"Maine’s rockweed harvesters trigger disputes; Clash with critics over ownership, environment" by Jenifer B. McKim | Globe Staff, July 29, 2013
OFF HOG ISLAND, BREMEN, Maine — The ubiquitous olive-green sea grass — known as rockweed — that drapes coastlines from New England to Europe. The nutrient-rich kelp is coveted for use in fertilizer and animal feed....
Rockweed is one of the state’s most valuable marine resources, worth about $20 million a year. But the harvesting of it has become contentious, as businesses clash with critics who say stripping away the sea grass destroys the habitat of scores of marine animals, including periwinkles and fish such as rock gunnel and juvenile pollock.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Slippery Lunch
It is getting close to lunch, so why don't you sit right back and you'll here a tale, a tale of a fateful trip....
Beyond the environmental arguments, there is debate about who actually owns the kelp, which clings to rocks in intertidal zones, areas that are submerged at high tide but exposed when the water ebbs.
“I’d rather see this natural thing left alone and undisturbed,” said Robert Alley, a lobsterman who lives on Beals Island in Northern Maine. “I’ve seen some places where [harvesters] have already been; they’ve raked the rocks and there is nothing left on them.”
To address complaints and questions about the taking of rockweed, Maine officials are working on a management proposal to submit to the Legislature early next year. The state Department of Marine Resources has organized a 13-member group of academics, business people, and conservationists charged with proposing regulations that could win widespread support.
“We need to come up with a management plan that the industry buys into,” said Linda P. Mercer, director of the Bureau of Marine Science at the Department of Marine Resources. “There has been quite a bit of controversy.”
Environmentalists always lose out.
Although several types of seaweed are commonly pulled from the ocean, rockweed makes up at least 90 percent of the catch, according to the state. The Maine seaweed harvest has more than doubled in size since 2007 to 15 million pounds last year as demand for the organic material grows.
Scores of Maine harvesters like Wood work as independent contractors, cutting rockweed with knives or rakes or with the help of a mechanical harvester. They sell it wet to a handful of companies that dry and mill the kelp for use in fertilizer, soil conditioner, animal feed, and nutritional supplements.
Maine fishermen have been harvesting rockweed since the 1970s, but disputes over it did not surface until 1999....
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“It just didn’t make sense that you would take something that is so valuable for habitat and sell it for so little to put on a golf course or make into dog food,’’ said Robin Hadlock Seeley, a Cornell University marine biologist who grew up in Maine, and assistant director for academic programs at Cornell’s Shoals Marine Laboratory, a teaching and research institution on Appledore Island. “There is no demonstration that it is legal, and we don’t know what level [of] taking is ecologically sustainable.”
But Aimee Phillippi, an associate professor of biology at Unity College in Maine, said her studies of rockweed harvesting over the last three years show that the practice has left the sediment and organisms sheltered by rockweed largely unaffected.
“The majority of marine scientists feel like rockweed harvesting is sustainable,’’ Phillippi said.
Adding to the confusion is a state law that does not make it clear, and the lack of legal clarity also makes it difficult....
Talk of the statewide plan is prompting a new push from critics for a moratorium on seaweed cutting. More than 600 people have signed a petition urging officials to put a stop to harvesting until more studies are undertaken and ownership questions settled. Another 570 landowners have signed a “no-cut” registry telling harvesters to bypass their shore areas. The volunteer registry, maintained by a nonprofit conservation organization, has met with limited success.
“It is a mixed bag,” said Tom Boutureira, executive director of the Machias-based Downeast Coastal Conservancy. “Sometimes [landowners] ask harvesters to leave and they will, and sometimes they won’t.”
Seaweed harvesters say they have been demonized by a small group of misinformed activists.
Robert Morse, owner of North American Kelp in Waldoboro, said he has run a rockweed business since 1971 and never had problems until Hadlock Seeley and her Cobscook Bay cohorts became involved. Morse, a marine engineer, said he got into the business because he liked the idea of providing a product that would limit pesticides in gardens and on golf courses.
He points to state data showing harvesters annually remove less than 1 percent of the more than 1 million tons of rockweed in the Gulf of Maine.
“I’ve been called a thief by these people,’’ he said of opponents. “They are despicable.”
Jane Arbuckle, a member of the committee working on the new plan who is also director of stewardship for the Maine Coast Heritage Trust conservation group, believes rockweed can be harvested in a responsible fashion. But history shows the ocean has often suffered in the name of commerce, she said, citing the overfishing of species like cod and sea urchins. Arbuckle is determined to prevent that from happening again.
“We have had a lot of things wiped out when we should have known better,” she said.
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UPDATE: Rockweed offers chance for sustainable thinking
So what's on the menu today, Globe?
"Breaching of dam, restoring salmon’s passage unite many" by Alyssa Botelho | Globe Correspondent, July 23, 2013
EDDINGTON, Maine — Two yellow bulldozers clamped down on the face of the hulking Veazie Dam on Monday, cracking open the concrete buttress that has separated Maine’s Penobscot River from the Atlantic Ocean for nearly 200 years.
The breach, the culmination of an innovative $62 million public-private partnership, is a critical step toward revitalizing the river by restoring endangered wild Atlantic salmon and other sea-running fish to the upstream waters where they were born.
Mmmmmmm!
But it is more than that. The destruction of the dam, Maine’s outermost gate to the sea, is about repair and revival of relationships between tribal people, conservationists, power companies, and sportsmen for whom the river is a lifeline, too....
The removal of the Veazie Dam will allow free passage for Atlantic salmon and 11 other species of sea-running fish to 1,000 miles of inland waters ideal for spawning and rearing.
Seventy-five percent of all Atlantic wild salmon that return to the United States from Greenland enter through the Penobscot, according to Andrew Goode, vice president of the Atlantic Salmon Federation.
To finish their journey, they have to swim over the Veazie, and a number of other dams farther inland.
This arduous passage, scientists said, is one reason why the iconic wild Atlantic salmon, which once teemed in Maine’s rivers, dwindled to endangered species levels in 2009.
“Imagine you’re a salmon that’s just swum 2,000 miles from Greenland and suddenly you run into this [dam],” Day said. “One doesn’t have to be a fish biologist to understand that this is an issue.”
It's a WTF moment for the salmon.
Buttresses like the 830-foot long and 30-foot tall Veazie have “fish ladders” — grooved paths cut into their walls to help fish clamber upward — but Laura Rose Day, the Penobscot River Restoration Project’s executive director, said those measures are far from perfect....
Now we know where to go get lunch!
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You know who else likes salmon?
"Polar bear attacks local man in Canada" Associated Press, July 29, 2013
A Maine man who was dragged out of his tent and attacked by a polar bear in a Canadian national park continues to improve at a hospital in Montreal, the Portland Press Herald reported Sunday. Matthew Dyer of Turner, a lawyer for Pine Tree Legal Assistance in Lewiston, was airlifted for treatment after the bear broke through an electrified fence and attacked him early Tuesday. Dyer’s fellow campers drove the bear off with signal flares. A hospital spokeswoman Dyer was in critical but stable condition and showing signs of progress Sunday. Dyer was attacked in Torngat Mountains National Park at the northern tip of Labrador. A Parks Canada spokesman says the eight-person group was advised to hire an armed polar bear guard but decided against the safety measure."
Must not be enough salmon around.
"Tenn. hiker still missing; Sugarloaf searched
Searchers are continuing to look for a Tennessee woman who went missing on the Appalachian Trail in Maine. Wardens said Geraldine Largay, 66, of Brentwood, Tenn., was supposed to meet her husband, George, last Monday. The search is focusing on an area around the backside of Sugarloaf Mountain. Largay’s husband had been keeping track of her progress along the trail and was replenishing her supplies at predetermined stops. He told WLBZ-TV that he remains positive because of the scope of the search and because his wife is an experienced hiker who had adequate supplies. Searches utilized more than 100 people on Saturday and Sunday. Geraldine Largay started her hike in April at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., with a destination of Baxter State Park in Maine."
But it has been a week.
Guess we are going to have to fly out of here:
"Carrier PenAir links Logan to remote locales" by Katie Johnston | Globe Staff, July 24, 2013
PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — This remote city in northernmost Maine is connected to Boston by three commercial flights a day, courtesy of an airline started in 1955 by an Alaskan fur trapper who wanted to cover more ground than his sled dog team could handle.
That fur trapper’s company, which became Anchorage-based PenAir, is building a mini-hub at Logan International Airport to serve the Northeast. The newest spoke, launching Thursday, will send nonstop flights to Long Island MacArthur Airport in Islip, N.Y., which serves a market of 2 million people.
How this small company came to establish operations at Logan is a reflection of today’s airline industry, in which major airlines are pulling out of smaller markets and independent carriers are stepping in to fill the void — even from 4,500 miles away....
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