State officials in California have approved sweeping expansions of the state’s marine protected areas, closing or restricting fishing activities in a total of over 200 square miles. This legislation, authorized by the California Marine Life Protection Act of 1999, places California in the forefront of states taking action to restrict fishing activities in near shore
“Best Fishing I’ve Had in a Long While” Mud walkers move in on co-op’s pound
Discovery Channel’s TV show “Dirty Jobs” has nothing on the job of the mud walker. As low tide approached, more than a dozen lobstermen and sternmen, dressed in oilskins, fishing boots, and heavy gloves, methodically combed the inside of the lobster pound at the Swan’s Island Fishermen’s Co-op. The pound, a 400- by 350-foot enclosure,
Traffic Lights come to Vinalhaven
There’s a first time for everything…and hopefully a last. Construction workers erected two temporary traffic lights on Main Street, Vinalhaven, to direct traffic during some road work on the bridge. Islanders have been photographing the lights to document Vinalhaven’s first stop light.
Isle au Haut gets a fire truck; island boy writes a book about it
Last spring the full-time students at the Isle au Haut school took a trip to Florida to visit Disney World — all but Caleb Mao, who at 8 years old was too young. It was a disappointment for him, of course, but he made up for it. “He got something pretty special,” says his mom,
Ocean vs. Olympia: To the Victor Goes the Pier
Only two proposals for the redevelopment of Maine State Pier met the stringent four-month late February deadline of Portland’s Community Development Committee (CDC). Both suggest a hotel, office building and accommodations for the high-speed Cat as well as the city’s tugboat fleet. Furthermore, both remarkably carry the same $90 million price tag. Currently the CDC
The Long View: Schools, housing, ferries, lobsters, secession: the legislature is in session
One of the first times I spoke to legislators in Augusta about island issues, I had the disheartening experience of having a representative who should have known better look at me incredulously and ask, “You mean people live on those islands in the winter?” That was long ago and in a different land, politically speaking.
From the Deck: Our Maritime Heritage
I have read and written too much of our maritime heritage dredged out of books, models and replicas, tales of seamen long dead and ships rotted away. Our maritime heritage is being created by our own friends in their own vessels day by day. The people we know are as brave, hardy and skillful as
In the Beginning
Our house began its life about 50 years or so ago when a native young fella built him a fish house on the shore of Sands Cove, right on the banking. Not a very large fish house, about 16 feet long and 12 feet wide, sufficient for building wooden traps and rigging fishing gear. By
Corrections
In last month’s story on fish ladders in Somesville, Dennis Smith was misidentified as Dennis King. In our page 3 story about the coastal working waterfront mapping project (WWF April 07) we slipped a decimal point two places, leaving the impression there’s even less working waterfront left on the coast than the mappers found. Twenty
L.L. Bean: The Making of an American Icon
Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006 The Business of Personality The New Yorker magazine, in its recent “style” issue, has a cartoon featuring a castaway. Standing alone under the sole palm tree on a small sandy island is a man stranded in the middle of nowhere. An opened box next to him is marked, “L.L.