May 14, 2026 — For more than a century, the sardine — not lobster — was the king of Maine’s coastal fisheries.
The industry may be gone but the people who helped catch and pack the little fish for sale around the world remain with stories to share. There’s an effort underway in Searsport to preserve that history.
From ‘Sardineland’ to ‘Vacationland’
At the height of production during the 1950’s, dozens of canneries fueled the economies of towns like Lubec, Belfast and Eastport. At that time, two out of every three sardines sold in the U.S. were packed in Maine.
That effort took entire communities helping to steer canned fish production. While the men of Maine’s coastal villages were on the water catching the fish, it was women who stood for hours in the canneries cutting up the tiny fish and packing them into tin cans.
“I remember cutting off the heads and the tails and having all these fish heads staring up at me,” said Anne Shure, who worked at the Stinson Cannery in Belfast during summers from 1971 to 1973. She still remembers all the sights — and other aspects of the cannery.
Shure said she was paid by the can and aimed to pack hundreds of fish a day. She remembers wrapping her fingers to prevent cuts from scales and scissors.
“It definitely smelled,” she said. “No one would go in my car because it smelled like sardines.”
The Maine sardines are actually a species of herring but were marketed as sardines to compete with European markets when canneries opened in the late 1800s.
During World War II, preserved fish were ideal to send to soldiers fighting overseas. After the soldiers came home, Maine boasted over 40 active canneries along its coast.
But by the 1970s, when Shure was putting in long hours at the Stinson Cannery, the industry had already started to lose steam.