To the editor: I have been a Working Waterfront subscriber and an Island Institute supporter for years and plan to continue. I look forward to your publications in the mail to jog my pleasant memories of time spent on the mainland and on the islands off the coast of Maine. I do not own a
“Breakaway” inanity
Congressman and Senators [via the editor of WWF]: If you have not seen the article on page 28 of the April edition of The Working Waterfront, published by the Island Institute, I commend it to you. It describes the inanity of requiring “breakaway” lobster fishing gear in areas where right whales have never been sighted.
Wrapping up the budget
Annually, town report covers bring out a degree of creativity across Maine. Island communities are no exception, as these examples from Swan’s Island, Cranberry Isles, North Haven and Isle au Haut suggest. Each year in the fall, the Maine Municipal Association holds a contest to determine what town’s report is the best designed. Results are
Corrections and omissions
To the editor: We need to note some corrections and omissions to last month’s article covering the Cranberry Isles Town meeting. This year the meal was hosted and prepared by Ladies Aid as is their custom to do every other year when the meeting is held on Great Cranberry Island. The fare was an astonishingly
Note of thanks
To the editor: For the past two months the Committee on Marine Resources has been conducting public hearings on a variety of bills affecting the fishing industry. I wanted to say “thank you” to all the fishermen who traveled to Augusta to testify. Hearing the different viewpoints and specific information on the issues was an
No-see-ums
Unlikely though it may seem, Vinalhaven, an island no less, is home to a band of car thieves who strike with impunity. Impunity is that characteristic which, in the face of what passes for police protection but is in fact only the Knox County Sheriff, so typifies both our mischief-makers (like ATV riders) and our
The Maine Land Bank
The Maine Land Bank, a proposed tax reform designed to insulate family properties on islands and elsewhere from skyrocketing property valuations, originated as a result of some hard work by folks on Chebeague Island and coastal Harpswell. Enrolling one’s property in the Land Bank program would exempt it from the state constitution’s “highest and best
Wrong river
To the editor: Re your editorial in the April issue of Working Waterfront, when I was in East Boothbay this afternoon, it was still on the bank of the Damariscotta, not the Sheepscot, River. Nicholas Dean Edgecomb I stand corrected. – ed.
The Long View Perserverance furthers
On one of the days with an early taste of spring last month, Nate Michaud, Mike Felton and I met the NATHANIEL ZACHARY in Bass Harbor for a trip to Frenchboro. With Zach Lunt at the helm we boarded the family lobster boat at the Morris Yacht dock and made a rolly crossing through the
“No historic memory”
David Cousens is correct. Term limits have apparently done their work at the legislature: the membership of today’s Joint Standing Committee on Marine Resources includes no one who was around when Maine’s historic (and successful) lobster-management rules were adopted in 1996. Cousens, president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, pointed out at a recent hearing on