July 13, 2014 — Port Clyde, like other fishing towns up and down the Maine coast, has changed in the past few decades. Most significantly, with federal regulations and a depleted fishery, Maine’s groundfishing fleet has shrunk from 300 boats in the early 1990s to about 50 in 2013, according to Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, a fishermen-led nonprofit that works to restore the fisheries and sustain Maine’s fishing communities.
But as valuable as the industry itself are stories such as Libby’s and Cushman’s. The Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association has preserved some of those fish tales through its Oral History Initiative, a multimedia presentation opening Wednesday at Harpswell Heritage Land Trust.
Funded in part by the Maine Humanities Council, the Island Institute and The Nature Conservancy, the narratives have been edited into 13 short videos, and Martens said the project may be expanded in the future.
Sharing the stories of longtime Maine fishermen and those who support them is one way to educate the public about the need to protect the fishery, and communities such as Port Clyde, which revolve around the struggling industry, Martens said.
“Most of the young guys just go about their own business, and they’re all about how much they can make, and they don’t worry about their neighbors as much,” Libby said in a 3 minute video featured as part of the exhibit. “We’ve lost a little bit of neighborly community — not all [though], because when my engine blew last week, Randy was fishing. He was on his first day of fishing, and he stopped his trip. He came, and he got me and towed me in. That’s what it used to be like.”
Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News