Places Volume 2

Conservation
MAINE
Working
Maine
Waterfronts
How the Land for Maine’s Future program is preserving
ocean access in the state’s traditional fishing villages.
Maine is famous for its beautiful
shorelines and the bounty of seafood
caught offshore in the Gulf of Maine, one
of the most productive fisheries in the
world. One of my jobs this past summer
was to document several working
waterfronts in Maine where commercial
fishing operations have existed for
decades (or centuries), but are now
threatened by rising real estate values. For
more than ten years, the state of Maine’s
Land for Maine’s Future Program (LMF)
14 ECOPHOTOGRAPHY SUMMER 2016
has been giving grants to commercial
and municipal wharves up and down the
coast to help preserve access to the sea
for fishermen and women. As more and
more people buy second homes on the
Maine coast, the value of coastal land has
risen to levels well above the value of the
land if it is used for commercial fishing
operations. LMF grant money helps
narrow that gap in values while insuring
that the land will be used only for fishing
operations in perpetuity.
This gig was a blast. I spent hours at a
time on these wharves (from Harpswell
to Beals Island,) swapping stories with the
men and women working the wharves
and taking in the banter between
boat captains and their crew. I met a
7th generation fisherman, intent on
preserving his small community’s access
to the sea, as well as an eleven year-old
girl who is a fourth generation lobster
fisher (she keeps ten traps in the water,)
who dared me to walk into the bait cooler