Articles
Running Silver: Restoring Atlantic Rivers and Their Great Fish Migrations
This time of year, sea birds are appearing on coastal waters, having left their Arctic breeding grounds. Scoters and king eiders, buffleheads and goldeneyes travel great distances to spend the winter in warmer climates, often returning to the same harbor or river bend year after year. Animal migrations are some of the greatest stories on
What happens when fish head north and fishermen do not?
As temperatures warm and water cycle patterns change, nearly every living thing on the planet is on the move. Off the U.S. East Coast between New Jersey and Maine, trawl surveys started by the National Marine Fisheries Service in the early 1960s provide one of the richest, longest-term datasets of environmental conditions and marine species
What Maine can learn from Superstorm Sandy
SOUTH PORTLAND — Last October, “Superstorm Sandy” hit the U.S. East Coast, killing 72 people and leaving 8.5 million people without power. Several factors made Sandy a “super”storm, according to Jay Tanski, a coastal processes and facilities specialist with New York Sea Grant and John Cannon of the National Weather Service, who presented at the
Oceans whisper in weathermen’s ears
The ocean provides not just food and inspiration, but real information that helps us get through our daily routines. For example, much of the weather we experience on a daily basis is driven by the ocean. In the Gulf of Maine region, oceanographers, meteorologists, and hydrographers are working with universities and other partners to feed
Those little river fish may bring big ocean fixes
Will the fish come back? Will the fish make it to their spawning grounds? These are the questions on the minds of fisheries biologists and river advocates this time of year, as they pay close attention to dam removals and other restoration efforts on streams and rivers. Many of these restoration projects began decades ago
Off-shore wind project takes tangible form
ORONO — The one-eighth scale prototype of a floating wind turbine unveiled Wednesday will change the wind power world, its developers asserted. Habib Dagher, director of the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center, revealed the foundation of the center’s floating wind turbine technology and the prototype for a future five-gigawatt deepwater wind development
Maine lobster fishery achieves ‘sustainable’ status
BOSTON, Mass. — The Marine Stewardship Council has certified the Maine lobster fishery as sustainable, Gov. LePage announced at the Boston Seafood Show on Sunday. “This not only helps other Maine fisheries, it helps the state. We are the lobster for the world,” said LePage, who gave credit to Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner
A new way to look at mercury could make seafood healthier
Mercury is associated with fish because eating fish is the primary way that people, at least most Americans, are exposed to this toxic but natural element. And most of the fish we eat is marine fish—seafood. So it might seem surprising that the majority of scientific research on mercury takes place not in the marine
The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail
The stories are well-known: European seafarers and explorers encountered a western Atlantic Ocean filled with numerous, large, and robust fish, unlike anything they had seen before. According to W. Jeffrey Bolster, who begins his book on the other side of the Atlantic, these early documentarians did not realize that the abundance they saw in American
Science Potpourri for the Holidays 2012
New Understanding of Lobster Shell Disease The conversations on the dock and in the papers this summer about lobster focused on the quantity of softshell lobsters that arrived along the entire coast virtually simultaneously in July, and the resulting drop in price that led to tie-ups and concerns about fishermen’s ability to turn a