Sears Island - Sierra Club leader surfaces; to debate anti-port plan activists Thursday 10am on WERU FM

Orland. Maine Sierra Club is responding to critics of the Club's support for the state plan to divide Sear Island into a port zone and a conservation buffer by agreeing at the last minute to join a debate with them.

Kenneth Cline, Maine Sierra Club's conservation chair, and professor of environmental law at College of the Atlantic, will take on representatives of Fair Play For Sears Island, a Searsport-based group that favors leaving the island in its current natural undeveloped state. Cline is part of the Maine chapter's leadership.

The radio debate is will be held on Thursday, June 5, 10-11am. WERU Community Radio. All are welcome to call in with their questions, facts and opinions. The toll free number is 1-866-625-9378. Local call in number is 469-0500. WERU also streams live on the web at www.weru.org Listen to the debate live. and call in.

Critics including members of their own group locally, Atlantic Canada Sierra Club members, and as far away as California (mp3 audio of Tom Politeo, interviewed by Ron Huber, Penobscot Bay Report, WRFR COmmunity Radio ).

There the Sierra Club strongly opposes new container ports due to their massive air pollution discharges and habitat destruction that come with them.

Details & Background about the Sears Island controversy:

Penobscot Bay Blog

Fair Play for Sears Island

1990s Sears Island struggle details

2004 Sears Island LNG plan FOIA documents

MDOT-Maine Coast Heritage Trust proposed deal dividing up the island

Coverage of May 26 anti-port 'funeral' on Sears Island

Maine Sierra Club
Sears Island 1990s news archive

Sears Island - the mote in BDN's editorial eye.

It's a pleasure to see new editorial leadership at the Bangor Daily News, especially someone arising from the ranks of BDN's veteran beat reporters - Tom Groening. We'll miss seeing and talking to you at at Penobscot Bay events, Tom.

However, the editorial 'Saving Sears Island' shows that Tom and/or other BDN editors need a crash course in Sears Island issues and Penobscot Bay ecology. We strongly urge them to get that by coming to the June 6th Sears Island Teach-In outside the Congregational Church of Searsport. The church is simultaneously host to a meeting of the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee. The two groups will doubtless mingle. The learning potential is tremendous. All are welcome! This means you, reader.

But let's get down to just one of the many brass tacks that makes reading the Bangor Daily News' editorial so painful.

The fundamental reason, the overriding purpose and need claimed for the port zoning plan is that building a port on Sears Island "may one day be deemed critical to Maine’s economic survival", as the editorial writer puts it.

Come now. The day that the change of use of any land, any location in Maine is truly "deemed critical to Maine's economic survival" it can and will be exploited for whatever that survival purpose is.

Whether it be a waterfront estate, a lobster dock or a natural island, if the state of Maine were in such dislocation that only a new container port plugged into her coast in a certain location would keep Mainers from ruin and anarchy, such a location would be speedily and rightly condemned, and those containers of economic salvation would shortly start flowing off on or off the ships.

The state of Maine will of course take care of its people should the need arise. It already has all the legal resources to do so. A fast track to let speculative investors rush in and build a needless port on Maine public land, despoiling the upper Bay region of its clean air and healthy marine environment while degrading an island of unparalleled and irreplaceable environmental quality and biodiversity - meanwhile squeezing every possible tax deferment or abatement from Maine taxpayers it can - does not benefit our region.

Speaking of 'economic survival', the mainstream scientific community of New England and the region's new creative economists will no doubt be willing to explain in great detail to JUPC members how building and operating a container port would itself threaten the 'economic survival' of the strong tourism, resort and fishing economies of the greater Penobscot Bay.

What or who will compensate commercial and recreational fishers? Summer camps and resorts? Those Mainers falling ill from asthma, which seems to follow closely behind container port construction elsewhere in the USA? All harmed by the new pollution, including invasives-rich ballast water and by lost critical nursery areas, that would follow from approving this port zone, and inciting some enterprising free marketeers to make a literal killing by building a container port, fouling the Penobscot Bay environment for a decade, then bailing out once the tax incentives decline. Leaving Maine the poorer for its pains.

The Port Baldacci plan for Sears Island, in closing, appears little more than a tawdry if carefully executed attempt to pave the way for global investors and port speculators to punch a briefly profitable new global trade port into the coast of Maine. Even if it ends up primarily as empty and virtually unused as the Estes Head port in Eastport, brainchild of Brian Nutter. Nutter was rewarded for the Eastport "port to nowhere" by being made head of the Maine Port Authority.

Now Brian, part of the JUPC, has come to our bay, and is busy promoting another needless port. Shall we listen to him? He's already set to move to yet another new port directorship - a major grain port on the Ohio River in Jeffersonville, Indiana. What Sears Island and Penobscot Bay be like when he finally heads south?

In our next entry we'll take a look at BDN editors' comprehension of the ecology at stake, (and award them a D-).

It's the estuary, Sierra Club!

Sears Island is the heart of an elegant estuary that suffuses the nutrient laden waters of the great Penobscot River with the nutrient laden waters of the Gulf of Maine. (Click image for larger version.)

The result: an ecological paradise for the larvae, the young and the grownups of countless wild residents of our bay.

If we unclog that vital intertidal passageway between Stockton Harbor and Long Cove, if we leave the wild shallows of Sears Island undegraded, the Harbor's clams will rebound to their old abundances with almost frightening speed, and the Bay will become groundfish central once more.

C'mon Sierrans. The port plan's a pig in a poke! Bail from JUPC! Save Penobscot Bay

Sears Island protectors take Sierra Club to Task

Sierra Club targeted by fishery activists at 'funeral march' on Maine's largest wild island. Good work, Island Huggers and Bay Huggers! Onward...

Media Coverage.

Bangor Daily News Activists Bury Sierra Club

Waldo County Citizen/Village Soup. 'Funeral' held in wake of Sears Island (Tina Shute photo/Village Soup)

WABI TV-5 Their story

Also May 23rd Maine Public Radio story (before the march) More to come.

GET INVOLVED NOW! Its now or never for Sears Island. We need your brains and brawn to succeed. HERE'S HOW:

Keep informed by checking the Penobscot Bay Blog & Fair Play For Sears Island

Contact either of the below people for more about this affair contact: Ron Huber or Harlan McLaughlin .

Ron Huber Executive Director Penobscot Bay Watch POB 1871 Rockland Maine 04841
e: coastwatch@gmail.com tel: 207-691-7485 web: http://www.penbay.org/

Harlan Mclaughlin, president, Fair Play for Sears Island,

Searsport, Maine tel 207-548-9962 pearlsb4swine1@verizon.net

web: http://www.fairplayforsearsisland.org/

Sears Island - funeral march coverage starts

Two of our most important state media have picked up on the story of citizens discontented with the Sears Island port consensus process agreement- the "Deal of Shame" holding a funeral march on the island. Maine Things Considered ran the story Friday evening, and Maine Coast Now! the Courier newspapers of the bay counties and Augusta is running the story in its Saturday editions - available now on line. Thank you! to both media outfits for taking on an important story. See you on the causeway...

Sears Island - the Deal of Shame. Word by word.

Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Sierra Club, Friends of Sears Island and others can clamber out of the JUPC wallow they presently find themselves mired in. Can back away today. All they need do is repudiate this deal between Maine DOT and Maine Coast Heritage Trust , that would divide Sears Island into a cargo port zone and a conservation easemented "buffer" zone. All twenty two pages of the most recent draft in an easy to read gallery format.

Remember: until the fat legislator sings in late December, it is not a done deal. The island is today as wild as it was yesterday, and if fishermen and conservationists truly press their case now, it will remain so. Only a planned deal. A proposed deal.

While Maine Coast Heritage Trust will clearly not withdraw from the deal on its own initiative, Sierra Club, Friends of Sears Island and others can. The climb out of the charmed JUPC circle will not be easy. But once whomever loses face by quitting JUPC have eaten their corvus-burgers and been properly mollified, these ENGOs can rise once more into their powerful role as guardians of Gaia. They can turn their considerable talents and resource instead s to setting up a truly baywide transportation management plan that evaluates the effects of changes in shipping, roads and rail, in light of the potential environmental and cultural impacts to human and natural users of Penobscot Bay. That is what is needed.

This joint use plan, the bastard child of an unnatural and secretive union between nature stewards and nature removers, should be shelved. Along with the absurd listing of MDOT on the Island's land title, down at the Waldo County Courthouse. The island is listed as owned by the state of Maine with a parenthetical add-on clause that claims exclusive administration of the island by Maine DOT. In December lets ask the legislature to remove the Maine DOT barnacle from the island's title. Giving jurisdiction as is proper to our state's Bureau of Public Land.

Let the baywide public - the affected public - in on the planning for Sears Island. Let's shelve the needlessly vague, hopelessly deficient product of the Joint Use Planning Committee and its Consensus Process.

Its time to give democracy a try.

Sierra Club's path to salvation on Sears Island

What would John Muir do?

If it is to regain credibility as defender of natural Maine, Sierra Club must stand away from the little charmed circle of JUPC. Must organize and host public meetings about the port plan around the bay. To hear from sailors , fishermen and others what they think about planning a new industrial port at the head of their bay. Not later, at the permit-fighting stage with lawyers for all sides running amuck, but now. Before the island rezoning plan is approved by the legislature.

That's what John Muir would do. Bring it to the people.

Look at the case of Plum Creek and its Moosehead plan. LURC is running a highly transparent zoning process, heavy on public involvement, with hearings, exhibits, testimony. Cross-examination. All on a rezoning plan. Like MDOT's for Sears Island.

So why does Sierra Club find MDOT's small group consensus process acceptable? It is undemocratic and exclusive, not inclusive. Beyond Stockton Springs and Searsport, a dozen other Penobscot Bay towns will be affected by the operation of a container port at the head of Penobscot Bay. (Four more towns if vessels use the eastern passage up and downbay, rather than the western.) Have these towns' people been apprized of the port planning process?
Been consulted? NO.

Worst of all MDOT's consensus players have actively sought to evade opportunities for environmental review of their rezoning plan by the public and the agencies with a claim tp managing some natural resource on Sears Island, rather than welcome them as adding to the Committee's understanding of the island.

The disinclination of Conservation Law Foundation and by Natural Resources Council of Maine, two giants of Maine Conservation, to join in Maine DOTs consensus process for Sears Island should be telling Sierra Club something.

Maine Sierra Club's Conservation chair Ken Cline needs to get beyond hurling ad hominem thunderbolts at critics of his group's actions within the JUPC consensus process. Broaden that consensus circle, Ken. Encompass all of Penobscot Bay in the picture before the decision goes before the legislature this December.

To paraphrase John Donne:

No island is an island, entire of itself; every island is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

Sears Island Port? What are we thinking? - editorial

Excerpted from the editorial: Ripping up rails a waste
by Jeff Orchard BDN Friday, May 16, 2008

"The state of Maine has invested millions in developing a shipping terminal in Eastport, and the only access to it by land is over a single two-lane road, which sits right beside a rail bed that was ripped up years ago. Imagine the increase in products that could be shipped from Eastport if sufficient quantities of goods could be economically transported to the ocean terminal. Instead, the state wants to invest millions more in opening a new cargo terminal at Sears Island. What the heck are we thinking?"

Community lobster meeting May 20th Rockland City Hall

Maine DMR will host a community lobster meeting at 6pm May 20th at Rockland City Hall Council Chambers.

Find out what the hot topics are for our bay's important lobster industry. This will be an open discussion about all facets of lobstering: whale rules, artificial and natural bait, lobster health, fuel costs, number of traps in the water etc. Tell DMR how it is. Open to all. More info

Sears Island: Why EPA said NO to a port back in the 90s

And why NO is still the right answer. Nothing has changed since then...

On September 29, 1995, John Devillars of US EPA New England wrote to the Federal Highway Administration and to the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers about the proposed Sears Island cargo port. Below is the introduction, then the "environmental impacts" section of his letter. (Full letter.)

Dear Mr. Lariviere and Colonel Bradbury:

I am pleased to provide the Environmental Protection Agency's comments on the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the Maine Department of Transportation's proposal to construct a marine dry cargo terminal on Sears Island in Penobscot Bay. Our comments are in accordance with our responsibilities under three federal environmental laws -- the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act.

Introduction

The Maine Department of Transportation seeks to build a modern, expandable marine cargo terminal on Sears Island, located at Searsport, Maine in Penobscot Bay. For over a decade, Maine has identified this project as one of great importance to the long term economic vitality of the State. At the same time, there are extremely valuable environmental resources at stake. Because of the severity of the environmental harm it would cause, as discussed below, the project as currently proposed cannot receive a Clean Water Act § 404 permit unless it is modified to reduce the impacts through further avoidance and/or development of a mitigation package which would sufficiently compensate for these impacts.

The challenge that lies ahead is to identify practicable ways to further avoid and compensate for the environmental losses so that Maine Department of Transportation can proceed to construct a cargo terminal in mid-coast Maine in an environmentally acceptable manner.

Environmental Impacts

"In evaluating the adverse impacts of this project, I have carefully reviewed the record before me including extensive analysis conducted by EPA marine and wetland biologists, the professional
staff of both the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service, and numerous informed commenters who have reviewed the DSEIS. Based on that review, I conclude that the impacts on eelgrass, intertidal and subtidal habitat, clamflats, forested wetlands, vernal pools, and streams associated with the Sears Island cargo facility, as currently proposed, are environmentally objectionable, and would cause significant degradation to the aquatic environment.

"This judgment is unequivocally endorsed by both the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

"A. Sears Island Alternatives
"The substantial impacts to both marine and freshwater habitats associated with the twelve Sears Island alternatives portrayed in the DSEIS would cause significant degradation to waters of the United States in violation of Section 230.10(c) of the 404(b)(1) guidelines and may result in substantial and unacceptable adverse impacts to aquatic resources of national importance.

The most environmentally damaging impacts associated with the twelve alternatives identified for analysis by MDOT are:

"* Permanent loss of a minimum of 13 acres of highly productive eelgrass beds, and the reduced productivity of up to an additional 80 to 250 acres of eelgrass. Eelgrass loss of this magnitude is unprecedented in New England. To our knowledge, no projects have ever been permitted that have approached this amount of destruction and degradation to submerged aquatic vegetation.

"* Permanent destruction of roughly 16 acres of intertidal habitat. These areas provide habitat for commercially and recreationally important species, including soft-shell clams, mussels, Atlantic salmon, menhaden, winter flounder, and other finfish species. The environmental values of this marine habitat has been recognized by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Moreover, the State of Maine has classified this area as habitat of regional significance to coastal wildlife, and MDOT's own consultant has documented the extremely high productivity of these marine habitats.

"* Fill or pilings placed in a minimum of 12 acres of subtidal habitat. These subtidal areas provide habitat for lobsters, crabs, sea urchins, numerous finfish species, and grey and harbor seals. An additional 34 to 46 acres of subtidal area would be dredged, resulting in a loss of foraging habitat and food resources for lobsters, crabs, sea urchins, grey and harbor seals, menhaden, Atlantic silversides, and other migratory finfish.

"* Outright destruction and total loss of functions of at least 17 acres of freshwater wetlands, up to four vernal pools and almost two-thirds of a mile of stream. Extensive indirect effects would render many of the adjacent wetlands on Sears Island less suitable or uninhabitable by wildlife. These direct and indirect effects would irreparably alter the integrity of this high quality, undisturbed ecosystem. If permitted as proposed, the impacts to freshwater wetlands and waters would be one of the most damaging to wildlife habitat in Maine in the past decade.

"In addition, the proximity of extremely valuable freshwater wetlands, vernal pools, mudflats, saltmarshes, eelgrass beds, and intertidal areas found on Sears Island is unusual. The juxtaposition of these valuable habitats results in a high biodiversity of wildlife species utilizing the island: more than three quarters of all wetland 'dependent mammal species and wetland dependent bird species occurring in this region of Maine have been verified on Sears Island. Construction of the project as proposed would result in substantial loss of ecological diversity, productivity, and stability for these species, and would adversely affect habitat for numerous species considered imperiled by the State, including the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon.

"EPA believes that the marine impacts are by themselves significant. The Sears Island marine habitats are exceptionally diverse, productive, and valuable to the fisheries resources of both Penobscot Bay and Penobscot River. As noted above, EPA is unaware of any other projects in New England with marine impacts as severe as the Sears Island proposal. The freshwater impacts, while not unprecedented, are unusually severe. No project in our experience would cause the combined harm to valuable marine and freshwater resources that would result from the Sears Island project as currently proposed.

"Given this, the project should not be permitted on Sears Island unless it is modified to reduce these impacts through further avoidance and/or development of a practicable mitigation package which would sufficiently compensate for these impacts."

End of excerpt

Georges Bank's Plankton Bloom failed last fall, NOAA says.

No Fall '07 Bloom Could Mean Fewer Haddock

Satellites in space and Research buoys in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank continuously monitor the rise and fall of the regions' plankton blooms, the essential food and waste processors for the larval fishes and invertebrates that hatch in these waters.

Last fall, however, the plankton bloom failed to develop on Georges Bank.

The table was bare, at one of the region’s most productive marine habitats.

NOAA thinks its going to reduce the amount of haddock in the area a couple years from now, according to its
spring 2008 ecosystem advisory for the northeast U.S. Continental Shelf.

NOAA also found its long term trends (1854-2007) in SST show that the NE Shelf Ecosystem is warming, especially in the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank and Southern New England subregions.

The advisories are issued twice yearly, in the spring and fall, by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Office of Marine Ecosystem Studies (OMES). The Spring 2008 Ecosystem Advisory reports conditions from the fall of 2007.

Penobscot Bay Podcasts

Check out The Penobscot Bay Podcast

Click here to get your own player.

Penobscot Bay lobsterboats, yachts, now under Homeland Security surveillance

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recently announced a new Small Vessel Security Strategy

It may soon be implemented in Belfast. What about Rockland? (See photo) Stonington? Vinalhaven?

The Homelander's press release states that small vessels ( those under 300 tons, like lobster boats, sailboats and yachts)

"... are readily vulnerable to potential exploitation by terrorist, smugglers of weapons of mass destruction, narcotics, aliens, and other contraband, and other criminals."

Citing the hapless USS Cole, the Homies warn:
"Small vessels have also been successfully employed overseas by terrorists to deliver Waterborne Improvised Explosive Devices." (WIEDs) pronounced "weeds"

Specifically: "commercial fishing vessels, recreational boats and yachts, towing vessels, uninspected passenger vessels, or any other small commercial vessels involved in foreign or U.S. voyages" fall under the new surveillance program according to the agency.

Sears Island - Highway Administration considers breaching causeway

One of the many interesting documents from a Freedom of Information Act request to the Federal Highway Administration is an email from Kevin Moody FHWA Environmental Specialist, to Mark Hasselmann, FHWA's Right of Way and Environment Program Manager, Brian Smith, FHWA Environmental Biology/Water Quality Specialist, Brian Yanchik, FHWA NEPA specialist, and Paul Garrett, FHWA Wetland Assessment specialist. And the response by boss Hasselman.

>-----------------------------------------
>From: Moody, Kevin
>Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 1:42 PM
> To: Hasselmann, Mark, Smith, Brian; Yanchik, Brian; Garrett, Paul
>Subject: RE: Sears Island Planning
>
>My recommendation is that ME DOT remove the causeway and dedicate the mainland >shoreline to preservation. Go for the momma of all credits with no future liabilities.
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>From: Hasselmann, Mark

>Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 2:02 PM
>To: Moody, Kevin

>Great idea. exactly what this latest group started with - the no build.

>----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Trawl survey coming to bay, May 19-23rd.

Lobstermen take note:
The Maine trawl survey will be steaming into Penobscot Bay May 19th for 5 days of towing. Click on dates for charts of planned trawl locations (large gif files)


May 19th – E of Monhegan to Metinic
May 20th – Rockland to Upper Penobscot Bay
May 21st – E of Monhegan to 11 Mile Ridge
May 22nd – E of Matinicus Rock to Seal Is.
May 23rd – Cape Rosier and E Penobscot Bay
All dates are tentative; storms or other issues may cause delays.

During those dates, you may contact the boat crew on either channel 16 or 13. The crew cell phone is 207-557-5276.

There's a lot of concern over the impacts of the trawl survey on lobsters, especially during shedder season.The state's own stats show that up to 12 percent of lobsters caught in a trawl are fatally injured by the capture method. A similar percent lose at least one claw or leg.

The above does not include any crushed by the trawl doors or delimbed by the groundwire, as they remain on the bottom.

A few years ago lobstermen in the waters off Corea drove the fall trawl survey away

Sea kayaker licensing on the horizon

A national association of state "boating law administrators" - including Maine Marine Patrol Major John Fetterman - is calling for laws making boater safety courses mandatory for owners of sea kayaks. Reason: increase in fatal accidents. What one media blogger thinks

Major John Fetterman, of Maine Marine Patrol told USA today: "Paddling represents our greatest risk in the recreational boating community".
He supports legislation to require kayakers to take courses that teach them the basics of water safety.

Twenty-seven people died kayaking in 2006, the most recent year for which numbers are available, USA Today says.

(It is unknown if any fatalities were marine mammal related, but a don't feed the walruses" regulation looks smart.)

Penobscot Bay history: chicken pollution in 1967

In 1967, the chicken industry was thriving in Waldo County. Unfortunately the way that the big chicken processing plant in Belfast at the time, Penobscot Poultry, Inc, dealt with the gurry and feathers from up to 200,000 birds a day that was their plants' waste products, was to dump it into the bay.

Read an impassioned statement by lobsterman/ scalloper/seafood dealer Frederick P. Young about the effect of that pollution on his livelihood. He was speaking on April 20, 1967, at a public hearing called by the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration at the Belfast High School to examine this chicken plant pollution issue.

It is people like Young who stand up for their natural resources that make a difference

Photo: Cedric N. Chatterley

Sears Island: Natural Areas Program says 'Nothing special here, JUPC, party on!'.

Maine Natural Areas Program has produced an important if misleading report on Sears Island's marine and upland wildilfe and habitats for the Joint Use Planing Committee. Read it here: BayBlog's html version __ MNAP's pdf version

The Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee appears to have accepted it as proof that their proposed container port and recreational facilities would have little if any impact on the island's upland, intertidal and marine resources.

Thus satisfied, the Committee has moved on to quibbling over the details: dimensions of their planned rail yards, how many education center buildings, how many acres of port pavement, the nature of the "wetland mitigation bank" value that the island's natural areas would have when MDOT markets the island to would-be port developer.

But, not so fast there. Let's examine this report, written by Lisa St. Hilaire of the Maine Natural Areas Program that purports to show that JUPC's development plans would have no environmental impacts.
It begins with a general description of Sears Island including the island's geology, soils, and history of land use (did you know the Penobscot Indians of today translate the name Wasumkeag quite differently from their ancestors?); summarizes the island's marine fisheries and its upland wildlife; ponders what rare animals and plants might be there - and what common? Then a look at the bigger picture of what natural communities of these plants and animals exist on and around the island, and finally, consideration of the island's wetlands, fresh and salt.

St. Hilaire then crunches the above data and predicts the port and a recreation center's impacts. Her prediction?

"Effects on regional biological diversity due to the cargo terminal project are expected to be minimal because the species and communities on Sears Island are common for the Penobscot Bay area."

But precisely how does a container port that would be bigger in size and service bigger ships than Angus King's '90s cargoport, have minimal to no impacts, when King's plan was shot down for threatening far less harm to marine, intertidal and upland wild resources than a Port Baldacci would have?

As any honest ecologist will say, some species and communities are individually common, but there is nothing like the combination of them all in one location on the Maine coast . EPA tore Maine DIFW a new one in a 1995 letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, then Maine DMR too , after DMR and DIF&W made feeble claims of 'nothing but common Maine species there' back then, at King Angus' bidding.

Nor are estuarine nursery waters along an island at the head of Maine's biggest bay, that nourishes and replenishes the bay's reviving nearshore schools of groundfish a "common" phenomenon...They are at the far end of the Penobscot River plumeentering the bay that collects larvae from the island nurseries and shunts like a conveyor belt down the west side of the bay, to disperse in the fertile waters lying between the Saint George peninsula, Monhegan and Matinicus Island. An area that in addition to cod and haddock, hosts New England's largest lobster populations.

By not looking at Sears Island's important ecological role in the ecology of Penobscot Bay, Lisa St. Hilaire has failed to see the forest for the trees. JUPC-ites have been given false assurance that their proposal for a container port will be benign with only minor localized impacts, when it most assuredly will not.

Why lobster drag fisheries are a bad idea.

When the introduction of fossil-fueled fishing boats made mobile bottom trawling of the Gulf of Maine possible in the  late 1860s, the US Fish Commission's first report to Congress  in 1872 warned against allowing "this evil" to be used here. (see page XXXIII) The state of Maine shortly thereafter had to ban lobstering with dragger gear in her waters.

The ban still holds in Maine waters and with good reason. Check out some of these sequential images of two dragger hauls of lobster made near the mouth of Penobscot Bay a few years ago graphically illustrating how this method of fishing - still legal in Massachusetts and Federal waters - can cause easy overharvesting of these crustaceans. The catches were made lawfully as part of the twice-annual Maine/New Hampshire trawl survey

The survey is controversial among lobstermen who once drove the survey vessel off their fishing grounds off downeast Maine.

Fishermen's Voice photo

Big issue: about 12 percent of lobsters captured by dragger gear, then bounced along the rocky seafloor in the cod end, claws and spines puncturing each others bellies and faces, breaking each others legs, then dumped on board, die from their injuries.

Others, particularly young and new shell (newly moulted) lobsters, are crushed by the cables and trawl doors scraping the bottom while the gaping bag between then flips aboard those .

There are also culls (non-lethal claw amputations) among young and moulting lobsters caught up by draggers in their nets.

From the stand point of lobstermen, regulators, environmentalists and many researchers, dragging for lobsters is unacceptably damaging to the stocks.

It also captures older broodstock lobsters that cannot fit into traps, removing a large portion of that important age group from the lobster community.

DMR's response to public release of videotapes documenting the research trawl expeditions was to stop taking them, beginning in2002 -- a dreadful loss to scientific posterity and a stupid reaction to the good natured public jokery about some of the antics on the tapes by a PPH columnist who viewed a copy.

Public interest anger by Penobscot Bay Watch about censoring the tapes in late September 2001 was met with silence, then a Coop-Extension mediation meeting/encounter session with John Sowles, state Marine Ecologist, followed by more silence. Perhaps these people of the future will see things in these hours and hours of research trawl catch videos that we in our primitive early 21st century ignorance cannot.

Fluttering herring and flatfish accent the eruptions of startled lobsters from the net.

They are often joined by muscular young cod and hoary old barnacled lobster behemoths doing pratfalls down the squirming mass of their wild neighbors.

Sturgeon, sponges, the whole panoply of marine life along our shores is laid before the eye in undignified dishabille.

All are telling us something. We should be paying close attention. Not censoring the survey videos to protect an occasional epithet (horrors!) from one of the fishermen and scientists carrying out the elaborate trawl survey in all weathers.

It you haven't please re-start videorecording your trawl survey catches, Maine DMR!

Sears Island: Lines in the sand.

Someone upset with the Sierra Club's position on Sears Island made his or her own position clear while visiting Wassumkeag. The writing says " Sierra Club Betrays Sears Island"

'90s Sears Island activists up in arms over JUPC "deal"

A groundswell of concern is becoming a wave of anger as activists and others who stopped Angus King's 1990's Sears Island port plan and Governor Baldacci's 2004 LNG port plan learn the details of the deal that conservationists on the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee have struck with the shipping industry and Maine Department of Transportation.

The Sierra Club in particular has drawn fire for being signatory to the agreement, which has yet to be ratified by an increasingly suspicious Maine Legislature.

The Club was instrumental in preventing a port from appearing on Sears Island in the 1980s and 1990s, and again in 2005.

Now? Sierra Club's present position (in an email from Conservation Chair Ken Cline to a port critic) is

"We have ensured that 2/3 of it will be protected for ever, but we need all the help we can get to protect the remaining part."

But Ken...Didn't Sierra Club read the fine print before signing the MaineDOT agreement? The agency has clearly stated over and over that protection of two thirds of THEIR island - remember MDOT is on the deed as agency in control of Sears Island - is contingent on the other third of the island becoming a cargo port. No port = no park. Its as simple as that.

What can we non-signatories to the deal do that doesn't bring the whole deal tumbling down? Would it better to bring it down?

Time to hit the beach! Unconditional surrender by Maine DOT! We'll accept no less.

Outta the way, Sierra Club!

Sears Island: Legislature says - Fix JUPC plan and get back to us in December

Evidently the Maine Legislature is not terribly enthused by the output so far of the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee.

According to the final few paragraphs in the latest Sears Island article by Waldo County Citizen reporter Tanya Mitchell, about the April 11 meeting of the committee in Searsport, there is...

"some division within the Transportation Committee about whether to support the process."

"Some of the representatives had misgivings about what the ultimate success was going to be here" Duane Scott, JUPC administrator for MDOT is quoted as saying. Scott observed that Transportation Commissioner Cole's report to the Maine Legislature's Transportation Committee on the JUPC's progress "went well, despite interruptions".

'Interruptions?' Duane's not referring to citizen hecklers in the audience. Rather the legislators were interrupting Cole's delivery.

MDOT's Scott fretted, according to reporter Tanya Mitchell, that "Some were caught up in all the history that has brought us up to this point in time."

And what a history that is.

At least, according to Mitchell, MDOT's Duane Scott appears to believe the committee members were "supportive of what we have accomplished up to now."

Ah but now the bottom may fall out of the plan. What about the impact of inevitable eelgrass loss and its well-predicted negative effect on lower Penobscot Bay fin and shellfisheries, that the National Marine Fisheries Service objected to 13 years ago? The Joint Use Planning Committee has yet to discuss the impacts to marine resources that should have played a role in the committee's delineation of a potential port zone right from the start two years ago.

That it hasn't bodes ill for meeting the legislature's December '08 deadline

Plastic pollution-a problem at the marine microbe level

Plastic pollution is one of the tragedies of modern technology. Example: on the macro scale, for example, untold millions of plastic cigarette lighters float in our rivers, lakes and seas.

Swallowed by seabirds, fish and and marine mammals, they may stay there, indigestible. Once the host has expired and decayed, the little ovoid cylinders pop loose and return to the surface, tempting yet another fish, bird or mammal to continue the ugly cycle until...? Plastic is well nigh indestructible, in biologic time.

Going from nature's macrocosm to her microcosm, a new study done for KIMO, a consortium of European coastal towns and associations focusing on marine pollution, found that microplastic particles are being found in in great number in Swedish and other coastal waters. Small enough to be eaten by larval fish and shellfish, as well as by protozoa and other marine microanimals. With...similar results?

While this problem has been known for the past few years, the new study found that the amount in seawater is actually up to a thousand times more than had been understood. The new study used a plankton net with a finer mesh than others had, and lo and behold, many more plastic particles. Small enough to be devoured by marine microorganisms.

Please read the KIMO report, (link below) if you've time. It's an 11 page pdf file. Well worth the reading and viewing. You'll gain a understanding of the nasty little plastic strands and blobs that we as a species release into the world's waters.

Small plastic particles in Coastal Swedish waters. (11 page pdf file)
By Dr. Fredrik Norén, marine consultant, N-Research www.n-research.se
http://www.penbay.org/bm/plastic_swedish_waters.pdf

About the marine protozoa who are ingesting microplastic

The KIMO report notes the sad physics of micro-plastic as pollution accumulators:

"Given the fact that organic pollutants accumulate on the plastic particles (Mato et al. 2001), this amount of small particles is extraordinarily serious since the area/volume quota of the particles increases with smaller particle volume (a large amount of small plastic particles may be a larger vector of organic pollutants than fewer large ones)."

Plastic microparticles attract pollutants onto their surfaces. Then the little one celled animals ingest them; themselves being consumed; the pollutant biomagnified or concentrated each strand higher of the food web. So consider polluted microbes, bioaccumulating whatever pollution adhere to the plastic microparticles they innocently ingest.

Isn't it time we began caring for our micro-ecosystems? The one-celled are the most abundant living organisms on earth, after all.

Image: Science Daily

Sears Island: don't worry, be happy.

Here's the scoop from the Soup's Tanya Mitchell

Read her article "Coast Guard: No 'show stoppers' in Sears Island joint use."

The Coasties say there may be boat exclusion zones (presumably kayak exclusions zones too)

They say that only vehicles entering the island will be subject to search. Pedestrians won't. Given enough surveillance cameras, they say, even a fence between the port zone and natural areas won't be necessary. .Big brother, it seems, will be watching