Articles
New Directions: Compass Project teaches kids job and life skills
Ten students from King Middle School in Portland are immersed in their work, building half models of the SEGUIN tugboat. Their focus is complete as they sit on the floor or work at a card table, bent intently over the model pieces, making holes with power or hand drills or by using a mallet and
Everything in Moderation: farmed salmon PBC levels exceed one standard, fall below another
After a report was issued by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) in August saying that 10 farm-raised salmon had higher levels of PCBs than allowed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, (not the Food and Drug Administration), Jon Lewis, Maine Department of Marine Resources Aquaculture Environmental Coordinator, says people kept asking him if he was
Adopt-a-Boat
Through a classroom connection with commercial fishermen set up by the Adopt-a-Boat program, K-12 students across New England have been learning about lobster traps and lobsters, lobster and ground fishing techniques, numerous marine animals, mudflat critters and oxygen levels, ocean temperature fluctuations, the impact of groundfishing rules and regulations and a multitude of other topics
Adventurous photographer documents glass eel migrations
If capturing the good shot means traveling to a river site after dark, donning a dry suit, lugging the underwater camera and strobe lighting equipment across slippery ledges to pools beside the river, lying down in the water and waiting patiently for the subject to appear, photographer Heather Perry of Bath is up for the
Helping research reach the marketplace
The Lobster Institute of the University of Maine at Orono has for many years partnered with university researchers to develop value-added products and processes that could benefit Maine’s lobster and crab industries. Their projects have included using lobster and crab by-product in seafood snacks and pasta, developing a soy-based lobster bait, and patenting a process
Promised land Eagle Island reflects an explorer’s life and personality
Admiral Robert Peary, whose wife, Josephine, was on Eagle Island in Casco Bay when she learned in 1909 that he and Matthew Henson had reached the North Pole, first saw the island when he was 17. He fell in love with it immediately. The passion he felt for it, which his family shared during their
New hatchery relies on safe, predictable practices
Chris Maloney, who with Tonie Simmons owns Maine’s newest shellfish hatchery, Muscongus Aquaculture, says reliability is the cornerstone of their business. Their mission, he says, is “to produce good quality shellfish and get it to growers when they want it and in the proper amount.” He emphasizes that they take their responsibility to the customer
A pianist for all people
For the past four summers, Richard “Dick” Hankinson’s artistry at the piano has delighted the congregation at Popham Chapel 10:30 a.m. Sunday services. A few hum along as he performs preludes and postludes by composers like Chopin, Liszt and Rubenstein. Hankinson and his wife moved to Maine in 1985, after visiting with Phippsburg resident Ruth
Shellfish from the Deep
Thanks to a demonstration project at University of New Hampshire, funded by a grant from NOAA, fishermen who need to find alternative part-time work that will keep them on the water have another option in sight: submerged open ocean longline mussel farming. Researchers at UNH, working with fishermen from the Portsmouth Fishermen’s Co-op, have labored
Raking it in
It takes hefty biceps and a strong back to hoist the rake Gavin Hood and Susan Domizi designed specifically for harvesting rockweed (Ascophyllum nodosum), but if a person has the strength and the will to work the rake long days during the harvest season, he or she can make a decent living. Actually, it isn’t