Coastal Conversations | WERU 89.9 FM Blue Hill, Maine Local News and Public Affairs Archives

Producer/Host: Catherine Devine Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. This month: In this episode, we shine a spotlight on Acadia National Park’s Schoodic Education Adventure (SEA) program, where learning meets the great outdoors. Join us as National Park Service education coordinator, Kati...

Producer/Host: Catherine Devine Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. This month: What happens to science when the science is done? And how does that inform how our forests are managed in the future? To answer these questions, Catherine Devine from Schoodic Institute sat down with UMaine’s...

Producer/Host: Catherine Devine Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. This month: Acadia is changing, and quickly. While its beauty endures, its forests, lakes and coasts are being altered by people through land uses, pollution, tourism, invasive species, and climate change. In this episode...

Producer/Host: Galen Koch Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. This month: This program features an episode of Island Institute’s podcast, From the Sea Up. We’ll travel to Southwest Harbor, a town of multiple maritime industries on the “quiet side” or Mount Desert Island. Southwest Harbor...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. This month: The January 10 and 13, 2024 storms, along with compounding record high tides, storm surge, and strong southeasterly winds, caused much damage throughout the Maine coast, including the loss of many piers and w...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. This month: High School students on a fishing boat deploying spat collectors, or mesh bags, into the water column to collect baby scallops. Science teachers and their students hauling line onto a work boat to examine the...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. This month: This episode features two distinct stories about Gouldsboro, Maine: STORY 1: Gouldsboro, a working waterfront community at a crossroads Today’s show features the second episode of this year’s From the Sea Up...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. This month: In honor of the holiday season, our show features “Maine holiday seafood celebrations, past and present.” We are excited to talk with three women from coastal Maine who write about food and history, about Mai...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. This month: The town of Eastport, Maine, has weathered many changes in the last decades, transitioning from empty sardine factories to a vibrant multi-use working waterfront positioned to respond and adapt to an uncertai...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. This month: Maine’s coastline has inspired writers and artists for generations. On today’s Coastal Conversations we are thrilled to feature three contemporary Maine writers who each have a special connection with the coa...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. In mid-July 2022, nearly 200 people gathered in Boston for the sixth National Working Waterfront Network conference. Working waterfronts are where people who make their living on the sea can access the water. They includ...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. Today our show is about the Mount Desert Island-based project called a Landscape of Change. Landscape of Change is a collaborative project with the goal of compiling and publishing historical records of natural history o...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. This episode: Most fishermen will tell you that the presence of Atlantic menhaden on the coast of Maine is cyclical. In the last few years, menhaden, or pogies as the small schooling fish are known locally, have returned...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Coastal Conversations: Conversations with people who live, work, and play on the Maine coast, hosted by the University of Maine Sea Grant Program. This episode: Many people in Maine have heard of Atlantic Salmon and Alewives, but do you know about Rainbow Smelt? These migratory sea-run fish may be swimming up your backyard streams right now! And historically, these...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Today, April 22, 2022, is Earth Day! And what better way to celebrate Earth Day than to explore the realm of one of the earth’s most interesting group of species: Seaweed. Seaweed has seen a surge in interest in Maine in the last few years, with a growing number of people paying attention to seaweed – from consumers to nutrition experts, from harvesters to farmers,...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Maine coastal and ocean issues: Rare Steller’s sea-eagle sparks attention and imagination Since late December 2021, a rare Steller’s sea eagle has been repeatedly sighted by hundreds of people on the Maine coast. This raptor is significantly bigger than our own beloved Bald Eagle. Its home range is very far away in coastal Siberia, around the Sea of Okhotsk and the...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Working waterfronts are those spaces along the shoreline that connect land and sea; places that provide critical access for people who make their living on the water. Pressure on working waterfronts is on the rise again here in Maine, due to a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is the increasing real estate market triggered by the global pandemic. We explore...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Happy New Year from our team at Coastal Conversations where we are launching season 8 of our show! For our first show of 2022, we are once again teaming up with The First Coast and the Island Institute to feature the final episode in our series about innovative people in Maine who are sustainably harvesting and growing products from the sea. First up, we’re talking...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel It’s the holidays season here in Maine, where we like to celebrate with stories about sustainable seafood! On this week’s coastal conversations, we are once again teaming up with The First Coast and the Island Institute to feature stories about innovative people in Maine who are sustainably harvesting and growing products from the sea. First up, we are talking abou...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Maine coastal and ocean issues: From the Sea Up #1 With the holiday season upon us, it is time to talk seafood. Fresh, sustainable, Maine seafood that is! For the next three episodes of Coastal Conversations, we are featuring a series of stories produced by The First Coast and the Island Institute. The series, called From the Sea Up, introduces the people and speci...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Maine coastal and ocean issues: Ocean Acidification, how can states and local communities respond? -What is Ocean Acidification? Much like carbon dioxide wreaks havoc on the atmosphere, C02 in the ocean triggers a series a chemical processes that lower the pH of the water, making it more acidic. This can cause problems for shellfish, a concern in a state like Maine...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Maine coastal and ocean issues: Life and Science on Mount Desert Rock Today, we venture out to the most remote of all of Maine’s islands, Mount Desert Rock, an exposed ledge, barely 3 acres in size, that emerges from a remarkably productive patch of ocean about 22 nautical miles south of Mount Desert Island. Since the early 19th century the island has had a light t...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel The Maine Coast has captured the imagination of artists for generations. On today’s Coastal Conversations we talk with two contemporary artists and an art writer about the relationship between art and the coast of Maine. Why is it that Maine inspires a deep sense of place in so many people? How and why do artists paint here? What are the threads that link Maine’s w...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel Maine coastal and ocean issues: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems: Ecological Connections and Research Methods Today’s coastal conversations is in honor of the annual spring running, that time of year when several species of fish, such as alewives and blue-back herring, return from the ocean to Maine’s streams and ponds to spawn. Our show is about marine and freshwa...

Producer/Host: Natalie Springuel The Maine Fisherman’s Forum is an annual event that brings together thousands of people who are connected to Maine’s fishing industry. Like so many events, the 2021 Fisherman’s Forum was cancelled due to COVID, but the stories and voices from the fishing industry persist! For this month’s episode of Coastal Conversations, our stellar team of student production assi...