MOUNT DESERT — The 24th Annual Hospice Regatta of Maine gets underway this Friday. As in the past several years, the regatta will feature races for several different sailboat classes and several Mount Desert Island sailing organizations will help with the logistics. There will, however, be at least two major differences from the regattas of …
STONINGTON — Andrew Gove began lobstering in the waters around Deer Isle as a boy of 7, fishing with his grandfather off Eagle Island in Penobscot Bay. Last year, at the age of 89, the lobsterman universally known as “Uncle” hauled his gear for the last time and retired to his home on Stonington Harbor …
TREMONT — Like the proverbial postmen undeterred by rain, sleet or snow from delivering the mail, four dozen intrepid skippers found their way to Bass Harbor on Sunday for a morning of lobster boat racing despite dungeon-thick fog. Some of the racers came no farther than from a mooring off the town wharf in Bernard, …
ELLSWORTH — A President known for surprises came up with a doozy Wednesday afternoon. President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue to provide financial assistance to members of the lobster industry — about 80 percent of which is based in Maine — who “continue to be harmed by …
ELLSWORTH — The Department of Marine Resources held its first “virtual” zone council meeting last Thursday afternoon and Commissioner Patrick Keliher had an unanticipated and unsettling piece of news for the Zone C and Zone D lobstermen who phoned in to the conference call or tuned in to the live event on their computers. Keliher …
STONINGTON — Maine boatbuilders, many of them based in Hancock County, have a reputation for turning out quality vessels that extends far beyond New England. On Monday, another locally built boat headed for a distant port not on a truck but sailing on its own bottom. Late last month, Surry-based Wesmac Custom Boats launched a …
TRENTON — Lobster 207, the marketing arm of the Maine Lobstering Union (MLU), has won a $1.43 million attachment against the Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound property, its owners, Anthony and Josette Pettegrow, their son Warren Pettegrow and Poseidon Charters Inc., a lobster-buying business owned by the Pettegrow family. U.S. District Court judge Lance E. Walker …
BANGOR — Richard Max Strahan, a New Hampshire-based whale protection activist with a history of filing federal lawsuits aimed at protecting endangered right whales against the New England fishing industry, may be headed back to court. Strahan has threatened to sue the Maine Lobstering Union (MLU), the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) and their individual members …
BROOKLIN — It’s no secret that the novel coronavirus — besides killing some 100,000 victims in the United States so far — will touch almost every element of summer, including many of Maine’s iconic maritime activities. In Brooklin, the WoodenBoat School, for the first time since its founding in 1981, will not open for the …
ELLSWORTH — The conservation groups that filed a federal lawsuit two years ago to force the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to do more to protect endangered right whales from entanglement with fishing gear have asked U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg to ban lobster fishing gear with vertical buoy lines off the coast …
ELLSWORTH — Earning a living as a fisherman is tough in the best of times. Right now, times are bad and Maine fishermen have to hope they don’t get any worse. Last year, according to the Department of Marine Resources, Maine harvesters landed 9,620 pounds of elvers — juvenile eels — and dealers paid $20,119,194 …
STONINGTON — When the coronavirus closed Maine schools, thousands of students who already qualified for free and reduced cost in-school meals faced the risk of hunger. With many parents suddenly out of work, many more students faced serious food insecurity. At the same time, most Maine lobstermen found that there was no market for their …
