I went to Wisconsin to learn about island communities in the Great Lakes. I didn’t expect to find so many reminders of Maine, but the connections sprang up in every conversation.
Category: Blog
Being a Tourist in Winter Harbor…in November
Posted by Neil Arnold & filed under Blog.
On this sunny afternoon in November, we found ourselves driving into Winter Harbor with a map in one hand and pocket book in the other, ready to see the local sites and inject some of our own money into the local economy.
Island kids take to the hills!
Posted by Neil Arnold & filed under Blog.
For this year’s fall field trip, the Outer Islands TLC headed inland to the foothills of the White Mountains! This adventure brought us to the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School campus in Newry, Maine.
Islanders are leading the way to better broadband
Posted by Neil Arnold & filed under Blog.
After a year and half, I’ve come to learn what islanders already knew: broadband is the high-speed, reliable internet that is essential for economic sustainability. I had the pleasure of hearing from Maine’s islands about their progress at the Broadband Summit.
Ocean planning in the classroom
Posted by Neil Arnold & filed under Blog.
I teamed up with Green Fire Productions, a nonprofit video production company, to film classroom footage of John Van Dis of Edna Drinkwater School and Marci Train of Long Island School for the newest Ocean Frontiers documentary.
Outer island stories brought to life by shadow puppets
Posted by Neil Arnold & filed under Blog.
Last winter and spring, Figures of Speech Theatre worked with outer islands schools to produce a film. And it’s probably not like any film you’ve seen before.
Alaskan Salmon in Maine: (delicious) food for thought
Posted by Neil Arnold & filed under Blog.
People driving down Route 1 on Sunday smelled wild salmon from the northern reaches of the Pacific hitting the grill a stone’s throw from the Atlantic. Those smart enough to follow their noses were greeted by sustainable salmon from Alaska and seaweed salad from Maine.
Hands-on learning in schools large and small
Posted by Neil Arnold & filed under Blog.
What kind of school gets kids to build their own racecar? How about asking students to carry their trash around for a week? Or compare themselves to a favorite vegetable? Those are just a few of the student assignments I heard about at this year’s Island Teachers Conference, and they all have a common result: Students are diving deeper into their surroundings, and learning more along the way.
Maine’s recent shellfish closure has the same culprit as California’s 2015 crab crisis
Posted by Neil Arnold & filed under Blog.
In September of this year, eastern Maine was closed to clam and mussel harvesting. The cause? Not our familiar red tide, but a different biotoxin, domoic acid. It accumulates in filter-feeding shellfish during a bloom of specific algae species. The bloom in eastern Maine is now dissipating, but the clam and mussel fishery hasn’t fully reopened.
Baby shellfish are growing fast as our first aquaculturists start their farms
Posted by Neil Arnold & filed under Blog.
Many of our aquaculture business development participants have already started their farms and we project that the economic impact of this work will have an $8.5 million effect on Maine’s coast over the next five years.
