By Kathleen Lignell Ellis, Maine/New Hampshire Sea Grant

In the late 1970s, I spent nearly three years living in a Down East fishing village at the edge of America. Last August, I spent three days haunting the abandoned waterfront streets and alleyways of Lubec and nearby Eastport, Maine. I was searching for part of my past— actually, both mine and America’s. For it was here, at the northeastern edge of the United States, that our first fishing industry got under way back in the 1600s. And it was to this place—as part of the "back to the land" movement—that I had in-migrated 3,600 miles from San Francisco Bay to Passamaquoddy Bay, where for centuries millions of tiny herring have found their way into the narrows as I had—to grow and flourish and move on.

Before I moved to Maine, a family friend, Ryerson Johnson (known as Johnny), told me stories about the Lubec waterfront where he had spent his boyhood summers in the early part of the century. In 200 Years of Lubec History 1776-1976, Johnny wrote about his Uncle Baker Sumner as "somewhat involved in the sardine business [juvenile herring are called sardines when preserved as food], and . . . owner and part owner of some Lubec vessels. I can remember as a very small child sitting with him high in the cupola which was then on top of our house, and looking through a long brass telescope to the ocean beyond the Carrying Place to see his ships come in."

Johnny also recalled the rows and rows of sardine carriers and Boston steamships in port, so many that he and the other young fellows could jump from boat to boat all the way from Lubec to Eastport. Or so he said. He also said that he saw Houdini wrap chains around his chest and legs, be lowered off a barge into the swift and frigid Lubec narrows, and moments later splash back up to the surface, free of his shackles.

Johnny may have stretched his stories some, but there’s no doubting that the narrows and coves around Lubec and neighboring Eastport across the bay were once alive with thrashing silver fish. Year after year between June and September, the gigantic schools of herring pushed their surfeit of smaller fish into the narrows dividing Lubec from Campobello Island in Canada and into the many weirs, or capture enclosures, that dotted the sheltered coves along the coastline.

Today, local fishermen spot fewer and fewer herring migrating Down East, although the fishery hangs on, barely, waiting for the stocks to rebound from decades of overfishing. It’s no surprise, then, that the region’s fishery managers and many in the industry have been fighting to prevent "outside" efforts by large Dutch and American factory ships to harvest Atlantic herring.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, herring stocks off Georges Bank and in the Gulf of Maine—which stretches from the Maine-New Brunswick border to south of Cape Cod—began to shrink from excessive harvesting by foreign fleets using modern factory trawlers and electronic fish-finding equipment. In 1996, however, federal fisheries scientists reported that the Georges Bank stock not only had recovered but also was at a record high.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is concerned that the Gulf of Maine—where 80 to 90 percent of the herring is currently harvested—may already be at or above long-term sustainable harvest levels.

According to the Maine Department of Marine Resources, Gulf of Maine herring stocks have increased, but not nearly as dramatically as the Georges Bank stock. In 1996, Gulf of Maine herring landings totaled 118,000 tons, compared with a low catch of 76,000 tons in 1994 and a high of 469,000 tons in 1968.

In the midst of the herring stock collapse in the mid-1970s, Sea Grant researchers at the University of Maine Migratory Fish Research Institute were already trying to distinguish between herring populations in the northwest Atlantic. At that time, two spawning concentrations were recognized within U.S. territorial waters: one in the Gulf of Maine, the other on Georges Bank.

The university researchers suggested that when these two populations mix during spawning, all the herring belong to one large population, and overfishing in one area can result in abundance fluctuations over a period of time.

Irving Kornfield and Bruce Sidell, University of Maine zoolology professors, wanted to find out how much inter-spawning occurred between different concentrations of herring during migration in the northwest Atlantic. If individual herring do return unerringly to their home turf to spawn, then an abnormally low catch of young herring during migration could be identified as a problem peculiar to just one spawning aggregation.

Using a biochemical approach, Kornfield and Sidell collected tissue samples of juvenile and spawning adult herring from a number of Gulf of Maine locations. Statistical analysis of these samples revealed three previously unknown biochemical "markers" by which to trace the herring’s genealogy.

The analysis of genetic variation revealed that spring-spawning herring are genetically different from fall spawners. These two groups thus possess isolated gene pools that can respond independently to ecological variation or fishing pressure. However, the magnitude of differentiation between these groups is small and probably of recent origin. Thus, the evidence from this research is not consistent with the existence of more than a single population of fall-spawning herring in the Gulf of Maine.

In the early 1980s, exploratory surveys on larval herring conducted by the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) indicated that "both eastern and central Maine spawning units have been producing larvae at a relatively low level since 1978, and the central Maine spawning stock may well be in difficulty." (Commercial Fisheries News, February 1984)

Last summer, DMR Commissioner Robin Alden expressed concern that although the offshore stocks appear abundant, the Gulf of Maine schools still appear thin, and no one knows how much fishing is too much.

Alden, along with other members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, voted in July 1997 that East Coast states should enforce a ban against herring trawlers larger than 165 feet until more is known about the fish and a management plan can be finished.

In late August, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to prevent the overharvesting of Atlantic herring and mackerel by large factory ships. The legislation calls for a population assessment study, requires development of a management plan to guard against depletion of the two species, and imposes a moratorium on large fishing vessels until the study is completed.

But for people in the Cobscook/Passamaquoddy Bay area the moratorium and the population study may be too little, too late. Since the early 1980s, aquaculture pioneers and enterprising locals has been betting their survival as a fishing center on salmon farming as the answer to the dwindling herring runs.

This August, as I dangle my feet over the brand-new, full-service $1.65 million marina on the Lubec waterfront, I look out across Cobscook Bay at men in bright-orange slickers circling the rims of salmon aquaculture net pens. It’s feeding time on the bay, and as the men toss pellets of fishmeal into the pens the salmon leap up as if their lives depend on how high they can rise out of the water.

The farm-raised salmon are long and slender and silvery, and like the herring, they are native to the northwestern Atlantic. But these cultured salmon must be reared in a freshwater hatchery for about one and a half years so they can go through a physiological change known as smoltification. This makes the anadromous fish—which are born in fresh water in the wild—ready for life in the sea. As smolts, they are then transferred to the ocean, where they spend the next two to three years in net pens until they are large enough to go to market.

While the Down East herring industry has nosedived, salmon aquaculture has doubled in volume during the last five years. In fact, farmed salmon has become a $56 million industry, second only to lobster as Maine’s most valuable marine product.

But those numbers tell only part of the story. Washington County—the heart of salmon aquaculture in the Northeast—continues to endure the state’s highest rate of unemployment: 13 percent in February 1997.

So far, operating the salmon farms has created relatively few jobs in the region, but processing—both salmon and sardines—still supports many local families. Currently, Lubec maintains two fish processing plants with approximately 200 workers; 57 fishing boats employing 100 to 125 fishermen; and three major finfish farming facilities with another 30 employees. The new marina is also expected to provide additional marine-related businesses.

Although it’s taken years for local residents to accept the net pens and seaweed operations in the bay, people have begun to realize that aquaculture is a wave of the future and an indication of hopeful change. The questions raised boil down to, "How can people live here and continue to make an honorable living? Are we going to replace fishing with tourism? Will we stick with industry that’s based on marine industries, or will we become a quaint fishing village?"

But the tourists are already here—they turn off the beaten path on Route 1 in Whiting to drive down Route 189 and cross the bridge to Campobello Island to visit Franklin Roosevelt’s 36-room "cottage" and see where he caught polio in the icy waters of Passamaquoddy Bay. And if they’re lucky, when they’re standing in Roosevelt’s back yard, they’ll see a whale or two that have followed the schools of herring into the bay.

* * * * * *

As I walk back from the new marina into town, I can’t help notice that things haven’t changed much on Water Street since I lived here in the late 1970s. Tippy’s Seafood Restaurant has been boarded up for years, and the shells of galleries and banks and grocery shops are shut up tight. It’s four in the afternoon and the street is nearly abandoned except for a low-rider hot-footing it down the street. He leaves a cloud of black smoke and an echo in his wake.

I shake off the dust and keep walking, stop briefly at the border station, and then cross halfway over the Roosevelt International Bridge. To my right is Canada, and on the left, America. A row of old smokehouses and sardine factories lines the waterfront. Each structure looks like it might tumble into the narrows at any moment—all but one, where a man on a forklift is moving boxes of farm-raised salmon. He stops and looks up at me, but at this distance I can’t make out the expression on his face. I wave, half expecting him to call out my name in recognition, but he doesn’t know me. To him, I am only one of the hordes of tourists from away who pass over the bridge to visit "the Roosevelt house."

For me, this is both the end of the world and a beginning. This is the jumping off place, the historic spawning ground for millions of herring to leave their "fingerprint" on their home turf, if only momentarily, before setting off on their own migrations.

As part of the "back to the land" movement, I came here first of all for the land and the chance to live in a small community. But looking back, I now see that I came for a land close to water at the edge of the country. When I headed across the country nearly 20 years ago, my move was influenced by the youthful restlessness and idealism of the times, a sense of adventure, and an aversion to the pollution and growing violence of the city. More important, it was due to the longing for homestead and the craving to be attached to one location on the earth. But while I’ve been away from "home" for 20 years, I’ve also been in place, at home away from home.

Fall is approaching. I feel it in the air, notice the maples already beginning to turn color. It’s time to move off into deeper water before passing out of the channel and on down the coast, swept up in the water mass and moving into nearshore waters, heading westward.

The Maine sardine business was brought into being by the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. A substantial quantity of French sardines and other fish products was brought into the United States by New York importers, one of whom was Wolff & Reessing. These importers, due to the war, had great difficulty getting supplies, and then only at highly increased costs.

The importers had general knowledge of the existence of a small fish industry in the Eastport-Lubec area, which used the fish to make smoked herring....Knowing of this fish supply, Julius Wolff came to Eastport to see the situation at first hand. He was so impressed by the volume and quality of the fish supply that he determined to try canning them.

This resulted in the establishment in 1875 of the Eagle Preserved Fish Company at Eastport. In that first year, 60,000 cans (not cases) were packed and sold. ...[O]ther New York importers became interested, so that by 1880 there were 18 factories operating, mostly in Eastport—with only one factory in Lubec. From 1881 to 1898, 23 sardine factories started up in Lubec.

During the period from 1940 to 1950, there were many new factories built, there being a grand total of 48 in the state, with seven in Lubec. The maximum pack in the history of the business occurred in 1950: 3,806,000 cases.

From this peak in 1950, it has been straight downhill. As to why this occurred, there are two outstanding reasons. One, the industry was overbuilt in the war years. Secondly, the industry had had tariff protection from its earliest days against the lower wages of foreign competition. By 1975, the plants in the state had dwindled from 48 to 15.

In 1976 there are two operating factories in Lubec.

—Mose Pike

Excerpted from 200 Years of Lubec History 1776-1976, ed. Ryerson Johnson (Copyright by Ryerson and Lois Johnson and the Lubec Historical Society, 1976). Reprinted by permission.

IN THE SARDINE FACTORY

There can be no other labor
like the slitting of dead fish into fillets,
no scissors so sharp
they miss and cut off chunks
of fingers and sometimes
missing altogether, you
gash your partner at the bloody table,
rinsing pieces of human flesh
with scales and fins.

—Kathleen Lignell Ellis

Excerpted from Maine Speaks: An Anthology of Maine Literature, 1989, published by Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Reprinted by permission.