Harpswell Information

• Coming Up

• Harpswell

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• General Information

  • 1/3/07 Maine Harbors
    Individual monthly Tide Charts for 150 Harbors from Eastport, ME to Greenwich, CT, as well as weather, marinas and more

  • 7/23/06 Mainers find new ways to ward off mosquitoes
    Nothing says early summer in Maine quite like mosquitoes.
    People will do anything to rid themselves of the buzzing, blood-sucking pests, and a widening array of products -- some exorbitantly priced -- guarantee them relief.

  • 12/27/04 Gulf of Maine Aquarium

  • 12/27/04 Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment
    Find introductory and scientific information about the Gulf of Maine, which is bordered by Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia.

  • 12/27/04 Gulf of Maine Times
     

  • 12/27/04 National Safe Boating Council
    The mission of the NSBC is to reduce accidents and enhance the boating experience. The NSBC is the foremost coalition for the advancement and promotion of safer boating through education. The National Safe Boating Council accomplishes this mission by:

  • 12/27/04 Maine Ports, Marine Transportation, Shipping, Ferry Schedules, Boating
    Information on Maine's ports, ferry schedules, recreational boating, weather and safety, rail, air freight, trucking, shipping, and marine transportation services.

  • Marine Research Connectivity Project
     

• The Ocean

  • 8/12/06 Trouble Downeast - The Boston Globe
    Machias Seal Island PUFFINS ARE NOT in paradise, even as 3,000 pairs of them flap, grunt, waddle, and hop along the rocks. There should be more noise. There are no terns flying about. This is not the way it is supposed to be.

  • 10/1/04 Community News - Get in the thick of it Belfast Village Soup
    Riding the wave, part 1
    MAINE (Oct 1, 2004): Just east of the Midcoast lies a large expanse of blue and steely grey water known as the Atlantic Ocean. A glance at its surface seems to indicate business as usual: seagulls wheeling, waves lapping and lobster boats chugging along. By all accounts, however, there seems to be trouble brewing down below the drifting ducks and tangled mats of wrack. And no one seems quite sure what to do about it.

• Casco Bay

  • Friends of Casco Bay
    Founded in 1989 to Improve and Protect the Environmental Health of Casco Bay 

  • Casco Bay Estuary Project (CBEP) - A Cooperative Effort to Protect the Health and Integrity of Casco Bay

  • Casco Bay Plan
    Draft Plan by the Casco Bay Estuary Project 1995

  • Casco Bay, Maine
    Mostly an ad for A Cruising Guide to the Maine Coast, but has some background

  • Island Institute
    Group dedicated to reviving island life in Maine. Concerned about island economics (fishing)

  • Casco Bay Online, History
    Historical Maps, Gallery, History, Resources

  • Casco Bay Lines
    We provide year-round ferry service for the Casco Bay Island Transit District, carrying passengers, vehicles and freight between Portland, Maine and the islands of Peaks, Little Diamond, Great Diamond, Long, Chebeague, and Cliff. We also offer scenic cruises, summertime music cruises, private charters and lobster bakes. Join us and see where the Maine coast really begins!

  • Maine Office of Tourism - Greater Portland & Casco Bay

  • BostonSeaGypsy - click on images to view albums - Kayaking in Casco Bay.
    This was a trip that was led by LLBean at their Paddling School at Flying Point, Freeport.
    It's top notch as the instructors are experts.
    Misty weather for the trip but that seemed to encourage the wildlife, as it dampened the sound we were making.Seals popped up out of the water to look at us and we also saw two bald eagles. We paddled out amongst some little islands for about 3 hours- it was idyllic.

  • EPA to approve dumping ban - The Boston Globe
    New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island have already made their coastlines off-limits for sewage dumping from boats. Casco Bay in Maine has also been declared a no-dumping zone, along with eight coastal areas in Massachusetts, most near Cape Cod and Nantucket.

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• General

  • 5/6/06 Coast's history, future discussed at DOT meeting - Tom Groening
    At the kickoff to a conference on Gateway 1 at the Samoset Resort Wednesday night, Colin Woodard, author of "The Lobster Coast," put into historical context just how remarkable it was to get Maine's legendarily independent - and sometimes downright ornery - residents and towns to work together.
    The coast's history is different from inland Maine and that past continues to shape its future, Woodard said.

  • 8/5/04 Gulf of Maine marine ecosystem may have entered new phase
    Gulf of Maine marine ecosystem may have entered new phase
    For most of the past 4,500 years, cod was king in the Gulf of Maine's coastal waters. Today, cod have given way to the Jonah crab with potential long-term consequences for coastal fisheries, according to a University of Maine research report published in the journal Ecosystems.
    Note: I found this a particularly interesting article.

  • Maine Coastal Program - Home

  • Island Institute

  • 05/21 New Meadows River Watershed Project

  • Muskie School of Public Service
    Changing Maine: 1960 - 2010
    Texts of each lecture will be available following the lecture date. To access these documents, click on the title of the lecture.

Top

• News

  • Rain wiped out most browntail moths
    Last year, Wolfe's Neck State Park was infested with so many browntail moths that rangers were warning visitors about the pests. The toxic hairs of the moths and their larvae, known as caterpillars, can lead to rashes, itching and sometimes breathing problems in humans.

  • Panel OKs strict limits on fishing Press Herald

  • Darling Marine Center, University of Maine
    the marine laboratory of The University of Maine

  • Sea squirt poses new problem for fishermen
    Press Herald 11/28/03

  • Trust hopes for more use of island
    About Whaleboat and Land for Maine's Future

Top

• Commercial Fishing

  • JWilsonLec (Muskie School of Public Service)
    Fisheries are one of Maine’s icons. People tend to think of fisheries, especially the lobster fishery, as quaint, traditional, the very symbol of the independent fisherman facing off against a difficult and unruly nature. This is a comfortable romantic vision of the fishery. But there is another side to our fisheries; they’re very complicated and fascinating and most of all they are a marvelous case study of the difficulties we have adapting human activities to the environment.

  • Maine Dept. Marine Resources
    A website for all Maine Fishing Industries particularly in State Waters

  • Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission
    Shrimp and Lobster Management

  • Welcome to Fish Research.org

  • Flat closures hurt Down East clam diggers

Top

• Clams

  News

  • 8/6/06 Enforcers protect clam industry
    SCARBOROUGH — Officer David Corbeau stares out over the expanse of mudflats that is his beat, trying to pick out the subtle signs of someone breaking the law. What he sees are a handful of "the hardest working people you'll find," bent at the waist and wielding a heavy hand-held rake as they slice the fetid mud in search of clams.

  • 6/11/05 Baldacci seeks aid for hard-hit clammers
    Gov. John Baldacci said Friday he'll work to find federal disaster relief for Maine's shellfish industry, which has been hurt by a toxic algae bloom that has closed clam flats along much of the New England coast.

  • 11/3/04 Beal Finds Clam Seeding Solution
    BEALS — On an Indian summer morning, marine ecologist Brian Beal stood on the shore of Great Wass Island hosing down a stack of lobster traps. Big and burly with wild hair and a thick moustache, Beal looked like any other working man in this region of hardscrabble fishing villages and coastal beauty.
    In the last few years Beal has devised an economically viable way to hatch soft-shell clams and in a single year raise them to the healthy size of 8-15 mm, large enough to be bought by coastal towns and seeded on mud flats set aside for conservation.

  • 9/28/04 Clam Flats To Close Oct. 1
    Westport Island selectmen are closing the Squam Creek clam flats for one year.

  • 8/25/04 Newswise
    Scientists Hopes to Pry Open Part of the Clam Genome

  • 9/7/04 With red tide comes red ink
    SCARBOROUGH — Summer is usually the busy season for clam diggers like John Lyons. Peak demand for steamers and fried clams, not to mention the fair weather, make this prime time on the mud flats along the Scarborough River and in estuaries all along the Maine coast.

  • 8/30/04 Flat closures hurt Down East clam diggers
    WHITING - More than 100 Down East clammers, who earn much of their revenue in summer to carry them over the winter, have gone without income for seven weeks and longer because of extended flat closures for red tide.As a result, stores and other businesses in the Cobscook Bay area are feeling the impact of fewer dollars circulating locally.

  • 6/25/04 projo.com Providence, R.I. AP's The Wire
    Algae bloom restricts harvest of mussels, clams

  • 5/12/04: Researcher dissolving shells to blame for clam deaths

  • 2/5: Clam flat rules target bird droppings
    BRUNSWICK (AP) -- The Department of Marine Resources and town officials are looking for a way to protect shellfish eaters from an unexpected and unsavory source of pollution -- bird droppings

  • 1/2, PH: Snowe´s staff meets with members of fishery council

  • The News-Gazette Online
    A clam was the first living thing to get an MRI

Top

• Red Tide

  • 5/12/06 State to double number of red tide monitors - Katherine Cassidy (177)
    Doubling the number of biotoxin monitors and testing stations up and down the Maine coast will help the Maine Department of Marine Resources keep a closer watch on red tide this summer.

  • 5/12/06 Coping with Red Tide - Bangornews.com Staff
    With $20 million in federal disaster assistance perhaps headed to New England shellfish harvesters and red tide already forcing closures of harvesting areas in Maine, some of the relief money should be used for more than compensating those who lost money last year.

  • 5/3/06 Red tide fears expand shellfishing closures
    State officials closed the southern Maine coast to the harvesting of mussels and some other shellfish Tuesday as scientists warned that a large plume of toxic red tide may be on its way.

  • Red tide makes an early appearance in Harpswell
    HARPSWELL - The red tide, which shut down much of the Maine coast to shellfish harvesting last year, is back.

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• Scallops

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• Scrimp

  • 3/21/07: Local shrimp industry struggles against farm-raised Asian stock
    South Carolina
    Georgia Tisdale is battling to save an endangered species – the South Carolina shrimper.
    She is marketing director for the South Carolina Shrimpers Association, which was formed 1½ years ago to extol the benefits of fresh, locally caught shrimp. She is also the shrimpers’ Jeremiah, who warns that globalization of the fishing industry threatens not only a way of life for working shrimpers, but our country’s health and welfare, too.

  • 10/14/04 First Time in Three Years
    ELLSWORTH — For the first time in three years, the Northern Shrimp Technical Committee will recommend that there be a shrimp season in the Gulf of Maine.
    “The resource is looking in better shape,” said Margaret Hunter, a Maine fisheries biologist who chairs the committee of scientists and resource managers for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

  • 3/19 Newhouse A1
    U.S. Shrimpers Seek Help in Trade War; WASHINGTON -- An international trade war is raging over shrimp. U.S. shrimpers and processors say the six leading shrimp-exporting countries -- Brazil, China, Ecuador, India, Thailand and Vietnam -- are cutting the legs from under the domestic industry by dumping large quantities of their product in the U.S. market at below cost. The U.S. shrimpers want the government to impose tariffs.

  • 1/22 Plenty of shrimp, but few customers

Top

• Urchins

  • 11/13/04 Searchin' for urchins
    NONE (Nov 13, 2004): Like spiny, spherical versions of the American bison, vast herds of green sea urchins once roamed the rocky coast of Maine. The urchins lived a life of plenty by grazing on kelp, other algae and the occasional bag of lobster bait, and grew and reproduced beneath the waves of the North Atlantic.

  • 9/28/04 Yahoo! News - Urchin Industry a Skeleton of Former Self
    Urchin Industry a Skeleton of Former Self
    YORK, Maine - Maine's urchin season has barely begun — and it's already almost over.

  • 9/22/04 CTV.ca Sunken fishing boat raised from Bay of Fundy
    Investigators hope raising the wreckage of a fishing boat that sank in the Bay of Fundy last winter, killing all aboard, may dredge up some much-needed answers.

  • 8/15/04 Sea urchins gone, attention shifts to Irish moss harvest
    Researchers are surveying the coast this summer for a commercially valuable seaweed that is taking over the territory once filled by spiny sea urchins.

  • 8/1/04 The News@Ellsworth American.com
    Harvesters Cry For More Days
    ELLSWORTH — It came as no surprise that sea urchin fishermen were plentiful and vocal at last week’s hearings on the proposed cuts to Maine’s urchin season.

  • 2/24 Sea Urchins Could Be Newest Cash Crop for United States
    BIRMINGHAM, AL — Making one aspect of the fishing industry more environmentally friendly could actually make it more profitable. A University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) researcher is looking at ways to establish a land-based aquaculture system for sea urchin breeding to bolster the seafood industry while preserving fragile marine ecosystems.

Top

• Aquaculture

  News

  • http://www.ellsworthamerican.com/archive/2004/07-08-04/ea_news7_07-08-04.html
    Fish Research Micro Tech Working On Vaccines for Cod

  • 7/6/04 In the muck lies a growing fortune..the farm-raised clam (HamptonRoads.com-Pilot Online)
    This article has a tremendous amount of info on clam aquaculture

  • 4/28/04 Wired 12.05 The Bluewater Revolution
    Interesting article about an open ocean aquaculture experiment by the U. of N.H. which is taking place near the Isle of Shoals with cod, haddock and halibut

  • 1/3/04 Madison Daily Leader
    Researchers explore new ways of raising saltwater fish outside the ocean

  • 4/2/04 projo.com Providence, R.I. AP's The Wire
    Troubled salmon farm sold to Canadian company
    MACHIASPORT, Maine (AP) - Atlantic Salmon of Maine, one of Maine's largest aquaculture operations which has fallen on hard times because of fish disease and litigation, is being sold to a Canadian company.

  • 3/28 PH Maine seeks aquatic reforms

  • 3/21PRESS RELEASE Fresh Mediterranean Seafood Delicacies Directly to US Grocers!

  • 2/11 Wisconsin Ag Connection - More Opportunities Available in Aquaculture!

  • 2/8- Projo.com Providence Business
    Making their oyster bed
    New methods and a more welcoming state climate help aquaculture grow Aquaculture is making steady progress in Rhode Island, as growers gain experience and skills, and as state government becomes supportive rather than hostile.

  •  Aquaculture report affirms its value
    BANGOR — A new report on Maine's aquaculture industry says fish and shellfish farming should be an integral part of the state's coastline in the years to come. The 190-page report includes a vision statement - which says aquaculture is an "important and compatible element in Maine's diverse coastal economy" - and a set of guiding principles to be considered in future development of aquaculture.

  • 1/10 The Observer Focus Has fish had its chips
    contains a good overview of worldwide aquaculture - with empahasis on salmon

  • 1/9: Newhouse A1
    U.S. Government Envisions Opening Vast Areas of Oceans to Fish Farming

  • 1/1, Kennebec Journal Forum speaker to assess fishing industry's future

  • 12/30 Anchorage Daily News State offers new mariculture sites
    Alaska leases sites for mariculture. Article also discusses some problems.

  • 1/5: Business News - Another frustrating year of waiting looms for marine farmers
    Troubled in New Zealand with Aquaculture (1 300 million dollar industry)

• Recreational

  • 11/18/04 Discharge ban sought in Casco Bay
    PORTLAND, Maine — A proposal targeted at recreational boaters would make Casco Bay the state´s first no-discharge area in which all dumping of sewage from boats is banned.

  • 3/21 Ristori Congress holds striped bass hearings

• Grants

  • Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund
    The Board chooses projects in four categories that promote recreation as well as conservation of Maine's special places, endangered species and important fish and wildlife habitat.