SOUTHWEST HARBOR — The U.S. Coast Guard has only been a separate government entity since 1915, but mariners in peril at sea have looked to the service and its predecessor organizations, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service and the U.S. Lifesaving Service, for assistance since at least the American Revolution. Now, with the partial shutdown of …
ELLSWORTH — For devotees of high school sailing, it doesn’t seem all that long ago that Will Welles was a star skipper for the Mount Desert Island High School sailing team, racing fiercely against George Stevens Academy in Southwest Harbor or Castine. In fact, it has been a long time and the 1993 MDIHS graduate …
STONINGTON — Maine’s scallop season got off to a good start last month, with supplies plentiful and a strong price, but that may be about to change. Early on, according to Melissa Smith, the scallop resource manager at the Department of Marine Resources, along most of the coast between Penobscot Bay and Cobscook Bay landings …
ELLSWORTH — In the past two weeks, Governor Janet Mills has nominated new commissioners to head most of the state’s administrative agencies, replacing appointees of former Governor Paul LePage. One agency that will not get a new chief is the Department of Marine Resources. Last Thursday, on her first full day on the job, Mills …
ELLSWORTH — Brett Ciccotelli has a loaded calendar for next week. On the evening of Tuesday, Jan. 15, the the Downeast Salmon Federation fisheries biologist will be at the Ellsworth Public Library, where the conservation group and the Friends of Graham Lake will host a joint meeting to review the status of the Union River …
SORRENTO — The Department of Marine Resources gave Acadia Aqua Farms an early present a week before Christmas when Commissioner Patrick Keliher approved a renewal of the Trenton-based company’s lease for the bottom culture of mussels on a 14.3-acre site off Waukeag Neck in Flanders Bay. Acadia acquired the lease, originally issued in September 1997 …
ELLSWORTH — Japan will resume commercial whale hunting next summer for the first time since the International Whaling Commission imposed a moratorium on the fishery more than 30 years ago. On Dec. 26, Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, announced that the country would withdraw from the IWC on June 30, 2019, and resume commercial …
STONINGTON — Maine’s recent election has brought a crop of first-time legislators to Augusta, among them lobsterman Genevieve McDonald who filed her first piece of legislation even before the new Legislature has been sworn in. McDonald represents House District 134, an all-island district that stretches eastwards from Penobscot Bay to Mount Desert Island and includes …
ELLSWORTH — Last year, Maine saw more than 110 million pounds of lobster landed at docks along the coast from Kittery to Cobscook Bay. Those landings put more than $450 million in the pockets of Maine lobstermen and, after those lobsters were consumed, left some 33,000 tons of lobster shells behind to be disposed of. …
GOULDSBORO — The big winds that pummeled eastern Maine late in November did plenty of damage along the coast, including the sinking of the lobster boat Robin A. II in Prospect Harbor. Last Friday, Bar Harbor scuba diver Ed Monat joined Captain Wid Minctons and his Southwest Harbor-based crane barge Charles Bradley in a salvage …
