Category: Science

Island Journal

How Far Can a Fish Run?

It’s not rocket science. “Take a freshwater fish, put it in salt water, and you’ve killed it. Take a marine fish, put it in fresh water, and you’ve killed it.” So says Justin Stevens, a sea-run fish specialist at Maine Sea Grant while describing the wonder of sea-run—or diadromous—fish. Like most organisms, fish require a strict regulation of salt within the body to function, so if a fish’s habitat is either too salty or not salty enough, it dies. Diadromous fish, however, challenge this conventional wisdom in that they thrive in both salt and fresh water. SEE MORE

Island Journal

What We Saw Touring the Gulf of Maine Shore

In 2002, Natalie Springuel and Richard MacDonald, among others, embarked on a paddling expedition along the shores of the Gulf of Maine. What they learned reveals how dynamic and threatened is this “semi-enclosed sea.” The Gulf of Maine Expedition was a sea kayaking journey organized to raise awareness and caring about the ecological and cultural legacy of this vast international watershed and to promote low-impact coastal recreational practices, safety, and stewardship principles. SEE MORE

Island Journal

The Unique Environment of Island Forests

photos by Jack Sullivan Imagine being at sea for weeks, months, or years, seeing only blue, gray, and the foaming white of cresting waves. Imagine smelling only salt, minerals, fish, and then, one day, catching the faintest scent of something different, like honey mixed with cinnamon and turpentine. On the… SEE MORE

Island Journal

The Misunderstood Shark

“Bastid took m’ hook!” Carts, a wiry guy with a cockeyed green cap and gaps in his smile, looked down at me from his precarious perch on the gunnel of the boat. I was about nine years old, and taken aback by his anger about the hook. We were on… SEE MORE
two geese take flight near an island

Island Journal

All eyes on the Chesapeake

The Chesapeake Bay’s past is the stuff of legend: Pocahontas and Capt. John Smith (well, actually John Rolfe), the rockets’ red glare and the anthem it inspired, the Monitor and the Merrimack, oyster pirates and the “Oyster Navy.” The future, though, is shaping up to be the stuff of hard… SEE MORE
horseshoe crabs in water

Island Journal

The Strange Nature of Horseshoe Crabs

Ages ago in the sea-green clear water of Chandler’s Cove on Chebeague Island, strange dark shapes were scuttling around the bottom. My seven-year-old face peeked out over the edge of the wharf, watching them. I remember my hands gripping the splintery planks. Horseshoe crabs, the big people called them. Gliding… SEE MORE
Map of Florida Keys

Island Journal

Whelmed in Key Largo

In the fall of 2017, Hurricane Irma’s surge advanced toward my home in Key Largo, waves curling across the lawns of properties slightly closer to Largo Sound. After the storm passed, the neighborhood was excavated from beneath branches and trees that no longer provided shade, and piles rose in front… SEE MORE
Workshop participants inspect a shell midden in the Damariscotta area

Island Journal

More Than a Pile of Shells

Up a tidal river, around a blue-green bend where the banks begin to steepen, the wooded shoreline is interrupted by a tall white cliff. Weathered bits of shell and dust tumble down the exposed face, revealing layer upon layer of oyster shells. Pockets of charcoal and fire-cracked rock are signs of human activity from millennia ago, when ancestors of the Wabanaki people came together to harvest oysters from the warm, brackish river in what is now known as Damariscotta and Newcastle. On both banks, they deposited the shells, one at a time, basketful by basketful, season after season. Eventually, the piles grew into small mountains some 30 feet tall. Around 2,000 years ago, the local people stopped adding to the piles. Soil and trees grew over the tops, but the middens were massive and the river kept the edges washed clean, and they continued to attract attention after Europeans came on the scene. SEE MORE