Working Waterfront

Climate is the real culprit in whale saga

In following the rollercoaster of how new regulations designed to protect the North Atlantic right whale will impact Maine’s lobster fishery and the communities the industry supports, two recent announcements stuck out to me. One is the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) five-year review of the species. The whales are… SEE MORE

Babb’s The Iron Works (1977, oil on panel, 36 x 48 in. collection of Janet Starr).

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Joel Babb’s BIW

Over its nearly 130-year existence, Bath Iron Works has also attracted artists. SEE MORE

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How to shrink your seafood footprint

Farmed oysters, along with their cousins the clam and the mussel, are extremely carbon-light. SEE MORE

Detail ofA Kosti Ruohomaa photograph made at Freeport’s L.L. Bean. PHOTO: COURTESY PENOBSCOT MARINE MUSEUM

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Ruohomaa featured in Freeport

Kosti Ruohomaa was a prominent mid-20th century photojournalist who grew up in Rockland. SEE MORE

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Study: lobster has small carbon footprint

In the spring of 2021, the Island Institute undertook a carbon footprint study with Maine-based seafood company and Island Institute partner Luke’s Lobster. It was the first time greenhouse gas emissions were measured along one company’s supply chain of Gulf of Maine lobster. Both the Institute, publisher of The Working… SEE MORE

Staff scientist Mike Doan collects water quality data from Friends’ research vessel, R/V Joseph E. Payne using a data sonde, a device that measures temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and other parameters.

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Casco Bay data shows rapid warming

“This rise in water temperature marks an enormous shift,” reports Mike Doan, staff scientist with Friends of Casco Bay. SEE MORE

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A well-deserved poetic tribute

Wedmore brings these women alive with vivid descriptions of their experiences and their emotional underpinning. SEE MORE

An employee of Lyman-Morse in Thomaston carries a boat stand. PHOTO: JACK SULLIVAN

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Maine boatbuilding: Busy, but fraught

According to the industry trade association Maine Built Boats, boatbuilding in the state generates annual industrywide sales of more than $650 million and some 5,000 jobs. SEE MORE

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Home, again, to Matinicus

Not surprisingly, traps and boats and fishing have been a big part of Scott’s life, though that life took him far from the Gulf of Maine. SEE MORE

Port Clyde, 1993, by Malcolm Morley (oil on canvas, 38 by 52 inches Private collection, Maine). Copyright the estate of Malcolm Morley.

Working Waterfront

Malcolm Morley’s Port Clyde collage

An artist with a checkered past—he served time in a U.K. reform school and prison before finding his way to art school and subsequent fame as a painter in New York City—Morley became a U.S. citizen in 1991 at age 60. SEE MORE