Field Trip to the Maine Granite Industry Museum

Steve explains how the quarrymen drilled holes in the 1830's before the advent of steam drills. This was a 4 person job, with 3 "strikers" wielding 8 pound hammers, and one man seated on an iron box who was in charge of holding and turning the drill to chip out a 2.5" hole.

Cait and I were down in Bar Harbor yesterday (April 24, 2014) and had a chance to stop by the Maine Granite Industry Historical Society Museum, which is tucked away just past Somesville on Mount Desert Island. The Museum was founded, curated, and is run by Steve Haynes, who is a fantastic wealth of knowledge about the quarrying process, and who, over the past 46 years, has personally collected and polished granite samples from all of Maine's quarries, interviewed tool boys who worked in the quarries, and collected historic photos and documents of the era. Steve is a stone carver himself, and he took time away from preparing granite memorial stones to step us through the quarrying process and to explain all of the tools that helped cut, shape, move, and polish the granite. We are looking forward to getting Steve out to Hurricane Island, and you should definitely visit the museum if you find yourself on Mount Desert Island! Thanks for everything Steve! You can read about Hurricane's history as a granite quarry town here.

Book review: The Unnatural History of the Sea

If you're looking for some springtime reading that will help you gain some perspective on the scale of marine resource exploitation, I recommend The Unnatural History of the Sea by Callum Roberts. This is a great nonfiction book that provides an in-depth account of marine resource exploitation dating back to the 11th century medieval Europe. Using firsthand accounts from early mariners and a variety of other sources, Roberts creates a colorful illustration of human reliance on marine resources and inspires awe about the life our oceans once supported. Roberts also warns about the dangers of shifting ecological baselines--a phenomenon where each generation assumes the current conditions they personally experience are the norm rather than looking at historic landings, species diversity, and average body size of different species. The ocean has historically supported a greater diversity of species and in higher abundance than today. If we look at the ocean's current status only within the context of our lifetime, we easily lower our standards, and a "successfull" rebound of a species may be only a fraction of its historic abundance. You can see a great photo series of shifting baselines here. While it is a sobering subject, Roberts' writing is very engaging and his call to action is inspirational and necessary if we want to improve the state of marine resources. I do believe that we can achieve a balance between resource extraction and protection and hopefully maintain the commercial fishing industry as a viable livelihood that honors past generations of mariners.

For his work, Roberts was awarded the 2008 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists.

License to Kill... in the Name of Scallop Research!

Atlantic Sea Scallop (Placopecten magellanicus)

We were recently approved for our 2014 special license through the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR). We are required to file a special license application for our research because we are asking for an exception from existing legislation that prohibits collecting undersized scallops, tissue and shell samples. The tissue samples are being saved for genetic analysis which will help us understand the connectivity between different scallop population locations, and we will also keep the shells from each individual collected for aging and growth rate analysis. 

The DMR Application describes the purpose of our project, how project findings might be useful in future management decisions, the specific activities we will be carrying out as part of the project, and gear types used to collect samples. For this application, we worked with Kevin Rousseau, who is part of the regulations, hearings, and special licenses division of the DMR.

Special license applications are reviewed and voted for approval by the Department's Advisory Council, which is made up of 16 members: five commercial harvesters who each represent a different fishery, four people who hold a non-harvesting-related license, a recreational fishing representative, a member of the public, and an aquaculture industry representative. The chair of the Lobster Advisory Council, the chair of the Sea Run Fisheries and Habitat Advisory, the chair of the Sea Urchin Zone Council, and the chair of the Shellfish Advisory Council are ex officio members of the council. 

Phenology Friday: Hurricane's Trees have Buds!

Cait and I visited Hurricane Island yesterday (April 10th, 2014) and were excited to see that some of our favorite trees have buds on them! It must finally be spring! If you are interested in tracking the phenology of plants around you, be sure to join Project Bud Burst or the USA National Phenology Network and submit your observations throughout the seasons.

From left to right: Horse Chestnut, Speckled Alder, Mountain Ash, Common Elderberry

We Aren't Being Shellfish, We're Just Hoping to Grow Them!

This is one technique for growing scallops called "ear hanging," which uses plastic Age-pins to secure the scallops in pairs along a line.

Cait and I had a great meeting with Dana Morse, on Monday, April 7th to talk about opportunities for Hurricane Island to set up educational aquaculture sites around the island. Before we can set up a site, we need to identify what types of shellfish we want to grow, how we want to grow them (bottom seeding, bottom cages, floating gear...the list goes on) and, most importantly, we need to identify good sites with the right conditions for our shellfish, and then apply for Limited-Purpose Aquaculture (LPA) licenses through the DMR. Dana has a cool blog that chronicles his extensive work and research into shellfish aquaculture, and serves as a great additional resource explaining all of the different techniques that exist to raise oysters, scallops, mussels, and clams in Maine waters. Dana is going to help us identify sites for our LPA's this May, and then we hope to apply for a license and be able to start growing in the spring of 2015!