Working Waterfront

Are the mussels really gone? Depends on where you look

By Susie Arnold, Ph. D. and Heather Deese, Ph. D. There has been a lot of curiosity about the reported decline of blue mussels along Maine’s coast. Over the last year, we have visited 32 coastal towns and islands, from Portsmouth to Eastport, sharing our Climate of Change documentary film… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Private air-traffic control could impact Penobscot Bay

By Kevin Waters In 1998, an ice storm swept through Maine, leaving some communities completely inaccessible. Without general aviation, many towns and island communities would have been cut off from resources for an unknown period. It was general aviation pilots who stepped up to the plate, providing a vital link to ensure… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Transportation decisions must consider community identity

Here’s a question to ponder, maybe while you’re stuck in traffic this summer: What would Maine be like if the interstate highway system ended in Portsmouth, N.H.? Transportation infrastructure impacts the way our communities grow, the way they function, and even what sort of relative prosperity they enjoy. A decision… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Memoir is a rumination on doing good work

A Winter Apprentice, by John Holt Willey; Polar Bear & Co., Solon, Maine, 2016; 280 pages, trade paperback, $14.95. In the summer of 1977 John Willey returned home to Maine with his wife, Barbara, who had never been that far east. His last permanent address had been San Francisco, where… SEE MORE

From left: panel moderator Carol Coultas

Working Waterfront

Coastal tourism businesses brace for worker shortage

As summer arrives, there’s worry in the tourism industry—not about seeing enough customers, but about having enough staff. At a May 31 breakfast forum hosted by the Portland Press Herald, coastal business owners and managers described the challenges they face this year, which range from a local workforce unable to… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Below decks with a schooner chef

You can hear the laughter before you board the schooner, and the mouth-watering scents of bacon sizzling in butter and right-from-the-oven blueberry muffins nearly make you dizzy as you descend into chef Anna Miller’s domain—the galley of the schooner Ladona (pronounced la-doe-na). The five-foot-tall Miller is all action: stirring butter… SEE MORE

An especially high tide in Wells a few years back shows the Maine coast's vulnerability to rising sea levels.

Working Waterfront

Climate decisions reflect who we are as nation

Our government’s decisions project a story to the world about who we are as people. When we step off a plane in another country, we encounter these stories, as the people we meet repeat them back to us. We find that we are asked to personally represent and explain the United States,… SEE MORE

A lobster boat in an early 20th century image.

Working Waterfront

Just the stats—Lobster by the numbers

The American lobster is the single most valuable species of fish landed in the United States. Over 80 percent of the catch comes from Maine (source: NOAA fisheries reports from 2014 and 2015). Thirty percent of all commercial fishing trips on the East Coast are taken by Maine fishermen—469,000… SEE MORE

A turn-of-the-20th-century photograph of a lobster boat.

Working Waterfront

Lobster worries: Record harvests, but fewer juveniles

Despite an abundance of egg-bearing adult lobsters and record-breaking harvests, the number of young lobsters continues to fall in the Gulf of Maine. That’s the 2016 update from the American Lobster Settlement Index, an international monitoring program founded in 1989 by University of Maine marine scientist Rick Wahle. The settlement… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Help on the way from island caretakers

As May began with limited sunshine and two weeks of showers in the forecast, I said to Bruce, “Remember that one year when we had 23 days of rain in May?” He reminded me it was the year we built our house. “We were so lucky to get the whole… SEE MORE