Category Coasts & Oceans
Long May They Run
Just a few months into 2010, the Year of the Sardine, news came that the Stinson Seafood plant in Prospect Harbor—the last sardine cannery in the United States—was closing. The sardine song became a requiem; the herring hymn an elegy that carried across the continent, across the Atlantic, and up Penobscot Bay, where I heard […]
Redemption for the sea lamprey
Sea lamprey have a bad reputation as a flesh-eating monsters, but the sea-run fish are are native to the Maine coast. University of Maine esearchers are finding that when it comes inland to spawn in late spring, this primitive, resilient fish actually does some good in Maine rivers, from cleaning out streambeds to playing architect […]
Welcome back, Alewives!
In May 2011, I rode a cargo ferry across Penobscot Bay to the island of North Haven with two Maine Department of Marine Resources tanker trucks filled with 2,500 fish. The fish were alewives, and they were a long time coming. A grassroots effort of year-round and seasonal residents was responsible for bringing the native […]
