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Groundline Exchange Scheduled For Maine
Early British nautical charts labeled Port Clyde “Herring Gut.” In the 1870’s, Burnham and Morrill started a lobster cannery at Teel Cove in Port Clyde. When the regulation on “shorts” put an end to the profitability of canned lobster, the company canned clams, mussels and sardines. After a war-time stint as a WPA funded boatyard, the factory resumed its former role as a cannery site under changing ownership. When the Port Clyde Sardine Factory burned in September of 1970, 150 workers lost their jobs. Including fishermen, over 1,000 local incomes were affected by the 1970 fire. Port Clyde has always been a fishing town, and there’s a school serving their district that respects that tradition with the goal of preserving it. Herring Gut Learning Center offers a marine science program serving SAD 50. This year, their alternative approach helped 35 middle and high school students meet science credit requirements and learn solid foundation skills with the goal of future employment in the fishing industry. Students work in an open-air classroom, learning about aquaculture, aquaponics, sustainable fisheries management and business through work that puts academic learning into a practical framework. It’s a “fish or cut bait” curriculum, incorporating responsibility into lesson plans. Rockland High School students built the Center’s aquaponic greenhouse, which produces basil fed from nutrients produced by fish raised in the classroom’s sustainable system. If a fish dies, kids are accountable for determining why by performing necropsies and water quality tests to measure levels of dissolved oxygen and PH. After diagnosing a problem, corrections are made to the system preventing further loss of stock. While planning to expand their product line, students sell the basil they produce in this greenhouse to local restaurants. The success of this small business (run by Rockland’s Alternative High School) depends upon the careful monitoring of the aquaponic greenhouse. Warren Middle School raised rainbow trout at the Center’s freshwater hatchery and released them Alien’s Island. Camden’s Zenith School (SAD 28) performed site evaluations in Appleton where they released trout they raised. Students raise and monitor oysters and lobsters and handle maintenance of the tanks and systems that support fish and plant stock. They attend programs at Herring Gut twice a week, in addition to regular school. Students are carefully screened. Due to its small campus and staff, there are limitations on the number of kids the Center can accommodate. Outreach programs from Herring Gut visit classrooms with presentations that promote interest in the marine sciences. Land for Maine’s Future, the Working Waterfront Bill and other legislation written to benefit the next generation, will need workers in the fisheries, agricultural, and waterfront trades in order to succeed in its goal of protecting Maine’s fishing, farming and waterfront industries.
Masterson worked alongside Herring Gut’s Director Jeff Chase, when the Learning Center was established in 1999 with the goal to develop programs for alternative education students from the St. George District. Their first group of students from the St. George School raised oysters. Chase had students elect peers to serve as directors for a mock aquaculture business to incorporate real-life skills into the program. Students worked from a budget, elected a president, secretary, treasurer and marketing director. The program has evolved, and now students raise clams, oysters and hydroponic basil for sale to local restaurants. Proceeds are re-invested in the school to buy plant stock, fish food and water monitoring chemicals. Taking the business to a level where production led to actual sales of shellfish and basil became possible for Herring Gut in 2002, when its new building opened. The 34,000 square foot addition houses two new classrooms, offices, a greenhouse and wet lab that allows the Center more work space. Outreach programs and summer classes are currently offered, while training seminars for adults and a re-certification course for teachers are in the planning stages. Herring Gut is off Factory Road, which swings behind the offices to Monhegan Boat Line, run by Captain Jim Barstow. Hailing “from a long line of educators,” Jim and his sister Barbara attended the Monhegan School, which his family helped establish. Barbara likes a one-room schoolhouse approach. “Put a kid in a chair, he’s not going to learn anything. Interacting with other kids—within a curriculum—works; they teach each other. The clam seeding they’re doing [at Herring Gut] - it’s great.” She calls purse seining “smart fishing” because of the minimal disturbance of the fishing bottom, and she remembers the herring fishermen in Port Clyde. “They got together and all agreed NOT to go during one spawning season. Nobody told them not to, they just did this themselves. There wasn’t a problem till some guy at a desk decided, ‘Okay, don’t fish during such and such dates, and it just didn’t work out after that. Fish don’t go by a calendar,” she said. That observation is a good example of what former DMR commissioner Robin Alden meant when she said, “Regulation needs to come from the people.” Training in marine science and teaching ways to earn a sustainable income from the water is a good investment for coastal towns. Mike Dasatt from Belfast said, “It’s hard to find kids who want to go out on the boats down here, though there are off-shoots to the industry other than just being on the water.” He likes the idea of a school that’ll get kids interested in the industry. |
