Maine Sea Grant

Susan Shaw Marine Environmental Research Institute 55 Main Street Blue Hill, ME 04614 207.374.2135 sshaw@meriresearch.org The world’s oceans are littered with plastic debris. With the 1997 discovery of staggering amounts of plastic collecting in the Pacific Ocean and North Atlantic gyres emerged the question of what happens to these plastics as they break down, since plastic particles […]

John Anderson College of the Atlantic 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609 207.801.5717 Email John Anderson Recent declines in sea gull populations in the Gulf of Maine suggest significant changes in the ecosystem. Gulls nesting on the Maine coast travel long distances across the United States and Canada, and there is no coordinated effort […]

Erin Owen Husson University 1 College Circle Bangor, ME 04401 207.941.7744 Email Erin Owen Maine’s small but unique coastal scallop fishery has been a lucrative source of income for fishing communities, only second in value to the state’s lobster fishery. In response to a steady decline in landings, the Maine Department of Marine Resources initiated […]

Ian Bricknell Aquaculture Research Institute Hitchner Hall University of Maine Orono, ME 04469 207.581.4380 ian.bricknell@umit.maine.edu   In an effort to reduce the threat of infection by parasitic sea lice, Maine’s salmon farming industry has adopted a three-year production cycle that rotates production sites. If wild fish are carrying sea lice, they can make this strategy […]

Deborah Bouchard Animal Health Laboratory 348 Hitchner Hall University of Maine Orono, ME 04469 207.581.2767 deborah.bouchard@maine.edu Fisheries managers first imported the European or flat oyster, Ostrea edulis, to Maine in 1949 in an attempt to return local oyster populations to commercially harvestable levels. While the experiment was unsuccessful, some European oysters reproduced and became established […]

Jonathan Eaton Georges River Tidewater Association PO Box 336 Thomaston, ME 04861 207.354.2234 jonathan.eaton3@gmail.com The St. George River estuary has been listed as impaired by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection since 2000. The reason for the impairment are dissolved oxygen levels below what is required to protect the health of fish and other organisms. […]

Sean Todd Director, Allied Whale and Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Sciences College of the Atlantic 105 Eden Street Bar Harbor, ME 04609 207.801.5725 stodd@coa.edu Allied Whale has been studying endangered humpback, fin, and right whales from Mount Desert Rock’s marine field station for nearly 40 years. Visual observations from small vessels and from […]

Mark Green Peaks Island Shellfish Co. 5 Willow Street Peaks Island, ME 04108 207.712.3681 Email Mark Green Reporting by Dana Morse, Maine Sea Grant Shellfish harvesters are in need of product diversification. While Maine scallop fishermen get excellent prices for their high-quality product, yet the volume of wild-caught scallops in Maine is very low, and […]