster shells.

Working Waterfront

Lobster shells may protect potato crop

Scientists at the University of Maine are studying lobster shells as a possible aid to microbial communities to ward off soilborne potato pathogens. The novel shell-to-spud combination may connect two cornerstones of Maine’s food system and enhance the state’s circular economy. Potatoes are Maine’s top agricultural commodity with a value… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Fear of aquaculture not couched in reality

An article in the February/March issue The Working Waterfront outlined the fact that an increasing number of coastal towns in Maine fear, and are interposing regulatory measures that bar or limit, new and/or expanded aquaculture activities in their respective towns (“Towns fear, fight aquaculture expansion”). Similar (and somewhat stronger) views… SEE MORE

Maine Department of Transportation officials watch an Irving ship near the Mack Point terminal in Searsport in 2013. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Working Waterfront

Maine’s ports poised for growth

The future of Maine’s three state-supported shipping ports is bright, says Matt Burns, director of the Maine Port Authority. “We have a lot of activities on our plate out to the end of the decade,” Burns said during a Feb. 14 online presentation hosted by the Waterfront Alliance, a Portland… SEE MORE

A view of Greenland's glacial landscape. PHOTO: PETER NEILL

Working Waterfront

Greenland’s lessons for the climate crisis

I was 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… SEE MORE

A summer afternoon on Swan's Island. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Working Waterfront

Institute implements resiliency program

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… SEE MORE

Crustacean off Great Cranberry Isle. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Working Waterfront

Trends emerge on communities reliant on lobster

The value of Maine’s 2022 lobster fishery was $388 million, a decline of over $353 million compared to 2021. While this is a significant number, the total value of Maine’s lobster landings didn’t exceed $350 million until 2013. In addition, we know that the value of these landings is not… SEE MORE