Category: Marine

The Brooks family; from left: Mark, Sally, Julie, and Stephen. FILE PHOTO: JULIA NEMY

Working Waterfront

Worker shortage impacting lobster fishery

You see the signs everywhere: “Help Wanted” or “Hiring Now.” Businesses in every sector of Maine’s economy have found it difficult to hire the number and type of workers they need. The problem has become acute in the businesses that supply lobstermen with their traps and other equipment. “Sadly, we’ve… SEE MORE
Stonington harbor. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Working Waterfront

Lobstermen’s Association sues over whale rules

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association filed a lawsuit in early September against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the Secretary of Commerce in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the federal government’s ten‐year whale protection plan. The suit claims the plan will all but eliminate the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

The Maine coast, 50 years ago

Thanks to the Farnsworth Art Museum for use of these photos shot by George Tice in several Maine coastal towns in 1971.     [caption id="attachment_28820" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Bertram Peabody and son clam digging on Beals Island, 1971.[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_28821" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Painted lobster buoys, Stonington, 1971.[/caption]   [caption… SEE MORE
Kathy Walsh at work on her boat. PHOTO: COURTESY KATHY WALSH

Working Waterfront

Boatbuilder develops work strategies while navigating ALS

Boatbuilder Kathy Walsh, who was diagnosed with a motor neuron disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis last spring, has developed strategies to continue working despite increasing weakness in her upper body. Walsh also wonders if toxins found in work-related materials could be the cause of, or a contributor to the disease.… SEE MORE
A lobster boat cruises past some of Portland’s wharves in late fall. PHOTO: JACK SULLIVAN

Working Waterfront

GMRI to buy Portland’s Union Wharf

The past and the future of Portland’s working waterfront will be melded together when the Gulf of Maine Research Institute completes its purchase of Union Wharf from the Poole family, owners of the historic wharf since at least 1861, later this year. GMRI announced the impending purchase on Nov. 15.… SEE MORE
A container ship off Searport. FILE PHOTO: TOM GROENING

Working Waterfront

Maine ports avoid shipping delays… for now

Off the coast of Southern California, there is a sizable fleet of container ships with as many as half a million containers waiting to make port. Meanwhile, a major terminal at one of China’s most important ports recently was shuttered for two weeks because of a single case of COVID-19… SEE MORE
Tuna

Working Waterfront

Bluefin tuna blues: To eat or not to eat?

My favorite sushi restaurant is in Rockland—Suzuki Sushi, where Keiko Suzuki Steinberger presides over a delectable panorama of sushi, sashimi, nigiri, and other mostly seafood delights of Japanese cuisine. I love Chef Keiko’s insistence on fish that’s local, fresh, and sustainably harvested, but there’s one variety, in great demand, that… SEE MORE
World Ocean Observatory

Working Waterfront

The ‘ocean’ above us under assault

One of the great ocean experiences is the panoply of the night sky. A vast darkness, shaped by intimations of residual clouds, the crescent moon, complicated by distant planets and stars in their constellations, swept into the arc of the Milky Way, made exhilarating and mysterious by the potential of… SEE MORE