Gould Academy visits Hurricane

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A group of Gould Academy sophomores joined us for three days on Hurricane for a mixture of fun and adventurous activities. This was a particularly international group of students and we enjoyed hearing multiple languages spoken on the island!

The first afternoon they worked together to do a beach clean up along Hurricane’s Western shoreline. They picked up over 350 pieces of trash! The next day was a combination of service projects, leadership initiatives, and rock climbing. They were our first group to scramble up our climbing walls this year. The evening was topped off with a view of the sunset up at sunset rock followed by a campfire complete with marshmallows.

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On their last day they learned about the quarry town that used to reside on Hurricane nearly a century ago. They also learned about Maine’s lobster industry and got a chance to haul a few of our lobster traps off of Hurricane’s shore.

It wouldn’t be a Gould trip without a lot of swimming. Students jumped into the frigid ocean every day, for many it was their first time swimming in the Atlantic. This was our second year hosting Gould on Hurricane, we hope to welcome them back again next year! 

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Cold water doesn't scare these kids!

2015 Garden Update

April showers bring gardens to life on Hurricane!

This month marks our third year of growing food for the Center For Science and Leadership. Returning visitors and students will see both similarities and differences in our gardens from previous years.  

We are excited to be growing in straw bales for the second year in a row! Last year we had a blast experimenting with straw bale gardening and we especially loved using them as a teaching tool for our students. They provide a great lesson in compost and circular agricultural techniques, and have allowed us to grow a lot of food on Hurricane’s stubborn granite bedrock. This year we were able to get bales that have already started to decompose a bit from sitting out in a field all spring at Spear Farm and Greenhouse and in Warren, Maine. I’m interested to see how they play host to our vegetables compared to the bales that we used last year.

As I write this I am in the middle of the two-week process of conditioning the bales. Every day I soak the bales through with water (from our conveniently placed fire hose). Every other day I put a half-cup of fertilizer that is high in nitrogen on top of the bales, and continue to soak them through. This process gets the bales “cooking”, by breaking down the straw to start the decomposing process. In about a week they will start to smell sweet and hold moisture really well, and in two weeks they will be ready for planting!

The flower garden has Day Lilies, Sweet William, Echinacea, Bee Balm, and a beautiful Bleeding Heart coming up again this year. We planted Marigolds, Snap Dragons, Calendula, and two high bush blueberry plants in the flower garden, all in the hopes of inviting pollinators to this area of the island. The flower garden is one of my favorite spots on Hurricane. I love seeing bright colorful flowers peak over the old foundation wall that was once the bowling alley during the quarrying era. It’s a joy to see nature reclaim Hurricane’s old historical sites. 

Our volunteer Betsy Rich planted our flower, cucumber, and zucchini seedlings. These are happily sitting in front of the big windows in the mess hall catching as much solar heat as possible. We have also placed our two cold frames over the herbs in the herb garden since they are the most exposed to wind and cold ocean air down by the waterfront.

A big addition to our gardens this year is the expansion of the meadow garden. The students from our Botany program last year helped us turn the second half of the garden over and we covered it with tarp to kill off the weeds and grass. During a very productive volunteer day this past April we had three people help turn the whole garden over and start to form and rake beds. I decided to layer straw over the walking paths in hopes of suppressing weeds, fingers crossed it helps! We planted carrots, peas, kale, spinach, and head lettuces, the perennial rhubarb is as enthusiastic as ever, and the peony looks like it will bloom again this year!

For now we are playing the waiting game for all of our seeds to pop of out of the soil. Stay tuned for more garden updates!​

Volunteer Day: April 25

We kicked off our volunteer days on Hurricane Island for 2015 with a particularly early one, on Saturday April 25. The fact that our winter had been so long and snowy made it seem even earlier than it would on any other year. And as we walked the trails, getting reacquainted with the island we know and love, we did find many banks of snow remaining on Hurricane, and not only in the deep woods.

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Fourteen volunteers, ages 7 to 85, joined seven staffers on Hurricane on this chilly morning, and we could actually see a few snowflakes in the air before we boarded M/V Equinox in Rockland, along with 18 bales for this year’s straw bale gardens just up from the Dining Hall. We had volunteers that had lived on Hurricane for years, and we had volunteers who had never set foot on Hurricane, but everyone was perfectly prepared for whatever mother nature delivered, and she delivered us a day perfect for the projects we had planned.

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We didn’t have our floats in at the dock yet, so it was up the ladder at the dock for this group. The difference between getting to Hurricane so early in the season compared with, say, October, is so palpable, yet hard to define. Sure, the light is a little different in May with the solstice less than two months away, the vegetation is different, but if you kept constant all those little details—took the same number of people, chose a chilly October day with gray skies like this late April day, there is a psychic quality to the island that makes it just feel different. It’s as if the island itself has been hibernating, like the echoes of an entire season of students and visitors that are so fresh in October, so vibrant and ringing, have long faded away to winter’s quiet, contemplative state. There’s a hush to the island, and everyone senses that, so that we find ourselves almost tiptoeing and whispering.

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We started our volunteer day out right: with a coffee break! and then mustered in the barn to hear about the day’s projects: oiling stall doors in the new showerhouse, clearing brush and cutting back branches from the perimeter trail, turning over the gardens in the Meadow, hauling straw bales up to the gardens, re-shingling a side of the infirmary, making repairs to the floats before they are put in for the season, clearing brush, and a new one: drilling holes in birch logs and hammering in plugs that contain mushroom spores. We’re going to grow oyster mushrooms!

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Our new cook for 2015, Micah Conkling, prepared a wonderful, hearty meal for us. Jobs were swapped after lunch, and the weather continued to cooperate. It warmed up enough to remove parkas and hats. It was truly a wonderful day: we completed many projects, we explored and woke up the island, and new friends were made. 

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New Buzz on Hurricane

This summer, Hurricane Island will be home to nearly 40,000 new residents! We just picked up two 3-pound packages of Apis mellifera ligustica (Italian honeybees) from Sparky's Apiaries, operated by David Smith from Hope, ME. Each package contains worker bees, attendants (a specialized type of worker bee that takes care of the queen), drones, and a caged queen. When we set up the hives, the bees will chew through a sugar plug to release their queen from her cage and she will take off on a mating flight. Except for when the hive swarms, this is the only time she will leave the hive, and from that point on, laying eggs and repopulating the hive is her full-time job.

Apart from the queen and male drone bees, the bulk of the hive consists of female worker bees, who are attending to the queen, cleaning the nest, taking care of larvae, defending the hive, and foraging.Producing honey is no small task. Bees will travel up to 50,000 miles visiting nearly 2 million flowers to forage enough nectar to make one pound of honey. Additionally, it takes a hive to get the job done: a single worker bee produces only 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey her lifetime.

Remember, bees and wasps are different! You can tell if the creature buzzing around you is a bee by observing a few key features: bees have hairy bodies, no defined waist, and flat legs to help collect pollen. Wasps are predators, streamlined to hunt insects, and produce papery pulp nests from chewed up fibers and saliva. Wasps can sting and live to tell the tale, but a worker bee will only sting if it is an absolute necessity--she will die from ripping the sting barb out of her body as she flies away after the attack.

We are excited to welcome this docile breed of bees to the Hurricane Island Community, and are already scheming where to plant new flower gardens around the island to expand their nectar resources. With bees also comes an opportunity for new programs on beekeeping, pollination, colony behavior, and we are excited to start collecting scientific data on our hive health and work with students to conduct new research on bees. Most importantly, we'll be spending time this summer perfecting our waggle dance... Stay tuned!

Teacher Day 2015

Greetings from Hurricane Island…Spring is finally springing!

Last week we were lucky enough to celebrate Spring and Earth Day 2015 with a group of dedicated, inspiring individuals…teachers! A total of 13 teachers from 8 different schools in Maine and Massachusetts joined us for a trip out to the Island for our annual Free Teacher Day, a program we offer to give teachers the chance to learn about our facilities and the programming we offer on-Island. We were also lucky enough to be in Mother Nature’s good graces for the day as we had lots of sun, no rain and light wind all day. It was only my second time out to the Island and the first for many of our teachers, so we all felt thankful and inspired to be sharing such a beautiful day in a magical place!

We had a smooth ride out to the Island aboard the F/V Equinox, arriving on the Island around 10:30. Upon arrival, we took a moment to introduce ourselves to each other and have the necessary safety orientation, presented by HIF’s own Skillful Safety Sam Hallowell. Following safety, Jammin’ Josie Gates, Awesome Alice Anderson and Outstanding Oakley Jackson took us through the facilities of Hurricane Island, highlighting our off-the-grid infrastructure of solar panels and composting toilets, our gardens and compost, and introducing teachers to the teaching spaces and dorms.

After filling our bellies with a delicious lunch, provided by Merry Micah Conkling, and filling our brains with discussion of the possibilities a place like Hurricane provides for educators, we took a more in-depth tour of the grounds outside of the campus and learned about the history of Hurricane Island. We visited the remains of the Church, took a break at the Ice Pond and hiked up to our water holding tanks to talk about our gravity-fed water system. We then made our way down to the cliffs (where we captured this fabulous shot) and continued on to view the quarry and rock climbing routes, all the way sharing ideas, admiring the scenery and learning bits about the Island, it’s ecology and how we run programs.

We ended with a gathering for a short question and answer session and a chance to reflect on the day’s experience. We then re-boarded the Equinox and departed the Island feeling rejuvenated, inspired and privileged to share a day with such dedicated, enthusiastic educators that endeavor to provide students with unique experiences, inside and outside of the classroom. Just another fabulous day on Hurricane Island!

Field Naturalist on Hurricane this Summer

We are excited to have a field naturalist joining us this year as part of the University of Vermont's Master's program. For his master’s project, Ben will be working on Hurricane Island for the 2015 summer season, completing an ecological inventory and asking some prodding questions about the role of fungi, lichens, and other small critters in the overall ecology of the island. 

Ben grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, a city that is somewhere between mountains and coast, small town and big city, old-timey and new-fangled. Although deeply attached to his homeland, Ben happily shipped off to the Pacific Northwest for undergraduate studies at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. In college, Ben took the notion of "broadening your horizons" as literally as possible, traveling to India, banding birds in Mexico and Oregon, and sailing the Oregon coast aboard a tall ship as part of his studies. After graduating with a BA in international studies and a BS in environmental science, Ben returned to Ahmedabad, India, where he interned at an arts-for-social-change academy for a year: writing grants, gaining some web design know-how, and occasionally walking on stilts or singing a few lines in Hindi, as the day required. Returning to Charlotte, Ben did some freelance graphic design, helped start a yoga studio, and worked on the front lines of the budding vegan culinary scene in town. 

2015 Summer Interns

We are excited to have finalized the team for our summer season on Hurricane Island! Our summer interns will arrive in late June and help with the delivery of our middle and high school summer programs. They are an integral part of our community and we are looking forward to having them on the island. Stay tuned for updates from our interns about programs on the island, research, and more!

Jacqueline Rosa - Science & Experiential Education Intern

Originally from Connecticut, Jacque earned her degree in Marine Science from the University of Maine. During her time at UMaine, she spent a summer working at the Darling Marine Center (DMC) while completing her capstone research on the American lobster. Jacque then participated in the DMC's Semester by the Sea program. After graduating, she moved to California to work as a Marine Science Instructor at Catalina Island Marine Institute. She is passionate about helping kids gain environmental awareness and is excited to be back on the beautiful coast of Maine (and finally eat lobster again!).  

Olivia Lukacic - Science Education Intern

Olivia was born and raised in Massachusetts, but has now fallen in love with Vermont while attending the University of Vermont for the past three years. Studying environmental science and forestry has allowed her to critically look at the space around her with greater understanding. Although she spends classroom time daydreaming about being outside, she hopes to work to combine education and the environment to inspire the younger generation of scientists! While at school she spends many of her mornings on the Lamoille River watching the sunrise as a member of the women's rowing team. Waking up in the dark is tricky, but she would not trade the unique perspective on the river for anything. When Olivia is not rowing, she loves hiking, climbing, exploring, as well as reading and cooking! During winter, which is in her top two favorite seasons, she loves cross country skiing, snowshoeing, sledding and making paper snowflakes. Her love for the outdoors began while growing up on conservation land and she continues to be curious about everything that goes on around her, and particularly loves swapping knowledge about the natural world with others. Olivia's family spent many summers camping on the coast of Maine and she cannot wait to live on the Island this summer!  

Bailey Moritz - Scallop Research Intern

Though a proud Seattleite at heart, Bailey is currently a junior studying Earth & Oceanographic Science and Environmental Studies at Bowdoin College in Maine. Last summer she was on campus researching ocean acidification in a clam flat and getting covered in mud. In hopes of improving her Spanish skills, she went abroad on an ecology and marine conservation program in Panama, living with home stay families, researching Caribbean spiny lobster, and eating lots of plantains. Interested in the interaction of society and marine resources, she hopes to pursue fisheries science in the future. After becoming a leader for the Bowdoin Outing Club, she tries to spend most weekends exploring some corner of Maine by foot, canoe, or white water raft. Scuba diving has been her favorite activity since high school and inspired an awe and passion for the underwater world, which she loves to learn more about and share with others. Whenever she has free time, she plays percussion in a Middle Eastern Ensemble and can't pass up a good round of board games. 

Silas Rogers - Sustainability Intern

Silas grew up in the foothills of western Maine, but finds himself at home on Maine’s coast, and on the water. He is currently enrolled at The Apprenticeshop, a school for traditional boatbuilding in Rockland, Maine, for a two-year apprenticeship. There, he is honing his skills as a woodworker, building and restoring wooden boats. 

Silas enjoys activities such as biking, skiing, rowing, and sailing. Another of his favorite pastimes is playing music. He has been part of many music groups over the years, playing a mixture of instruments including fiddle and guitar, and hopes to bring music to the island this summer.

Excited to be a part of the Hurricane Island family, Silas is full of enthusiasm and energy, guided toward understanding and improving the island systems. He is always ready to take on a challenge, especially if it is hands-on. 

Eastern Maine Skippers at the Fishermen's Forum

Every year March rolls around and fishermen, marine scientists, and industry members from along the coast of Maine gather in Rockland at the annual Fishermen's Forum. This is the 40th year this event has been running, and it is a great opportunity for everyone to connect about the major challenges and innovative ideas to address changes in Maine's fisheries.

After the fall kickoff event on Hurricane Island, the Eastern Maine Skippers Program students have been busy developing green crab project plans to implement this spring. The Fishermen's Forum was a great opportunity for all of the school groups to gather and share their project updates to the broader community. Student's from all of the schools (North Haven, Vinalhaven, Deer Isle Stonington, George Stevens Academy, Narraguagus, and Jonesport-Beals) presented on their project ideas, and the whole group will be giving a final presentation about their approach to a green crab solution on May 28th at the Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth. Below is a summary of the range of project ideas that students presented on during their slot at the forum:

North Haven students have proposed two main projects around creating fertilizer from green crabs: one group is going to determine the best ratio of green crab meal to soil for optimal growing, and the other group is going to be looking at the opportunity of green crabs as being a natural nematode suppressant and will be comparing the quantity and quality of the produce grown from corn, beans, and tomatoes that are grown with green crab added to the soil vs. their control.

Vinalhaven students have focused their efforts on testing the efficiency of traps and bait in capturing green crabs, and also on developing creative cooking ideas to make green crabs a new tasty menu item. One of the student groups is going to trial a trap used by Unity College students at a variety of depths and trying different types of bait to determine the most efficient way to harvest green crabs. Another group is attempting a new cooking method which involves a two-part process of softening the crab shell first in a vinegar brine, flavoring with teriyaki, and then smoking the crabs whole. Part of the cooking challenge will be for students to determine if there is a preferable size for the crabs which results in a soft shell and positive taste results. 

Deer Isle-Stonington High School students are banding together to assess the real impacts of green crabs by asking "How do green crabs affect the lobster industry in the waters around Deer Isle?" Students will be documenting where and in what densities they are finding green crabs, determining if green crabs eat lobsters and between what size range, if green crabs and lobsters are competing for the same food, and whether the local lobster settlement is lower because of green crabs. Students plan to collect their data using permitted ventless traps, and looking at the population ratio of green crabs to juvenile lobsters within their survey area.

George Stevens Academy students are planning to see if crushed green crab powder can be added to grass fertilizer and marketed to local golf courses like the Blue Hill Country Club. They will be testing nutrient levels in the soil with the addition of green crabs, and, if their project succeeds, look into larger distribution opportunities with their product. First, they are in the market for a dehydrator, and are waiting for the snow to melt so they can set their traps!

Narraguagus High School is planning to test three different green crab traps to determine the most cost effective and efficient design-- one used by the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) in a 1950s green crab survey, one triangular trap design, and one design they are still working on. With the help of donated supplies from Brooks Trap Mill they are going to be fishing these traps and comparing which fishes best. These students have also been surveying local community members, including wormers, clamdiggers, and gathering testimonials about the scope of the green crab problem, and its potential long-term impacts on important coastal industries.

Jonesport-Beals High School students have also been exploring compost and food opportunities for green crabs. A few highlight ideas include developing green crab rangoon, green crab cakes, green crab sushi, and a specialty green crab spice which could flavor seafood and soups--the spice would be produced by cooking, dehydrating, and grinding up green crabs into a powder! 

We were impressed with the quality of the presentations from students-- their project ideas have matured so much from the fall, and students delivered a polished presentation to a packed room! We wish the Skippers the best of luck as they launch into their projects, and hope that there will be a taste-testing opportunity during the May event to sample green crab recipes!