At 77, the Rev. Ted Hoskins isn’t sitting around. “I may get slowed down, but I don’t intend to slow down,” he said from his Blue Hill home.
To most island residents and to many others along the coast, from fishermen to summer folk, Hoskins is a trusted friend and advisor. For many years he was chaplain to the Bar Harbor-based Maine Seacoast Mission and its succession of boats all named Sunbeam. He was there for weddings, births, deaths and many things in-between. In all, he was aboard Sunbeam for about nine years and then spent another five years with the Mission on shore.
“I count that as a very special privilege, getting to know the people on the islands,” he said. In 1971, the year that electricity came to the island, he taught eight students in the Isle au Haut schoolhouse. He hopes that others will sense the beauty, simplicity and intimacy of island life, and will give it a try, even if they don’t stay for good.
The Sunbeam continues it’s traditional to visits island communities, providing medical care, social and spiritual assistance. Before retiring from that post last year, Hoskins had changed his focus from boat minister to fisheries and communities minister, reflecting his concern for the collapse of fish stocks and the fragility of island communities. Among other things, Hoskins serves on the board of Penobscot East Resource Center on Deer Isle.
Hoskins has a second home on his beloved Isle au Haut, where his father was seasonal pastor at the Union Congregational Church-a job Ted Hoskins now holds. Decades ago, he traded ministering a church in suburban Westport, Ct. for a less conventional life around Penobscot Bay. He already knew the islands from his father’s summer work on Isle au Haut, where the younger Hoskins did some lobstering and purse seining to earn money for college. He’d been spending summers on the island from the age of nine.
His heart and his calling are local islands, but his passion for fisheries has taken him as far away as Belize. There, with the support of the Belize government, he is encouraging sustainable practices and helping fishermen form groups to protect their way of life. He expects local people will take over his own role, which he described as facilitator.
Fisherman Ted Ames, a fellow board member at Penobscot East Resource Center and an authority on fisheries, said, “anything good you can say about Ted Hoskins is an understatement.” Ames, who along with Hoskins helped organize the Stonington Fisheries Alliance, said his friend has “enthusiasm and a great passion for economic and social justice.”
Ames said Hoskins has the ability to help fishermen see the need for “a fishery that’s good for the long term,” sustaining both the fish and the communities that depend on fishing.
Hoskins and his wife, Linda, have been married for more than two decades, meeting after each of them had been widowed. She has two grown children and two grandchildren; he has a daughter in Stonington. Hoskins’ son drowned many years ago when his small boat was caught in rough seas at night.
Hoskins remains an optimist in spite of grim reports of fewer fish, increasing environmental pollution and island towns that are barely hanging on as full-time residents move away. He believes that if coastal Mainers understand sustainability, and work together, the situation is not hopeless. “I don’t feel like we should ever feel that it’s the end of the road. My feeling is that God, in whatever form you want to think of it, that the intent of any deity is to make life work. We can find ways for this creation to really work. We should not be assuming that we’re the center of everything.”
Is the fishery and island life in crisis? “I think we’re always at a crossroads,” he said. “The key is recognizing it and choosing to do something positive about it. We have to live with a sense of crisis and make good choices, with a good understanding of what the options are.”
If fishermen realize they are stakeholders in the fishery, they can become stewards of the resource, and “winners, not of the lottery, but of the ability to continue fishing.” Or, as popular T-shirts in Belize say, “Fish Forever.”
Steve Cartwright is a freelance writer who lives in Waldoboro.