Three waterkeepers tell Friends of Penobscot Bay: set up a baykeeper!

Our bioregion's three waterkeepers  have visited Penobscot Bay in recent months to talk with those interested in getting a Penobsot Baykeeper project. 

Matt Abbott, Fundy Baykeeper

Listen to a January 7, 2015 talk & Q&A by  Fundy Baykeeper Matthew Abbott;  a February 27, 2015 talk & Q&A  by Casco Baykeeper emeritus Joe Payne and a March 14, 2015 talk & Q&A  by  Great Bay/Piscataqua River Waterkeeper Jeff Barnum

 A common thread of the discussions  has been setting up a unique affiliates-style West Penobscot Baykeeper program as start up, with expansion to other reaches as local communities sign on to the value of waterkeeping Penobscot Bay.

This acknowledges the  enormous size of the bay and and the varied societies, economies and ecology of its different reaches, and also focuses on the most environmentally and ecologically challenged western reaches of Penobscot Bay. 

Joe Pay, Casco Baykeeper emeritus

There are immensely significant  geographic,  ecological, environmental, economic and cultural differences between the reaches which loosely consist of  West Penobscot Bay from Port Clyde to Stockton Springs;  tidal Penobscot River from Prospect to  head of tide at  Veazie;  East Penobscot Bay from Stonington to the town of Penobscot;  Islesboro and the Fox Islands; and the outer islands

West Penobscot Bay and its coastal forests face increasing commercial, residential and industrial development pressure  along the US Route 1 corridor. The pace of development in East Penobscot Bay and on the major islands  is much slower  and lower impact.  Our board members have collectively more than a century worth of experience on (mostly) west Penobscot Bay in one way or another. .

While all-volunteer  Friends of Penobscot Bay has been committed to  carrying out FOPB's missions on a shoestring budget,  a paid part time, regional waterkeeper is a good first step and necessary as development pressures increase under an industry-friendly  administration.

Jeff Barnum, Great Bay/Piscataqua keeper

 

An affiliate waterkeeper program may prove to be an excellent way of achieving this over the medium run, while gaining us the many support benefits  of being part of an association of more than 100 waterkeepers around the natoin and the world - each of whom has faced similar challenges fighting for clean water, healthy habitat & successful renewable fisheries and scenic natural assets

While there have been some successes along our way in Penobscot Bay, there is a great deal more that we could accomplish. Affiliating with this noble movement may be just the thing. 

Casco Baykeeper on Penobscot Baykeeping: Audios of 2/27/15 talk in Belfast

Last night (February 27, 2015) Casco Baykeeper emeritus Joe Payne gave a talk and took part in a discussion at the Belfast Unitarian Universalist Church on organizing a Penobscot Baykeeper Program.  (For those who couldn't make it to the event, listen to the hourlong event at this link:     (mp3))

* Part 1 14min 40sec

* Part 2 15min

* Part 3 16 minutes

* Part 4  16min 32 sec

* Full hour

Joe gave his strong support to organizing a Penobscot Baykeeper. A LONG overdue event, he says. The now retired Casco Baykeeper suggests a unique affiliates-styles Penobscot Baykeeper program that reflects the enormous size of the bay and and the diverse societies, economics and ecology of the different reaches. 

This could be whichever divisions make sense: for example: East Penobscot Bay, west Penobscot Bay and the Fox islands & islesboro. Or upper bay/outer bay. Or even single harbors like Belfast Baykeeper.

Whichever it is. Joe said, each would benefit by being organized around people with great knowledge of and devotion to, their reach of Penobscot bay, Eventually a baywide leader would arise among the affiliates, he said, and a bay wide Penobscot Baykeeper might emerge. Or the affiliate system may prove to be an effective system on its own.

On raising money, Joe said, and all agreed, the money is out there. the businesses the philanthopists, the people  all  who would have  a voice for the ecology and enviornment of their bay or their reach of Penobscot Bay.

In the discussion part of the meeting, Joe took questions from pesticide activist Jody Spear, right whale defender Mark Dietrich, retired school teacher David Smith a critic of the new hardrock mining rules of the Lepage administration, educator-on-sabbatical Linda Bowie on project-based teaching, deep ecologist Hugh Curran of Morgan Bay, a critic of excessive aquaculture 
and meeting host Ron Huber of Friends of Penobscot Bay.


However it is done, all agreed, a Penobscot Baykeeper is LONG overdue!

Fundy Baykeeper talk & Q&A recordings from Friends of Penobscot Bay meeting, January 7, 2015, Belfast.

Matthew Abbott, Fundy Baykeeper

On January 7, 2015, Matthew Abbott, the Fundy Baykeeper, came from St Stephens New Brunswick to  Penobscot Bay to speak at  the monthly meeting of the Friends of Penobscot Bay at the Belfast Free Library. Matt described his job and the various ways a Penobscot Baykeeper could take form.  A lively hour long discussion followed.

Matt spoke for 11 minutes, followed by an hour of questions, answers and discussion with a standing-room-only audience in the library's 3rd floor meeting room.

Matt's talk 11 minutes   (more audio below photo)

Steve Tanguay points to Searsport Hbr planned dredging.

QA1 11 minutes
QA2, 10 minutes
QA3 10 minutes
QA4 7minutes 
QA5  8 minutes 
QA6  6 minutes
QA7 to end. 7 min
Full 69 minute talk

Ron Huber announces environmental leadership award to GAC Chemical for planning a cleanup.

Full 70 minute mp3 of 1/7/15  FOPB meeting

Matthew Abbot, Fundy Baykeeper, at Searsport Harbor, ME 1/7/15. Sears Island & Mack Pt in backgrd

Meeting photos by Peter Taber /// Outdoor photo by Ron Huber

Ring around Penobscot Bay June 1st. Why? Because our Two Bays must become One.

The central challenge we face  keeping the Bay safe as a single ecoregion is that Penobscot Bay is the coastal partition of the 'Two Maines', with only limited community connectivity between East Penobscot Bay and West Penobscot Bay.   

On June First, take part in Ring Around The Bay, an amazing shore to shore, bay coast to bay coast event that brings the communities of both Maines together around their common bay, and  lays out the roadmap for organizing the Penobscot Baykeeper.  

Want to help? write us at penbay@justice.com or call us at 207-593-2744

AT ISSUE.
Nature and history have conspired to create "Two Penobscot Bays" each with its own economic & cultural centers and natural resource bases - largely separate of the other.  As a result  East Penobscot Bay and West Penobscot Bay differ environmentally, ecologically, socially and economically from each other:. 

To the west, bay communities connect like pearls on a string along the Route One interstate highway corridor;   East Penobscot Bay hosts a tapestry of small communities linked by webs of  local roads and byways, with Route One only passing by the bay's northeast corner on its way Downeast.
 
While this makes for a certain robustness to the region, there are stark lessons to be learned from the DCP near-disaster, that we ignore at our peril. The fight against Big Tank,  the Sears Island struggles, the successful effort to keep salmon farming out of the bay, and other battles for the environmental quality and scenic character of Penobscot Bay have taught us taht:

1.  Development or pollution in any one part of Penobscot Bay can harm the rest, and 
2.  Every year, more development wannabees large and small come to Penobscot Bay
3. Countering   developers' money and influence requires organized,  sustained People Power.

Otherwise we end up with "Dumb Growth":  projects that damage the ecosystem and/or economy of the bay,  with federal and state officials who rule on them seemingly struck dumb concerning those unpleasant impacts, approving them regardless of community opposition.

Regrettably, in these times we can expect many dumb growth plans to arrive  in or around Penobscot Bay, often with skilled public relations teams and campaign cash. To keep Penobscot Bay America's scenic lobster basket, we must detect and fend off each  dumb growth proposals as it arrives.


WHAT TO DO
We must rethink our existing Two Bays  point of view.   The two bays must become one to fend off the coming threats - for they assuredly will come. Two into One is the purpose and theme of the  Ring Around The Bay on June 1st.  We will use all the means of community connectivity  from runners, drums, mirrors and smoke signals around  from Stonington round to Port Clyde, Sears Island to Vinalhaven, and a marathon 18 hour webinar that documents it all.

HOW TO DO IT   
 In the worldwide lexicon of signalers, two flashes, two smoke puffs, or two drumbeats means PAY ATTENTION!  (Groups of three signals means EMERGENCY )   On June first, that is our message

OUR MESSAGE i two beats, two smoke puffs, two mirror flashes, with those pairs repeated  twice:
calls us all to pay attention: the two Penobscot Bays must become one.


Are you a drummer? dadum -dadum ...5 seconds.....dadum-dadum.........10 sec........ dadum-dadum......five seconds...... dadum-dadum!

A firebuilder?
Smokepuff ..10 sec delay.....smokepuff........20 sec delay..........smokepuff ....10 sec delay..smokepuff

A mirror signaller?  
 Flash - 1 second delay - flash....5 seconds delay .....flash - 1 second delay - flash.

A runner? 
From Islesboro's Turtle Head to Pendleton Point, and from Pendleton Point to Turtle Head,  runners will carry the word the length of this chain of islands connecting upper Penobscot  Bay to outer Penobscot Bay.

Other? The human capacity for communication knows no bounds, Whatever medium you choose, prepare to spread the word around the bay:  Pay Attention to Your Bay!   


We will be on high points and other places that are in line of sight or line of sound of the many reaches of the bay. Aready people on both sides of the mouth of the bay and on Sears Island and at Searsport Shores' beach have committed to their places.   There will be presences everywhere around Penobscot Bay, even aboard one or more of the boats and  ferries plying the bay on June 1st.


THE GRAND FINALE To thunderous applause, this "Attention: one bay!"  message will finally be delivered  to those gathered at  the Unitarian Universalist Church in Belfast, there to examine and celebrate the defeat of Big Gas and look to the future.

Want to take part? Got ideas, mirrors drums horns smoke skills?  Willing to run for miles?

Contact the Friends of Penobscot Bay at penbay@justice.com or call 593-2744.

It's your bay that's under attack. Deal with it.

Penobscot Bay gets 'Friended'

A new environmental organization has risen to steward Penobscot Bay's water quality, fish and shellfish habitat and scenic resources. It held its first press conference October 4th 2012 on the Sears Island causeway. See TV coverage.

Why a new NGO? Aren't there enough already? Not..exactly.

For too long, Maine's biggest bay has suffered from a scattershot approach to protection of its natural resources from oil spills and other pollution sources and from inappropriate development.

Maine's newest marine conservation group, the Friends of Penobscot Bay, which held a media rollout of the organization on Thursday October 4, 2012 on the Sears Island causeway will bring expertise from around the bay and among the bay's fishery and tourism sectors to bear on these many local concerns.

Communities and citizens in the trenches defending their piece of Penobscot Bay
 from sprawl or pollution rarely have an opportunity to assist the bay's other defenders up and down her coast. Yet the problems raised by developers and waste dischargers around the bay are often very similar, often involving the same officials of the same agencies. The companies are represented by the same environmental consultants, law firms and public relations teams

The Friends of Penobscot Bay has come into being to respond to the need to coordinate such information. With a baywide organization run by fishermen and others whose living is dependent on their Bay having clean water and healthy marine and shoreline habitats, abundant prey and forage species, and high quality natural scenic beauty, the Friends are able to respond to any kind of issue, anywhere around the bay.

The vast majority of the bay's hatchling  fish and shellfish do not survive their first year before falling to predation, starvation or poor water quality. 

Unique among environmental groups the makeup of the Friends of Penobscot Bay's Board of Directors reflects its small business/ natural resource protection orientation: Sheila Dassatt of the Downeast Lobstermen's Association; Thomas Atherton of Bucksport, a commercial wormdigger and biologist; scalloper Michael Keating of Owls Head, workboat operator and diver Robert Izerbyt of Rockport, oyster farmer Jesse Stuart of Penobscot, recreational clammer and coastal camp operator Astrig Tanguay of Searsport, environmentalist Harlan McLaughlin, also of Searsport, and conservationist Ron Huber of Rockland

 
The Friends of Penobscot Bay  will inventory the knowledge and talents of the bay's many natural resource-reliant commercial businesses, from fishermen to wormdiggers to coastal campground operators and apply it  to each bay impacting development proposal, be it a summer home builder seeking to riprap an eroding shoreline or an energy giant.

Combining the local close-in citizens are critical for protection and improvement of our natural environment, bit by irreplaceable bit. However, the Friends of Penobscot Bay seek to boost the likelihood of bay-friendly outcomes in those efforts, by bringing  the combined  talents, knowledge, skills and assets of  the bay's fishermen, eco-defenders, and other bay users and enjoyers to bear on each local issue.

The bay is suffering from a thousand local cuts, inflicted over the last three hundred years. The combined effect is such that even small new development projects and waste sites can combine with dreadful effect on our bay's entire ecology.

An unhappy result of those 'thousand cuts' is that Penobscot Bay's finfish, mussels, scallops, seaworms, urchins and more are at historic low levels. Meanwhile many of the bay's irreplaceable scenic  and sonic viewsheds and other natural assets have been degraded by inappropriate coastal development, and many more are threatened. Lobstermen have reported a new  and stubborn skin disease infecting from even the minor cuts and abrasions that occur on the job.

While overfishing and inappropriate fishing tech are part of the poor fish stocks picture, has a rise in larval mortality of many bay fish and shellfish species added another stress to these animals?  

The vast majority of the bay's hatchling  fish and shellfish do not survive their first year before falling to predators, sometimes, as in the case of the cod, even their own species

BAY POLLUTION Under the guidance of that board,  the Friends of Penobscot Bay will take up the task of reducing water pollution and cleaning up the 100s of legacy toxic and petroleum waste dumps and spills that were created in the 19th and 20th centuries. They will also keep an eye on the bay's many operating outfalls, each of which has strict limitations on the discharges they are allowed to make into Penobscot Bay. 

BAY REPLENISHMENT The Friends of Penobscot Bay will attempt to redevelop and replenish the diversified fisheries and scenic wonders that, once overwhelmingly bountiful, have declined in many reaches of Penobscot Bay over the last 300 years.

Let's hope the Friends of Penobscot Bay accomplish what they are setting out to do!