The hope and promise of a sustainable Gulf of Maine rests, in large part, on a rising, irrepressible chorus of voices of people from Massachusetts to Nova Scotia who are actively engaged in the overall health of their watersheds. Collectively, these are people, often thought of as visionaries, who share a deep devotion to improving the future well being of coastal lands and waters at the local level, and, who also understand how their actions ultimately benefit the entire Gulf region and beyond. One of the main purposes of the Gulf of Maine Council’s Visionary Awards, which are given each year, is to remind such stewards that they are not alone. As a show of gratitude, the awards honor the innovation and creativity of individuals and organizations from each state and province bordering the Gulf of Maine. Through their efforts and perseverance, these visionaries are working to protect one of the most productive and diverse ecosystems on Earth.

Profiles by Lori Valigra

Salem Sound Coastwatch
Salem, Massachusetts

Six quintessential New England communities north of Boston stretching from Marblehead to Manchester embrace the Salem Sound. For 14 years Salem Sound Coastwatch (SSCW), a nonprofit coastal watershed association, has worked to maintain the area’s good fishing, refreshing swimming, vital urban waterfronts and diverse plants and wildlife through extensive volunteer-based efforts.

Through the ambitious Wetland Health Assessment Toolbox (WHAT) Program started in 1999, SSCW and technical experts from the Massachusetts Bay’s National Estuary Program, the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management and other experts have trained 150 local “citizen scientist” volunteers to monitor wetlands. They measure seven parameters: birds, fish, macroinvertebrates, plants, salinity, tidal influence and land use. Data from the WHAT program already are being used to support local, state and federal wetlands restoration efforts. For example, about 20 percent of the regional marsh monitoring database at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve in Wells, Maine, comes from the WHAT program.

Other SSCW programs include Adopt-a-Tidepool, Clean Beaches and Streams, the recent Coastal Habitat Invasives Monitoring Program and the Anadromous Fish Run Restoration. Through the fish program, SSCW is working with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries to restore areas including the smelt-spawning habitat in the North River in Salem and Peabody. As recently as the 1970s, the river was a dumping ground for tannery waste and raw sewage, but smelt and other fish now have returned, says Barbara Warren, SSCW’s program director.

Warren adds that the SSCW plans to begin work on eelgrass conservation and to perform a Marine Sanitation Needs Assessment to study the sanitation practices of boaters.

In 1992, one of SSCW’s founding partners, Salem Partnership, was also given a Visionary Award for “its leadership as a business supporting environmental initiatives,” says Rob Gough, executive director.

Stephen H. Jones, Jackson Estuarine Laboratory
Durham, New Hampshire

Stephen H. Jones, research associate professor for natural resources and marine science at the University of New Hampshire, spends his days studying a sometimes perplexing, if not amusing, assortment of fecal pollutants in water. To help identify the species responsible for contamination, Jones set up a specialized lab at the university’s Jackson Estuarine Laboratory to conduct microbial source tracking (MST), a sophisticated genetic analysis of bacteria found in water. Other scientists have used the genetic methodology he employs, ribotyping, for about 10 years, but Jones has developed it as an environmental investigation tool for the Gulf of Maine region.

Jones’ database has information on 35 species in it, including cows, dogs and humans, as well as alpaca and muskrat. He admits that at times, he has been stumped by some of the results of his analysis. New Hampshire’s Department of Environmental Services once sent him samples from marshes behind beaches of the state’s Atlantic coast. Jones says he was dumbfounded when he traced the pollution back to otters. “It turns out the state sampled the water from a small creek where the otters had established areas to use as latrines,” he says.

Another puzzler was a sample that showed a 72-percent concentration of cat fecal bacteria. “We discovered it came from a storm conduit where a lady was putting down cat feces,” he says.

But such specificity can help the state solve problems and make better management decisions, Jones says. His other related research includes field evaluation of storm water treatment technologies for removing bacteria, studying the ecology of pathogens in shellfish and evaluating effluent from municipal wastewater treatment facilities.

Tricia Miller, Advocates for the North Mill Pond
Portsmouth, New Hampshire

Tricia Miller, vice president of the Advocates for the North Mill Pond (ANMP), only needed to look in her own backyard to find an environmental cause that could vitalize her community. Miller and her neighbors became alarmed by the deteriorating condition of Hodgson Brook, the freshwater stream that flows through the center of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and into the North Mill Pond near their homes. A 46-acre salt pond, North Mill Pond also is fed by tidal waters of the Piscataqua River.

Hodgson Brook suffered from overdevelopment and years of neglect: dumped trash littered its banks and pollution poured into its waters. Teenage partiers and vagrants made the area increasingly unsafe. The neighborhood formed ANMP in 1997 to clean up and enhance North Mill Pond and its surroundings. In 2001, ANMP won a grant from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services to study Hodgson Brook and devise a restoration plan.

The University of New Hampshire tested the water to identify the pollutants. Miller says ANMP members removed the refrigerators, beds and other trash along the banks. The cleanup efforts soon paid off: striped bass, mummichogs and other fish and birds returned. The community became aware of the brook and pond as a natural area.

“By drawing from the diversity of the neighborhood and working in a positive way with the city and state, we’ve been able to accomplish an awful lot. This is backyard stewardship,” says Miller, a graphic artist whose skills have been critical to ANMP's success in developing the restoration plan and reaching out to watershed constituents. Members of the group, who volunteer their time and skills, include environmental scientists, a lawyer and an events manager. ANMP received an earlier Gulf of Maine Council visionary award in 1998.

Clinton “Bill” Townsend
Canaan, Maine

Bill Townsend, who is widely regarded as the dean of the conservation community in Maine, grew up loving hunting, fishing and virtually all outdoor activities. When he was in his 20s, just after World War II, he realized that rivers and other waterways would have to be taken care of so future generations could enjoy those same activities. Few environmental groups existed in the 1950s, which helped propel Townsend into action. “It was an epiphany,” he says, recalling a drive with his father through the Vermont countryside. “I was watching a blue stream. It then turned green, and then orange just around the corner from a woolen mill that was discharging a dye batch into it. That struck me as really wrong.”

Since then he has freely given his time and boundless energy to protect rivers and sea-run fish. His love of Atlantic salmon has driven many of his efforts and earned the respect of the international salmon community. He helped found the Maine Council of the Atlantic Salmon Federation and became its president in 1986. He also has served as president of Facilitators Improving Salmonid Habitat, a group that buys and then removes old dams, and has won numerous awards, including from the North Eastern Council Federation of Fly Fishers.

A New Yorker who vacationed summers on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, Townsend and his family moved to Maine in 1957. He was an attorney, but always found time to advocate for clean waters. “I can’t help myself,” he says. Known for his understated “country lawyer” style, he finds creative and balanced solutions that have had a profound impact on the Gulf of Maine’s health. Townsend, 77, says that when he eventually slows down, he’d like to “go fishing.”

Maine Coast Heritage Trust
Topsham, Maine

In the face of intense pressures for development along the coast, Maine Coast Heritage Trust (MHCT) has been the leading private land conservation organization since 1970. During that time it has conserved more than 119,000 acres of land, including 245 entire coastal islands. In 2004 it completed more than 30 land protection projects. They include wild offshore islands, wetlands and stream frontage that are important for wildlife habitat, community recreation and working farms. MCHT created the Maine Land Trust Network for information sharing and technical assistance for local land trusts throughout Maine and into Maritime Canada. It also collaborated with others to establish the Land Trust Alliance, a noted national organization.

The MCHT works with landowners using various conservation techniques to protect land considered essential to the character of Maine. All of the agreements with landowners are voluntary, and some include purchases, such as 78-acre Saddleback Island in the Deer Isle Thorofare, which the trust recently protected for the public. It also recently partnered with the Bar Harbor Housing authority to protect a 167-acre saltwater farm adjacent to Acadia National Park.

“We continue to work with landowners to facilitate their passion for land conservation,” says Richard Knox, MCHT’s director of communications.

One of the Trusts’ more notable achievements took place in 1988, when MCHT worked to preserve three bold and pristine coastal headlands that were threatened by proposed residential development. News of the planned development drew public outcry. The three headlands—Western Head, Great Head and Boot Head—are in easternmost Maine near the Canadian border. Western Head supports one of Maine’s last inshore herring beds, a critical supply of bait for local fishermen. MCHT’s board acted quickly, launching a $5-million campaign and partnering to secure the headlands and assure permanent public access.

Edward McLean
Saint John, New Brunswick

The well-being of juvenile herring in the Bay of Fundy started Edward McLean’s notable work on sustainable development of the fishing industry in the Gulf of Maine. As the former executive vice president of sardine operations for Connors Brothers, McLean became keenly aware of the delicate balance between preserving fish and their environment and meeting the needs of people whose activities can cause pollution.

The century-old company obtains 95 percent of its juvenile herring, which it packages and sells as sardines, from the Gulf of Maine. It is the only sardine packer left in North America.

“We have seen the business failures caused by overfishing, like cod in Eastern Canada,” says McLean, who retired from Connors at the end of 2004 after serving for 37 years in various executive positions. “The juvenile herring are very important to us, as is the environment in which they grow and survive.”

McLean said Connors saw the exploitation of fisheries in the 1960s and 1970s, when herring were used for fishmeal to feed chickens. Fishmeal producers had such a tremendous capacity to catch and process fish that Connors and the government realized the herring population could be in jeopardy, and the practice was stopped.

Currently, pollution and the use of herring for lobster bait pose immediate challenges. McLean and Connors have worked with the government to identify sites and pollution, and they are encouraging fishermen to listen to scientists’ biomass estimates to avoid overfishing the critical resource. They also have worked with the salmon aquaculture industry to find ways the two industries can coexist.

McLean became involved in fisheries in a broader way when he served as New Brunswick’s private-sector member on the Gulf of Maine Council for five years.

J.D. Irving Ltd.
Saint John, New Brunswick

J.D. Irving Ltd. (JDI) decided two heads were better than one when it teamed up with Deborah MacLatchy, associate professor of biology at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John. JDI discovered that MacLatchy was researching the impact of effluent on the estuary around JDI’s pulp mill, and invited her into the mill because it also was working to prevent pollution, says Bill Borland, director of environmental affairs for the company.

“We were putting a lot of effort into pollution prevention, which is a better long-term investment than secondary treatment,” Borland says. Of key concern was the endocrine disrupting chemicals found in the mill’s effluent. The chemicals, which have been linked to reproductive and other problems in fish, are a component of the trees processed by JDI. The company installed a reverse osmosis treatment using a high-pressure membrane to clean up the effluent. MacLatchy examined the water after the treatment and found no endocrine disruptors in it.

JDI, a family business started more than 100 years ago, makes environmental friendliness a business practice. “There is a long list of things that we do,” Borland says, such as salmon restoration work in rivers, right whale protection in the Bay of Fundy and work in watersheds and coastal areas of the Gulf of Maine. JDI also has donated land in the Musquash Estuary in the Bay of Fundy to the Nature Conservancy, and established the 600-acre Irving Nature Park to preserve wildlife and ecosystems.

In 1957, K.C. Irving, considered the patriarch of JDI and the person whose vision prompted the company’s environmental focus, started planting trees to foster sustainable forest management. “He wanted the company to do business as if it would be doing business for 1,000 years,” Borland says.

Friends of the Cornwallis River Society
Kentville, Nova Scotia

The Friends of the Cornwallis River Society (FOCS) has spent more than a decade protecting and restoring the Cornwallis River watershed and developing a fisheries management plan for the Cornwallis River, a 45-kilometer stream that runs through the Annapolis Valley.

Among the group’s many efforts are riparian re-establishment, fencing and leasing. The livestock-fencing program in Kings County, called the Cornwallis River Riparian Management Project, has been undertaken with the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources and the Nova Scotia Eastern Habitat Joint Venture Riparian Management Project. The program aims to restrict livestock access to habitats alongside the stream in order to reduce the degradation of riverbanks and improve the water quality. FOCS also is involved in creating riparian edges that help conserve wildlife habitat and reduce contamination from agricultural runoff. Once farmers see the results, they are quick to react to the benefits of the program. “People started talking about it after they saw that their neighbor had a nice riparian edge along the water,” says Derick Fritz, a fish biologist and acting executive director of FOCS. “Otherwise, they could be losing up to four feet of property a year.”

FOCS also would like to repopulate the Atlantic salmon in the Cornwallis River. The two major tributaries of the Cornwallis River, Elderkin Brook and MillBrook, were well known for salmon, but the population dropped because of overfishing, overpredation and water-quality problems

Other FOCS initiatives include volunteer water quality monitoring and promotion of awareness of fish and fish habitat within local elementary schools.

Fritz emphasizes the importance of groups like FOCS partnering with other action-oriented organizations, especially at the community level. “One problem is groups are not able to move forward without the support of others,” he says.

J. Sherman Bleakney
Wolfville, Nova Scotia

“I’ve had a whole life of discovery,” says J. Sherman Bleakney, a distinguished zoologist, marine biologist, researcher, historian and writer who has spent the past 50 years finding out what is in the Bay of Fundy. A retired Acadia University biology professor, Bleakney modestly says his primary contribution is baseline data about the bay. But his insatiable curiosity has yielded the first chronicles of the lives and habits of multitudes of previously unknown creatures.

Among his seminal work was the discovery of leatherback sea turtles in the North Atlantic, and the fact that they feed on stinging jellyfish rather than on crabs, as had been thought. His work earned him the honor of a namesake: the first male leatherback tagged with a satellite transmitter was called “Sherman.” But Bleakney is hard-pressed to name a favorite discovery; there have been so many, and there will be more in the future. He was excited to find flying squirrels in Nova Scotia, frogs that smell like minks and a 3,800-year-old bed of preserved oysters in Minas Bay.

His books are “Sea Slugs of Atlantic Canada and the Gulf of Maine,” “Keys to the Fauna and Flora of Minas Basin,” and “Sods, Soils, and Spades: The Acadians at Grand Pré and their Dykeland Legacy.” He calls the Acadians book a retirement hobby that he wrote from 1994 to 2004. He looked at maps from the early 1800s and talked to 80-year-olds who still remembered the dyking methods of the Acadians. He still marvels at their skills. “They dyked 250,000 acres with a spade, pitchfork and a pair of oxen,” he says. “They dyked just about every stream or river and farmed. They knew a lot about the tide cycles and rising sea levels.”

 © 2005 The Gulf of Maine Times