Two men in work boots sort fish on a dock, with fishing boats tied alongside. One man is in rubber overalls, the other in jeans and a T-shirt. The dock is covered in fish, most about two feet in length. All fish appear dead.
Crew of a charter vessel sort the catch, late 1969Photo: Penobscot Marine Museum Digital Archive

Coastal Conversations Radio Program: In Pursuit of Cod

July 31, 2025 Coastal Conversations

Coastal Conversations show: July 25, 2025
WERU 89.9 in Blue Hill and 99.9 in Bangor

Hosts

Tiegan Paulson, student at College of the Atlantic

This Episode

Matt McKenzie saw the cod fishery collapse from the window of a school bus. He watched day after day on his way to school as the boats accumulated in the harbor. But that was only the culmination of a story that began over five hundred years earlier; a story of the greatest fishery in the history of the North Atlantic. This month we will take a look at the fish that brought Europeans to New England, the adaptations their ancestors made to keep fishing, and the decline of the cod fishery that had sustained this coast for generations. Tune in on Friday, July 25th at 4pm for this month’s Coastal Conversation. Coastal Conversations is supported by Maine Sea Grant in partnership with Schoodic Institute and The First Coast.

Guests

Matthew McKenzie, History and Maritime Studies Professor at the University of Connecticut
Karen Alexander, Historical Ecology emeritus at the University of New Hampshire
Robin Alden, Former commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources

For More Information

To learn more about Mount Desert Island’s cod fishery in the 1800s, check out From Wealth to Poverty: The Rise and Fall of Cod Around Mount Desert Island by Karen Alexander, William Leavenworth, and our own Natalie Springuel.

For more information about changes to Maine’s fisheries in the last fifty years, take a look at Robin Alden’s article, Lessons for the Future from 50 Years of Maine Fisheries.

Thank you to Galen Koch and Natalie Springuel for production assistance, and to Todd Little-Siebold for research assistance.