The 35-year old campaign to build a marine research center on the Portland waterfront took another major step forward last month, but not everyone here is happy about it. The Gulf of Maine Aquarium secured $2.8 million in federal funds March 10, which will be put towards building a $12 million, 58,000 square foot research
Building things
Something’s right in East Boothbay, the little community on the banks of the Sheepscot River where shipbuilders survive and thrive. Year after year the welders, mechanics, riggers and joiners at two yards there turn out an impressive tugs, ferries and yachts – in an age when America’s small manufacturers struggle against foreign competition, an uninterested
Technical problems thwart Dimilin/lobster studies
A collaborative effort between fishermen and scientists to obtain conclusive data about the effect spraying for Brown Tail Moths has on Maine’s lobster population was thwarted this winter due to equipment failure at the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) in Boothbay. The problem occurred when a filter system broke down in tanks holding 100 lobsters
John Wulp
John Wulp: A man of many resurrections Introduction by John Guare New Canaan, CT: CommonPlace Publishing, 2003 “Looking back now, I often feel that instead of living my life, I survived it.” So writes North Haven islander John Wulp in the autobiographical essay that is the central text of this handsome monograph devoted to his
The Long View Cold weather warmth
The true hospitality of island life opens itself up to visitors in winter, since islanders are generally happy to see strangers once the frenzy of the summer is a distant and painless memory. And who in Maine doesn’t love to share with a hapless visitor the communal experience of northern New England privation? Last month
Safety Forum shifts to Maine Port Authority
On March 1, the United States Coast Guard formally becomes part of the Department of Homeland Security. Maine’s waterfront interests will be watching carefully as the agency balances its traditional marine safety and fisheries enforcement duties with the added responsibilities of countering terrorist threats in domestic waters. While the Coast Guard officially intends to maintain
Institute seeks herring spawning information
The Island Institute in Rockland is beginning a project to document inshore historic herring spawning sites. Any fisherman with recollections of herring spawning sites within about five miles of shore is encouraged to call Benjamin Neal, Marine Programs Officer, at 594-9209 ext. 102. The herring resource has seen a significant increase offshore, but in the
Journal of an Island Kitchen A Warm Relationship
Last summer food writer Molly O’Neill had a piece in the New Yorker magazine about Viking ranges – those big, honking multi-burnered, chrome and burnished steel, all-gas-and-gorgeousness kitchen stoves that wealthy and sophisticated people (or the wannabes) purchase and install in their homes. Trophy stoves, she called them, next to which these same folks eat
P.E.I., Magdalen Islands fishermen meet over disputed fishery
A boundary dispute between Prince Edward Island fishermen and fishermen from the Magdalen Islands of Quebec remains unresolved. The dispute is over a lobster fishery. The two sides met for the first time in mid-February. Hosted by the Magdalen group, the meeting did produce agreement on at least one point: that both groups of fishermen
Dragon Cement expansion could affect Rockland, Wiscasset
The news in early February that Dragon Cement has revived negotiations to purchase the Mason Station in Wiscasset for distribution of its product created a flurry of phone calls among lobstermen along the Sheepscot River. Dragon, New England’s only cement plant, has just begun a $50 million, 18-month modernization of its Thomaston facility that will