Join us online or in person at the Peavey Memorial Library for a conversation with Peter Neill, founding director of the World Ocean Observatory.

Fundy, Cobscook and Passamaquoddy bays are places of extraordinary marine abundance. The St. Croix river alone is estimated to have returned upwards of 30 million alewives per year, according to the DFO of Canada that number may have been closer to 100 milllion. Historical abundance in herring, pollock, halibut, cod was central to the indigenous and early settlement experience of this place. We still have the greatest diversity of commercial fisheries in the state of Maine.

Conventional thinking attributes the diminishment of traditional fisheries to overfishing, but fisheries scientists have long known that the impairment of river and coastal habitats, the loss of productive habitats for juvenile fish, forage fish and the connectivity between rivers and sea have the power to restore populations. From sturgeon to elver to alewives, species after species have in fact rebounded from fishways and habitat restoration work. The salmon farming industry would have us believe that the only way to enjoy fish from the sea is to farm it, unfortunately the farmed fish are eating wild fish ‘from away’, and contaminating the wild fish right here with their effluvia. The open net pens are coming up for renewal, and a matter that deserves public input– but other threats are also proposed for our bays. A 400 million dollar proposal for underwater AI datacenter, huge cruise ships making noise that impacts cetaceans and eco-tourism, a proposed tidal barrage across the Pennamaquan that would totally block fish passage– to name a few. How can we organize to protect our bays, how can we participate in decision making that will allow for the survival of this place we love? What can we learn from other places that have succeeded to protect their ecosystems and to see rebounding of native fish?