Working Waterfront

From fishing to farming—scallops (and goats)

For some fishermen, Maine’s aquaculture industry has been a thorny subject that includes concerns like navigational safety and environmental health. But as a third-generation fisherman, Marsden Brewer of Stonington sees the development of a new scallop farming sector as an opportunity for fishermen to diversify their income streams, maintain a… SEE MORE

A Maine Department of Transportation dump truck pulls off of the Downeast Sunrise Trail

Working Waterfront

Machias confronts frequent tidal floods

By Sarah Craighead Dedmon State snowplows descended on Machias the morning after an April storm, but they weren’t there to remove spring snow. Instead, they plowed debris from the Machias River, deposited during a violent storm and spring tide. It was the second time in four months plows removed seaweed… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

How the next generation is building a better climate

By Kate Tagai Youth leadership. It is the next generation’s world to inherit, and it is they who will need resilient leadership, compassion, and strength to adapt and thrive in a changing climate, so why not start now? It can be as simple as an adult asking the question, “What… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Spring comes, regardless of the state of humans

By Courtney Naliboff Remember last month’s column, when I was so excited about my staycation? And then exactly a month later we all found ourselves on an indefinite staycation? Except during this staycation I’m teaching a full remote-course load while helping my kindergartener with her remote learning and also attempting… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Mythic story-poems of spirit and survival

Review by Carl Little In a documentary about his life and work, award-winning Native-American writer N. Scott Momaday stated, “There is no such thing as poetry in Indian traditions.” Interviewing him in March, NPR reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked him to explain. “It’s a storytelling tradition,” Momaday said, “so you have… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Lobstermen rally to fight right whale ruling

By Laurie Schreiber For lobster fishermen, today’s uncertainties revolve not only around a tightening market during the pandemic, but a legal situation that questions the industry’s ability to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales. In mid-April, a federal judge ruled, in a case brought by four conservation organizations, that the… SEE MORE

An illustration of a cod schooner at sea in the mid 1800s.

Working Waterfront

Maine: A pattern of renewal after hardship

By Jack Sullivan I was looking forward to doing something fun to celebrate my home state’s 200th anniversary of statehood. I wanted to have a few friends over and make a toast to the 23rd state of this great nation—maybe even pour one out for Joshua Chamberlain. Unfortunately, March 15… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Personal stories about sewage and pollution

By Albert Presgraves I started sailing as a youngster with my family in the 1960s. At that time, the only sewage disposal system in common use on boats was a marine toilet with a built-in pump that pulled in seawater and discharged the waste and water mix overboard. It seemed… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Let’s take a trip around some other waterfronts

By Tom Groening When I arrived at the Island Institute seven years ago, the newspaper featured a column that reported on working waterfront access issues around the U.S. The few times I wrote the column, my approach was to bop around the web, reading news stories about development and the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Friendship family on its own for sea-level rise fixes

By Stephanie Bouchard When Tim Flood, 60, was a kid, the sea would find its way inside one of his family’s cottages on Muscongus Bay only once in a while during the winter. But within the last five years, the ocean has been a regular visitor to the two-story building… SEE MORE