Representatives from China’s leading boat magazines visited Maine recently to tour boatyards along the coast and promote the industry back home. China is a fast-growing market for yachts, according to Tony Kieffer, a managing partner with Portland-based MaineAsia, a year-old firm that provides strategic advice and engages in trading and investment ventures with businesses in
Influx of Students at Swan’s Island School
“Fifty-four kids, can you believe it!” exclaimed Heather Webster, principal at the Swan’s Island School. While some islands are struggling to keep the doors of their schools open, enrollment at the Swan’s Island School is exploding. The 2012-13 school budget was approved for an anticipated enrollment of 36 children based on figures from the 2011-12
CTC Ferry Service Seeking Stockholder Permission to go Nonprofit
Have you ever purchased shares of the Chebeague Transportation Company (CTC), even once just to get a reduced fare rate? If so, CTC wants to hear from you. The ferry and bus service is attempting to go nonprofit, and although the plan has received overwhelming approval from island residents and CTC shareholders, a vote to
What Are Our Oceans Telling Us?
George Noongwook, the lanky, bespectacled Yupik Alaskan, who is the chair of Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, was a recent guest of the Peary MacMillan Arctic Museum and Arctic Studies Center at Bowdoin College, along with a half dozen other native Alaskan leaders. Collectively these visiting Yupik and Inupiat leaders have contributed invaluable local knowledge to
Ready or Not
Ready or not, it’s over. One of the things I did right this summer was create a work schedule that allowed me to spend some time with friends at the Islesford Sand Beach when I was on the island and the weather cooperated. I managed to get a lot of my studio work done in
Matinicus Airstrip Improvement Set to Begin
A strange, almost lunar landscape is gradually growing beside the parking area next to the small gravel airstrip on Matinicus Island, as pile after pile of gray stone is delivered to the site by three dumps trucks. Gathering enough material to resurface an airstrip takes quite a while, here where the wharf is only accessible
Tidal Power Energy, Local Job Engine
Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC) met its greatest milestone this fall when it started generating electricity that was then connected toBangor Hydro’s distribution grid. As the first commercial tidal energy project in the United States, the company has begun a year long test of its TidGen turbinegenerator in the waters of Cobscook Bay. ORPC may
A Chat With Alaskan Fisherman, Corey Arnold
Alaskan commercial fisherman and photographer Corey Arnold traveled to Maine to share some of his favorite stories and photographs of fishermen and their catch in the presentation Fish-Work at the Strand Theatre on Aug. 9. On the trip to Rockland, he talked with the Island Institute’s Marine Programs director, Nick Battista, about salmon fishing in
Buying Out Maine’s Fishing Communities?
Fisheries represent a unique opportunity to think about our natural environment and how it interacts with society. Fish are the last of our wild food sources and, because of their cultural importance to New England, there is still a vast diversity in how these resources are managed, harvested and even consumed. Within the management system,
High Winds in the Gulf of Maine
One of the millions of videos you can watch on the Internet shows a 500-foot long steel tower being towed out of a harbor off of Stavanger, Norway in 2009. Then as seawater ballast begins to fill one end of the tower, it gently sinks in the water as the remaining 200 feet of tower