[0:00:00]

 

Katie Clark: Cool. Can you–just to test levels? Can you tell me what you had for breakfast this morning?

 

Toby Stephenson: I didn’t eat breakfast. I had a cup of coffee. But it was a really good cup of coffee. And very nutritious.

 

KC: What was so good about it?

 

TS: That’s just the way I make it. It was a good cup of coffee. It’s–I don’t even remember. You know, it’s like, “Newman’s Organic Decaf,” or something like that.

 

KC: What do you normally have for breakfast when you have the time?

 

TS: I don’t eat breakfasts.

 

KC: Why’s that?

 

TS: I don’t need the calories. My metabolism is–you know, everything’s  slowed down and you get older your metabolism’s slow and it’s just a waste to food. Yeah, I don’t need it.

 

KC: What about lunch?

 

TS: Today is going to be spaghetti. I made spaghetti for dinner last night. I make a killer spaghetti sauce. I think it’s a very good sauce. I don’t do the jarred spaghetti sauces. I make it.

 

KC: Yeah, definitely.

 

TS: Still going? You still need me to chat? Can I tell you about Katie? Have you heard much about Katie, Camden? I’ve got a lot of experiences.

 

KC: Okay, I think that’s good.

 

TS: You want us to stop there? Look at her, she’s–

 

KC: Okay.

 

TS: Alright.

 

KC: So can you tell me about your background on the Bay?

 

TS: Yeah, on Frenchman Bay, my background begins with [College of the Atlantic] as a student and working on whale watch boats and working on college boats back in the–starting in the mid 1990s. I believe 1995 was my first summer working on the water.

 

[0:02:04]

 

KC: How often do you personally get out of the Bay, outside of your professional career?

 

TS: Outside of my professional career, like almost never. It’s all about work on the water. And there have been a couple of trips where I–the college is good enough to let me every now and then use Osprey for a personal trip locally, in the Bay here. So I take family members out for–either to go fishing or bring them out to an island and one of my favorite things to do is to get a bunch of friends and family together and just go up to Bean Island and spend an afternoon out there with–especially when the kids were little. So I would do that every now and then once or–once a year usually.

 

KC: And then when you went on whale watch boats, where would you go on the Bay?

 

TS: Well, we always–when I worked on–when we did tours around the bay when I was guiding we went all over the place but those were for just the Bay cruises and things. So we would go around the Porcupines and we would go around Ironbound Island and out to Egg Rock and things like that. But when we’re going whale watching or with Allied Whale, working with whales, we typically go out to the Ballpark or Mount Desert Rock.

 

KC: And is it called the “Ballpark” because that’s where you see–

 

[0:03:39]

 

TS: Yeah, it’s an old fishing term. It’s the Inner Schoodic Ridges, and that was historically from Mount Desert Rock, east there’s a series of ridges. There’s an inner and an outer set of ridges, and they run right up towards the Hague line to the to the mouth of the Bay of Fundy, and they really continue up into the Bay of Fundy geologically, but the those ridges are really good fishing ground–or historically were a really good fishing ground. And the fisherman used to just refer to that area as the Ballpark: “You’re in the Ballpark.” And and that was–by lat and long it was” ’08 and 50″: 44° 08′ by 67° 50’–or minutes, and that’s just the general area where you would always go to find whales: 08′ and 50′,  start there and then just start seeking whales in the area. And hopefully the same boats or  the trawlers hadn’t come through and chewed up the food.

 

KC: Were you leading the whale watch tours?

 

TS: Yeah, I would have been a naturalist. I first started out as a crew member for the first few trips, for training, and then I started actually working as a naturalist.

 

KC: Now, how did you begin your job at COA?

 

[0:05:12]

 

TS: Well, so I actually–I’ll back up a little bit and just–I was a non-traditional student and I’d graduated high school and worked as a builder and a carpenter and so on. Then I moved to Maine in the late 80s, to learn how to build boats. And then I ended up working at the Chewonki Foundation. And that sort of steered me to the College of the Atlantic. And then when I got to the College of the Atlantic, my work study position was with Allied Whale, so I would go up and match humpback whales back in the day when it was all photographs and three-ring binders. And we’d use paper clips and stuff to help us keep track of notches and marks and things on the whale tails. And there was a phone call that came in, and one of the local whale watch companies was looking for naturalists. So they decided to call Allied Whale because they wanted whale watch naturalists. And I heard about that, and I said, “Well, that sounds fun. I don’t think I’d be able to do that.” And my supervisor at the time, Peter Stevens said, “Absolutely, you can” you know, encourag[ing] me to do it. He said, “You’d definitely be able to help them.” And I–so I called him up and I got hired as–for my summer job, so it was a great summer job as I finished up here.

 

[0:06:41]

 

KC: And then you made your way back to COA…

 

TS: Well, so after I graduated, I started working at–I wanted to still stay in teaching and education. My degree at COA also gave me my student teaching credentials. So I taught high school, at a couple of different schools down in Camden, and also up here at MDI [High School]. And then I worked at Camp Beech Cliff as their Director of Outdoor Activities and Sciences. And–but I just hated not being on the water. So I decided that I wanted to keep working on the water. So I got a job working as an endangered species observer. So I would go anywhere from the Gulf of Mexico to the south coast of the United States, the southeast coast, and work observing marine mammals and sea turtles on commercial ships to prevent incidents with them, or to keep track of incidents if they did occur. So I did that for a few years, and then realized I really just wanted to have a career on the water.

 

[0:08:04]

 

So I decided to get my captain’s license. And I already had some sea time working on the whale watch boats. So I went back to work with the whale watch company. And then in 2003, [I] got a call from a competing whale watch company, and they said that they would support Allied Whale financially every year if they could work with us, and we could provide them with naturalists. So I ended up working for this–this was the Walsh Company–ended up working with them–or Ocean Properties, and sort of starting–helping them start their whale watch side of things as a naturalist–they already had some captains and stuff. But that was going to be a way for me to also get my captain’s license, which I did. I got my captain’s license. And then with the–working with their boats–with the Walsh’s, they also had an old museum that had been started several years before as a joint effort between Allied Whale and some of the local whale watch businesses. They started this museum and the idea was that it was going to sell whale watch tickets, and then anybody that wanted to look at exhibits, they’d buy a ticket for that and that money would go to Allied Whale, so it was like this means of funding the research and which I always really liked that idea because it used to really bother me that companies, like whale watch companies, would learn all of this information about whales and whale biology from books that they just had to buy off the shelf but they never had any kickback to the research. There was never any money going back to support all of the hard work that scientists and researchers did to learn that information, they just took it off the shelf and then made piles of money.

 

[0:10:04]

 

So that really annoyed me. But this was a–so I was always looking for angles that we could get money from the commercial entity back into the research side of things. And this was a great avenue to do that. So, this museum ended up not working out very well. People weren’t interested in buying tickets to see the exhibits. So they ended up just buying whale watch tickets and walking off. So they ended up turning it into a gift shop. And because the college didn’t really want to go back and disrupt things, they said, “Okay, we’re just going to kind of let this happen. You guys sell buttons and things like that, and hopefully give us some money.” They weren’t really sure what to do with the whole project, so they just kind of let it happen. And this company was selling T-shirts hanging–just about hanging off of the skeletons that were in the museum and it was a pretty bad situation. Eventually they went out of business; the museum closed and the building flooded, and all the exhibits got destroyed. And the Walsh’s bought this building, and they said, “Why don’t you reopen the museum?” So Judy Allen and I put our heads together, and we decided to do it. And the Walsh’s gave us a bunch of money. And Allied Whale, or Steve Katona at the time, gave us a bunch of credit lines so we could buy supplies. And we opened up the museum and started a small gift shop. The next year, we brought on Mindy Vic Nikki. And from there we had about eight, nine years of whale museum in Downtown Bar Harbor. And it was really fun. So students would work there, make exhibits, and we turned it back into a museum.

 

[0:12:02]

 

And then we had a gift shop that was very clearly separate from the museum itself. So I did that for a number of years. And while I was doing that I was working for the whale watch company during the summers, driving boats and working as a naturalist. And then in the winters I’d work on exhibits with students, and we–a lot of students would put skeletons together and other exhibits. And that all went fine until eventually the building was torn down and they built a hotel over it. And that’s when I got hired on at [College of the Atlantic] to work for the college specifically in 2010 as their captain.

 

KC: And what are all the vessels you’ve traveled the Bay on?

 

TS: Well, I worked on a lot of different boats. When I was a student, I would take the Laughing Gull out and bring people out on trips. If Steve wanted people to go out and see Egg Rock or something, I might drive people out there. I worked as crew for the Indigo when I was a senior, and that was an interesting experience. I worked on a variety of different tour boats around the area. I never worked on any commercial fishing boats. And then I’ve been working on the Osprey for the last 13 years.

 

KC: What was interesting about the Indigo experience?

 

TS: Oh the Indigo, God, you know, that boat didn’t owe anybody anything. She wasn’t a really well-built boat. But she was affordable for people that wanted to have a pretty good-size boat.

 

[0:14:00]

 

The fellow that had her built–he was an older man, and he needed a cane to get around. So he was definitely limited with mobility. And he received Indigo, had her for about a week or two, and decided he hated it, and he couldn’t stand it, and he wanted to get rid of it. So somebody had the bright idea of convincing him to donate it to the college, which the college took gratefully and did some work to her. And she worked for the college for over 10 years and was sort of a gateway boat to the college actually being serious about having students on the water. And that coincided with the receiving of Great Duck Light Station in Mount Desert Rock. So it worked as a great transport boat to the islands as well as a research boat. Initially it was thought of as a research boat and our benefactor Ed Blair saw to that, but then her role at the college expanded and she became a little bit more dedicated to the islands. But she was always–you weren’t going to change the way she was designed, which, as I said, was an affordable boat. So she was pretty lightly built. And they didn’t have marine architects designing her, somebody probably designed her out of their shop. And what I tell people about the Indigo is that she was–so everything about her that you didn’t like in a person: She was noisy, she smelled bad, and she leaked a lot. You know, there’s all these qualities that were not very enjoyable. A lot of people got sick on her, everybody got cold at one point or another.

 

[0:16:01]

 

And she was just slow moving and unreliable. So–but she was affordable, and she got the college into the Atlantic. And then finally, Ed Blair pushed for having a real boat before he checked out, because he knew that was coming. And he saw to it. Osprey was commissioned in 2009; in 2010, they laid the keel, and in 2011, she was wet. And she’s now sort of our flagship, and she’s been a great addition. But the Indigo was a really great start to things, but I’m really glad she’s gone. I can’t say I miss her at all.

 

KC: And then now we have Rebecca, too.

 

TS: And now we’ve got Rebecca, and Rebecca was just just a blast to get. I was so happy about that boat.

 

KC: And what do you use to navigate? And is that–what did you use to navigate on Indigo and is that different from–

 

TS: You know, navigating on Indigo wasn’t really different. One of the–when I first started getting into working on tour boats, GPS plotters had just come out. So prior to that, we used charts, and Loran-C, which was a means of receiving your position through different stations that were located up along the coast. And it was kind of a clunky, hectic way of doing things, but it worked. But when plotters came along, they were just using the latitude and longitude coordinates, which were a lot more simple to work with. They were reliant on satellites, which was different than the Loran-C and shore-based positioning, which was great, except the satellites were moving around constantly and every now and then you would lose them.

 

[0:18:10]

 

So they weren’t super reliable. But it was a small screen, usually about a five-inch screen that put us on an electronic chart. But we all–we still used paper charts to back up and I remember once being around Baker Island, with a–on a boat with a relatively new captain. And he was making a crossing that he probably shouldn’t have made, but the plotter had cut out on him, the GPS signal had stopped and the plotter went dead. And he’s yelling at me to get charts out and find him a position. And we’re–so that’s the way we would do things we would triangulate to different locations and figure out where we were, and see if we’re in safe water. So it was sketchy, for sure. And you were really limited when you could or could not go out. You went out on good days, you went out and conditions were nice, you didn’t go out so much on foggy days, because there were just too many potential risks, and if it was foggy and rough, forget it. But since then, and from when I first started working on boats into the mid-2000s, the GPS based plotter became much more reliable. Now they’re extremely reliable. We have so many satellites in the atmosphere. We never lose position. We still–I still teach navigating to students with paper charts because you always have to know how to use a paper chart. You have to do that because you can always lose your power. And if you lose your power, your SOL, so charts are always there, and always important, in my view, even though the Coast Guard doesn’t really rely on–they don’t actually require you to have paper charts anymore, as long as you have redundant electronic options, but in my opinion, you can lose electricity anywhere, anyway.

 

[0:20:11]

 

So I always keep paper charts around. But typically, now what I’m teaching is how to use charts–, plotters to navigate with. But as you very well know, we use those in position on the boat. We don’t use chart or plotters up in the office to learn that way we do it in the field.

 

KC: How did you get down to the shore when you started? Was the pier there?

 

TS: Yeah, the pier was here before me. It had just gotten installed only a few years before I arrived, and they were still talking about the pier, and how we had this pier. But we honestly seldom went down there to hang out because there wasn’t really anything going on. First, it was just the pier and there were no docks. But once the Indigo arrived, we did have some docks, and we could actually start going down and using it. But it was–the way the college did things back then was bit-by-bit as they could afford it. We were such a small place, we just didn’t have all of the resources, but we were getting there. But the waterfront was really actually–we would just go down to walk and hang out and sit on the rocks along the shore, we didn’t necessarily– in my opinion, I would prefer–I prefer to do that than to actually sit on the pier and look at stuff; it was nicer just to walk down into the woods and sit on rocks. But eventually the waterfront started to develop. But there was always that path there that we still have now. And it’s–it actually hasn’t changed a whole lot, the access to the waterfront. It’s just that what’s changed now is once you get there, what your options are. We used to just store a lot of our boats on the cobble beach and launch from the beach. But we don’t do that anymore.  Oh, I don’t–I kind of stopped letting people use that because it’s such a small beach at the high tide. And I want it to be available to people. And especially during the summer, or around the school year when our students are here or we have the Summer Field Studies. It’s a really nice beach to hang out. But if we let people keep their dinghies and things down there, it would be completely packed with boats. So it’s not. We want it to be–I want it to be an enjoyable place for people to go and sit and just enjoy a beach.

 

[0:22:10]

 

KC: Why is that?  And when you went on the whale watch boats, was that all out of Bar Harbor Town Pier?

 

TS: Yep, we worked out of the Bar Harbor whale watch dock. There are a few different places that they operated from. But yeah, most of it was down there. Sometimes we would leave from the Regency Hotel, sometimes from the Walsh’s new hotel, which was Harborside. And then there’s also Harbor Place. So there were a couple–a few different locations boats would run out of.

 

KC: And when you launch boats now in the spring, or summer, is that normally out of–by the [Bar Harbor] airport or Southwest [Harbor]? Do you have a location that you feel like is most convenient?

 

TS: It’s all over the place. Because it depends what boat, when, and where. When Osprey–when we first got Osprey, we would actually keep her at Wesmac and we would haul her in and out in Surry. And then when we’d launch from Surry, we’d have to come all the way out Blue Hill Bay around the island and back up Frenchman Bay.

 

[0:23:57]

 

Then I started storing her in Trenton at the airport location and we would use that ramp and the–we’ve got other boats at the college: We’ve got the Borealis that we would launch almost always from the airport ramp in Trenton but we can also launch her from the Bar Harbor ramp and haul her if we need to. The smaller boats we haul and launch from either the Bar Harbor ramp or sometimes off the Bar itself. And for the real small boats sometimes we just drag them down the beach and launch them there, still. Right now Rebecca, our sailboat, is stored at Abel’s  and we launch her from Abel’s and that’s where Osprey is probably going to continue to operate out of now. So yep, Somes Sound to Blue Hill Bay to Frenchman Bay. You know, the most convenient place is right on our backyard. But unfortunately, we don’t have a ramp for that. But I’d love to have a boat ramp– a boat launch there one day. Bar Harbor’s certainly the most convenient. But I’ll take the Trenton ramp and short of that whatever is closer to us. But for students learning how to launch boats, the Bar and the Bar Harbor ramp are the best way for the inflatables, and small sailboats, and things like that.

 

KC: Do you have family who work on the bay?

 

TS: I don’t. I don’t actually, I’m the only person in my family and my wife’s family that works on the water. I’m kind of an anomaly. Everybody else sort of likes to look at it. And that’s about it. And they certainly don’t mind going out on boat rides and stuff, but I’m the only one. And I was actually looking back in my family tree and there wasn’t one other boat pilot in our family in England in the late 1800s on my grandmother’s side. One of her uncles was a boat pilot outside of–out of London. But other than that I’m it.

 

[0:26:26]

 

KC: I’m interested in your perception of the Bay. What was the Bay like when you started working on it?

 

TS: There was a lot less lobster gear. But–and there were a lot more fish. There were definitely lots of schooling fish around, and more birds. In fact, Bar–the Bar to Bar Island used to be covered with birds at the low tide. There would always–you could find kittiwakes and other varieties of gulls and smaller birds, even terns, sometimes and see out their feeding now. Now you don’t see anything because there’s so many people there, everything’s gonna stop showing up. Because whenever there’s a low tide in the summertime, it’s swarmed with people now. But there was definitely a lot less fishing gear. And a lot more bait fish in the bay. And you can see schooling, fish moving around. And I remember finding whales in Frenchman Bay on whale watches like finback whales and humpback whales. Not often, but they would come up into the Bay. And before my time, there was even more activity than that. And we’d have right whales and fin whales feeding in the Upper Bay. So they historically used to come right up into the Bay.

 

KC: Where in the Bay have you seen a whale?

 

[0:27:57]

 

TS: Most of the stuff I’ve seen has been between Sand Beach and Egg Rock. Minke whales we’ll see around the Porcupines, often. And sometimes north of the Porcupines but most of the minke whale stuff is now south of Egg Rock. So you don’t see too many minke whales north of Egg Rock. And it’s much fewer and further in-between when we actually see whales in the Bay.

 

KC: Do you know if the whale watch boats now go to different places because of how the whales are–

 

TS: Yeah, the whale watch boats have had to modify where they where they seek whales. We used to always just go out to the Ballpark or Mount Desert Rock. It was one of those two places. And if the whales weren’t there, they probably didn’t exist. And everybody just came home. Of course they existed and they were in other locations, we just couldn’t get out to them. So now that the boats are faster and they can go further they’re able to get up to the Grand Manan Banks and that’s sort of the reliable picking ground now for whales. Want to ask that question again?

 

KC: You were saying that now you can go up to Grand Manan–you have to go up to Grand Manan Banks to see whales.

 

[0:29:47]

 

TS: Yeah, so we used to be able to go out and find whales fairly reliably at Mount Desert Rock or the Ballpark. And then we started to extend that a little bit to a place further east from the Inner Schoodic Ridges to the East Bumps or we might go out to the Outer Schoodic Ridges. And that–it’s hard to tell if that was a function of where the whales were or because the boats were getting bigger and faster, how much further we could explore. It was always a little bit of both. But over time, looking back, it was fewer whales showing up and having to go further to find them. That’s really what was happening, because they always move around, but their probability in the normal haunts, the–like I said, Mount Desert Rock and the Outer Schoodic Ridges became lower and lower, and we had to go further to find them. I remember the first few years whale watching we always saw bubble-feeding. And I remember one year it was 1995; there were 11 humpback whales bubble-feeding for two or three days in the area [inaudible] being led by one whale in particular, was named–we named it–or it was named in the catalog “Tusk.” And he was a very cool whale. And he was leading this feeding brigade for several days. But if we weren’t seeing humpbacks bubble-feeding, we’d be seeing finback whales feeding and sometimes in big groups. Now we just never see it. And then about six years ago now things just started getting really slim. And every now and then we’d have these periods of time where the whales were really–”The numbers were really low this year,” but then the next year, they’d be back up again. And they’d stay that way for a year or two.

 

[0:32:00]

 

And then they’d go back down and then–but then they’d come back up again. But that infrequency started to increase. And about six years ago, we stopped seeing–five or six years ago, we stopped seeing whales entirely at Mount Desert Rock and the Ballpark. They were absent. Errant whales might swim through there periodically. But the tower watches at Mount Desert Rock were reporting just about zero whales throughout the course of the summer. And the whale watches were relegated to every trip driving to the Grand Manan Banks which were over the Hague Line in Canadian waters. And that was the case up until last year in [2022], we finally had whales local at Mount Desert Rock. There weren’t big numbers, but for at least a period of time we had reliability. The difference is that it wasn’t residency, there were different whales cruising around. So for whatever reasons, humpback whales and finback whales started to come back through this area seeking food. But they weren’t staying here. There wasn’t–there was enough to attract them, but there wasn’t enough to keep them. Previous summers, we would have whales that stayed with us all summer long. There were whales like Breaker and Siphon and Flyer. And every year there were reliable whales and we’d see them for weeks at a time, then they might disappear for a week or two and then they’d be back again. We were always seeing the same whales over and over and now we don’t have that residency anymore. The whales are just passing through here and moving on to other waters. And we don’t even really have a lot of residency at places like Grand Manan Banks. Even though there may be a little bit longer periods of time they stick around, they don’t stay there for long periods of time or virtually through the summer the way they used to.

 

[0:34:19]

 

KC: Who else was on the water at the time you started working on the Bay and how did that change?

 

TS: Well other than lobsterman it was purse seiners or trawlers. Purse seiners were the first commercial fishing boats I would see offshore–and there were gillnetters. And then, you know that in Maine, fishermen tried different things. lobstermen typically don’t for the most part, they just stay fishing bugs all year round but some of them try different things. They fish for lobster a bit, but they might try to fish for halibut, or they might try to drag for scallops, or something like that, or mussels. And then you’ve got some that tried gillnetting and things like that. But there used to be a little bit more moving around and you’d see a little bit more variety. But it was in the late 90s, the mid to late 90s, we started seeing the pair trawlers. And the purse seiners we thought were bad enough, they would come out and set a big circular net around a big school of fish. And then, like a purse, they would pinch in the bottom of the net and tighten it up. And then they’d pull the net in slowly and take the fish–whatever fish weren’t caught in the net weren’t caught. And that was–I suppose okay, but that was certainly a big change from handlining for cod and things like that, or weirs where you’d catch herring along the shore.

 

[0:36:06]

 

But the pair trawlers changed the game, because you had two large ships with sonar, forward-seeking sonar, powerful forward-seeking sonar, looking through the entire water column and finding schools of fish. And then together, spread a distance apart by several hundred meters, they would share a big net trawl that they would drag. And they could work like a vacuum cleaner, and they could change the height of the net knowing where the school of fish was in the water column. And they could be really maneuverable. And if they missed fish, they could go back and get them. And once the pair trawling started, that’s when we started to see a decline in lots of stuff. But they had a limit. Finally, there was a restriction put in place in the early–mid 2000s. And it prevented any trawling from happening in and around the whale grounds during the summer. So there was a reprieve finally that–it began in–at the end of May, and it went through September. And there was no pair trawling or trawling of any type that would happen then. So that was good. But climate, the climate was–that coincides with an excessive heating of the Gulf of Maine. And now, we’re not seeing a lot of food out there, not necessarily because the purse seiners or the trawlers are eating everything up but because things aren’t recovering very quickly because there’s a lot less copepods in the water.

 

KC: Do you remember where you see a lot of pair trawling and–

 

[0:38:00]

 

TS: Wherever the whales were, they always used–they used the whales and they used us to figure out where the food was because the whales knew where the food was, they just had to know where the whales were. And if they could find us they could find whales. So we would try different tactics like not communicating on the radios, and using different channels, or just not saying anything. And then when cell phones arrived, we started using cell phones to share information. So we weren’t broadcasting stuff, but they could still find us on radar, so it wasn’t that hard.

 

KC: What kind of fish were they mainly going for?

 

TS: Herring.

 

KC: How else has the Bay changed?

 

TS: Frenchman Bay has gotten a lot busier with lobster gear. It’s much much thicker in lobster gear than it used to be. And we’re not seeing all the schools of fish that used to come in. Every now and then we get these blasts of fish and you get kind of excited because maybe this is a good sign. And then you hope to see a pattern and I always take note of when I see lots of schooling fish in the area. But it hasn’t been–I can’t say that things have started to increase at all. I think we just get these blasts of herring; maybe it’s alewives, or maybe it’s Atlantic herring coming around, or maybe even mackerel. More recently we’re seeing menhaden which were more of a southern or lower New England type of bait fish. We’re seeing a lot more menhaden now. But in terms of boat activity, well there’s a number of things that have changed. There’s certainly more tour boats than there used to be. The ferry is back and running. And then because of COVID, there have been a lot more sailors–just errant sailors, and power boats, and sailboats coming up into Frenchmen Bay. So traffic has actually increased a fair amount. There hasn’t been an increase in lobster boats themselves, but there’s definitely an increase in lobster gear. And there’s more buoys out there. And of course, the cruise ships have gone up almost exponentially. But there may be an end of that in sight.

 

[0:40:47]

 

KC: And when you say you’ve seen these blasts of fish, are there specific areas where you’ve seen that?

 

TS: No, out in the middle of the bay, I might see them over by Otter Cliffs. I’ve seen them out north of Egg Rock, sometimes south of Egg Rock and sometimes up around the college. North of Bar Island you see puddling–fish puddling at the surface, but it seems to be kind of random and scattered–sometimes even north above Burnt and Long Porcupine, so further offshore from us out towards Bald Rock. But usually when I see any big patches of feeding birds, which is the giveaway for me, it’s south of the Porcupines not ever really very much north of the Porcupines.

 

KC: And that’s changed?

 

TS: I think, yeah, I think it has. And I’ve only been around Frenchman Bay for about 25 years so I haven’t got a whole lot of experience here. But I do recall seeing a lot more feeding bird clusters or groups of feeding birds spread out around the bay, north and south of the Porcupines. But over the last 10–15 years it’s almost all south of the porcupines. And now I really only see consistently lots of gannets and gulls feeding around Cod Ledge, which is closer to Baker island. So that’s right at the mouth of the Bay and a little outside.

 

[0:42:41]

 

KC: How has the Bay not changed?

 

TS: How has it not changed, the islands haven’t changed. The islands are all still there. But it always–everything changes. Nothing doesn’t change. Even the islands like the Thrum Cap, used to be–have a little cluster of trees on the top of it. And they’re all gone now because the cormorants killed them roosting in it. But I guess it hasn’t changed since I’ve been around in terms of it’s still a working Bay, mostly. There’s lobster–lobster boats are still out there working, and we still have seals at Egg Rock and Bald Rock. And we still see lots of gulls and cormorants and loons fishing around, looking for stuff. So if I were to balance out change versus not change, it would be like 98% Change 2% No change. Even on the bottom, things change.

 

[0:43:59]

 

The lobster are out now in the middle of the day–we’ve seen that when we put ROVs overboard. Lobster used to be a nocturnal animal that really hid during the day, but now they come out all hours of the day looking for food. And sometimes the blue mussel count is way down. We have–I can tell that every time I–we pull our docks and we pull the ladders off of our docks at the end of the summer, I can tell if we’ve had a big mussel year or a low mussel year. That fluctuates a fair amount but we’re seeing less mussels. We don’t see sea stars the way we used to. There used to always be sea stars climbing around the docks and now you hardly see any. So it changes but there’s still–the same birds are showing up and it’s kind of usual that way.

 

KC: Why do you think the lobsters are coming out in the day?

 

TS: Well, I think there are so many of them. Because the one thing that the lobster fishery is doing really well is managing their fishery. They throw the little ones back and the big ones back, so they’re doing a really good job, making sure the lobster aren’t overfished–to the point where lobster are super abundant all over the place, and they’re eating everything, and they’re having trouble finding food, so they’re starting to feed at all hours.

 

KC: What about the mussels? What do you think the inconsistency in numbers [is]?

 

[0:45:40]

 

TS: That’s also to do with temperature, from what I understand. When the–and the green crabs. We’ve seen an explosion of green crabs, so any little mussels in the intertidal that do get foot–take foot and start to grow, are usually consumed by green crabs. So we see really low recruitment. But that’s not what I observe on the docks, the green crabs aren’t able to get out onto the docks because they can’t swim up into the water column. What I’m seeing on the docks is about temperature change. And when the numbers are–when I see less blue mussels, it’s because the waters were warmer. And when I see more blue mussels, it’s because the water was colder, and there was more oxygen, and there was more phytoplankton and zooplankton in the water column. Or at least that’s the way it appears. But we almost never see mussels in and around the rockweed anymore or growing on the bottom.

 

KC: And what about the starfish–what do you think?

 

TS: Yeah, they’re coming and going too, and from what I understand that’s temperature-based as well. But it’s super, super complex out there. And at the risk of sounding cliché, we know more about space than we do about the ocean. And it’s very much true around us, that’s true on the macro, and it’s true on the micro. We cannot see the bottom. I think Ed Monat, Diver Ed, knows more about the bottom of Frenchman Bay than anybody ever has been there because he goes down there, and he sees it over and over again. And the lobstermen know quite a lot from what they pull up in their traps, but they can’t see what’s happening visually on the bottom. And we have completely changed the bottom culture below with all of the bait that we’re putting in traps and putting in the water, all the lobster that were sort of propagating and feeding down there.

 

[0:48:05]

 

With the temperature changes, and the dragging that still happens in the wintertime for mussels and–or nope, not really muscles anymore, but for scallops, it wrecks everything down there. So what we–but we can’t see it, all we can see is what we can see. And we cannot see down on the bottom so we can’t tell what’s going on, and we’re not paying much attention to it. So it’s super complex, and it’s constantly changing over. So just like those nice, simple–you’ve got the kelp forests, and you’ve got the otters and you’ve got the urchins out in the West. And when you hunt the otters, the urchins are–start to explode. And they feed on all the kelp, and all of a sudden the kelp forests die, and there’s nothing for the urchins to survive. You introduce the otters back into the environment, they control the urchins, and then the kelp forests grow back, and then everything that lives in them, lives. And it’s the same thing here. But being affected now by temperature. So whatever causes the mussels to die off or the sea starts to die off it just goes that way.

 

KC: And where does dragging happen in the Bay–for scallops, you said?

 

TS: You’d have to talk to someone else but I know they drag for scallops around the Porcupines. They do that every couple of years; they shut the area down and then they reopen it again. I know that they’re going to be dragging again this winter. But I think it’s been a couple of winters; I think it’s every three years they go on cycles where they let them drag again for scallops until a certain amount is caught, and then they either close it down or they let it go until they reach their their TAC, the total allowable catch But that definitely chews things up and drags everything up off the bottom.

 

[0:50:09]

 

KC: What do you value about the Bay?

 

TS: What do I value about the Bay? Oh, man, I mean, it’s our culture, right? We work on it, we live on it, we visually enjoy it. It’s the breadbasket in many ways to everything else around us. So I value it for all of the above. I certainly, personally, I just love being on the water. And I’ve been driving in and out of Frenchman Bay for the last 25 years in all kinds of conditions, and it’s never disappointed me.

 

KC: What do you like about your time on the water?

 

TS: Exactly that.

 

KC: What do you think are the most important things the Bay is used for?

 

TS: I think all of the above. I think all of the above, I think there’s a lot of people that work and make their living on it, there’s a lot of people that just like to look at it and see it and enjoy it just for its existence. And if those are the two extremes, we love it for those and everything in between.

 

KC: What do you think is important about looking at the Bay?

 

TS: Well it’s the artistic side of us; it’s the emotional side of us. And we can’t pretend that doesn’t exist. We can be practical, pragmatic, and about the way we exist and just focus on what we’re doing, but most of us like to stop and take a break and just love to be where we are–or at least appreciate a nice view, however that may be appealing.

 

[0:52:04]

 

And I’m certain there’s people that don’t really care about it and don’t see it, and that’s fine. And there’s some people, that’s all they want to do is see it and look at it, and that’s fine. I’m somewhere in the middle. But I just feel good around it. I love the smell and I love seeing it. I love the change in the movement.

 

KC: What do you want for the future of the Bay?

 

TS: Honestly, I’d like to see that it’s really cared for with a very focused intention to preserve it and preserve whatever diversity it can maintain. I’d love to have areas that were closed to dragging, where draggers couldn’t just come in and do what they want. I don’t think–I’d love to see less lobster gear, because I don’t think that’s very healthy for it, overall. I don’t want to see lobstering disappear by any means. I don’t even want to see it dropped by half. But I’d love to see it reduced a little bit because I don’t think it’s healthy for the bottom. And I’d like for more people to be focused on it, on preserving it and caring for it. So that’s what I wish was happening; I wish we paid more attention to it.

 

KC: Is there anything else you want to talk about before we end the interview?

 

TS: No. The only thing I’d say is that I think aquaculture and lobstering will probably–and tour boats are going to be the big issue in the future–tour boats for a very different reason. But lobstering and aquaculture are really going to start to clash pretty soon.

 

[0:54:04]

 

KC: In terms of space?

 

TS: Yep, yep. In terms of space, because you can’t fish your lobster where there’s aquaculture gear. They can’t fish onto the aquaculture nets, and that’ll be a potential–aquaculture–if we want to keep eating out of the ocean aquaculture’s the only way we’re going to be able to do it sustainably. And I’m not even talking finfish. I’m talking shellfish, and kelp, and nori, and things, which I think are important. But I think that’s where the conflict is going to be. So it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the future.

 

KC: Were there any follow up questions you wanted to ask?

 

CH: No, I think they’re all location-based.

 

KC: Okay, perfect. So now we’re gonna move into the next phase where we have some charts.

 

TS: Oh my god.

 

Camden Hunt: How are you doing timewise?

 

TS: I’m fine. I just–how are you guys doing?

 

CH: We’re great!

 

KC: Yeah.

 

TS: [inaudible]

 

CH: Yeah, so what I’ve been doing is I’ve just been taking notes on different locations that you mentioned. And then I’m just gonna sort of go through those–we have things [inaudible] this down as well. I’m just gonna sort of go through those and we can talk about where those are. I think we can move the mic just like over here and keep the levels the same. Let me know how that’s looking on your end.

 

TS: I can move a little closer here.

 

KC: Yeah, it should be fine.

 

CH: Great. So then what I’ll do is I’ll go ahead and just read through some of these locations. And if you could circle them, and I’ll tell you just a number to write next to them, that way it corresponds with this–that would be great.

 

TS: Yeah, no problem.

 

CH: Great. So you mentioned going to Bean Island?

 

TS: Yep.

 

CH: –with your family, if you could circle that?

 

TS: Right up here.

 

CH: Great, and you could add “1.” And then you also mentioned, for the nature cruise, going sort of around the Porcupines to Iron Bound and then out to Egg Rock? Would you mind just drawing that route?

 

[0:56:06]

 

TS: Yeah, I’ll draw you the route–the most common route that we would take out of Bar Harbor. We would go this way here, we’d go along the shoreline here, we’d go out around, and then we come straight home.

 

CH: Beautiful. If you could label that too, and maybe you put it out here just because I imagine there’s gonna be some stuff over here, and that way we can–So you mentioned the Ballpark. If you could just show us if it’s on this chart–

 

TS: It’s not.

 

CH: Okay, great, I have a wider chart. [inaudible] the really, really huge one.

 

TS: I can use it.

 

CH: Great.

 

TS: I mean, that works. So it’s right here. That’s the Ballpark

 

CH: Perfect. And could you label that number “3,” please? And then the coordinates–I have a number–[inaudible] make sure I got these right: 44°08′ and then 67°50′.

 

TS: Yep.

 

CH: Great.

 

TS: So 08′ was here, alright? Which brings you right there. And 50’–67° 50′ is right there.

 

CH: Sure. Perfect, great.

 

TS: [inaudible]

 

CH: And then to [inaudible]–

 

TS: Basically that is gonna put you right around here .

 

[0:58:05]

 

CH: Great. Perfect, thank you. And then moving back to this chart, where was the Walsh Museum turned into gift shop turned back into a museum?

 

TS: That was right on West Street.

 

CH: West Street.

 

TS: So it was…

 

CH: It’s hard on this map, I know.

 

TS: I’m just trying to…It was right here. Number “4?”

 

CH: Sure, please, thank you.

 

TS: And I can give you the address?

 

CH: That’d be awesome.

 

TS: 52 West Street.

 

CH: Great. And you said you started working for the college in 2010 which is around the time that was torn down. Do you know if that date is correct? Did I get it right?

 

TS: You got that correct.

 

CH: Okay, perfect.

 

TS: Yeah, its last year was 2010 and actually I started working for the college in 2011.

 

CH: Great, and then if you could just circle Great Duck and Mount Desert Rock. And if Great Duck could be number “5” and Mount Desert Rock number “6.” And then you mentioned Baker Island as well…And that’d be number “7.”

 

TS: Do you want that labeled on here as well?

 

CH: Either is fine. If you have it on one or both [inaudible]. And then back on this chart, probably, you mentioned the COA pier and the COA waterfront. You could circle those and we can call them “8.”

 

[1:00:15]

 

TS: Okay.

 

CH: Perfect, and then you mentioned the Bar Harbor whale watch docks.

 

TS: They’re going to be right–if this is the pier here, yeah–

 

CH: I know, I’m realizing [inaudible] the one in Bar Harbor.

 

TS: It’s right next to it. So they’re gonna be right here. I’m gonna do this…

 

CH: Perfect.  And number “9?”  Yes, thank you. And then you mentioned a few places where COA boats were launched. If there’s a good place on this one, maybe to show where in Surry, they would have been launched from…

 

TS: So in Surry they would have been right up–I wish I had a light–I got one, actually–here. Let’s see here. So it would be right here. “10?”

 

CH: “10,” yes, thank you.

 

TS: Okay.

 

CH: And then if you could also show where they would be launched from Trenton at the airport.

 

TS: So that is right here. And that’s right here.

 

CH: Right, and that would be “11.” Number “11.” And then you also mentioned the Bar and Somes Sound, if you could circle where those are and call those “12” and “13” as well.

 

TS: So, number “12.”And Somes Sound–Abel’s is right–sorry, hold on a second. Yeah, it’s right here. That’s “13?”

 

[1:02:21]

 

CH: Yes. Thank you.

 

TS: Okay.

 

CH: And then you mentioned sometimes seeing whales between Sand Beach and Egg Rock. Do you have like a specific–

 

TS: Yeah

 

CH: –thing to draw of where that would look?

 

TS: So literally right in here.That was a–that’s fin whales I’ve seen there.

 

CH: Great.

 

TS: And then Egg Rock, right here. And I’ve seen them out here as well. Okay?

 

CH: Great, so if you could call, maybe–

 

TS: “Fin”?

 

CH: Yeah, “fin.”And if that could be–that’d be “14.” And then if these could be “14.5.”

 

TS: Both?

 

CH: Yes, thank you.

 

TS: Okay?

 

CH: And then you also said that you sometimes saw minkes south of Egg Rock. Is that what this was referring to?

 

TS: Oh, they would be here too.

 

CH: Okay, great.

 

TS: So…minke ?

 

CH: Yes. And then that’d be “15.”

 

TS: Well, I’ve seen minkes here, here, up here, up here. Along here….

 

[1:04:04]

 

CH: Would you mind just drawing circles for those areas and labeling them all “15”?

 

TS: Yeah. Okay, so let me see again. I’ll start–I’ve seen make me see minkes all around. I’m just going to do a little–give me a shape. I’ll do a little squares. Sorry.

 

CH: No, go ahead.

 

TS: I mean, you see them all over the–really the area here, but there’s also places where I haven’t seen them. Right here. I’ve seen them along here. We’ve seen them over here. Seen them out here. Seen them out here. See them out here. And I’ve seen them up here. Like over–yeah, would have been out this way more.

 

CH: Could you give me–

 

TS: These are all number “15”?

 

CH: Yes. And I–you don’t need to write that, I have the square [inaudible] but around what range of years are we talking for the squares?

 

TS: Oh, all the time I’ve been here.

 

CH: Cool, great. And then I think we need to get out the bigger one just to point out to Grand Manan Banks.

 

TS: Yep. Right here.

 

CH: Yes, great. And that would be number “16.”And then I think you said the East Bumps.

 

TS: Yeah, the East Bumps are right here.

 

CH: Great, that’d be number “17.”

 

TS: And then the Outer Schoodic Ridges?

 

[01:06:00]

 

CH: Yes, if you can circle those as well, please.

 

TS: They are right here. Number?

 

CH: “18.”  Great, thank you. And then Cod Ledge which is close to Gannet Island?

 

TS: Okay. No, that’s where I’ve seen gannets.

 

CH: That’s where you’ve seen–okay.

 

TS: Yeah, Cod Ledge is better to note here because it’s right here.

 

CH: Okay, great.

 

TS: What number?

 

CH: “19.”

 

TS: “19”? Okay.

 

CH: And if you could just point out the Thrumcap.

 

TS: Right there.

 

CH: Great, now that’d be “20.” And then, you might not–I know you said they drag for scallops around the Porcupines. Do you have any idea of where that might roughly be?

 

TS: Yeah, they dragged all through here. All–the whole area here.

 

CH: The whole area here?

 

TS: Yeah. So you want me to do like a dashed line?

 

CH: Yeah, that’d be perfect, actually. Thank you. Great, that could be “21.”

 

TS: Okay.

 

CH: And then perfect. We are all set.

 

TS: That’s it?

 

CH: Yep. All right.

 

KC: Awesome. I just want to ask one more thing: Is there anyone that you’ve worked with in the past or currently work for you think would be a good person for us to talk to?

 

TS: Have you talked to Eddie [Monat] yet?

 

KC: Hopefully today.

 

TS: Okay, good.

 

CH: Lots of scheduling.

 

TS: Yeah, yeah, right. I know. He’s tough to work around. Have you talked to Larry, maybe Larry Nuesslein?

 

[1:08:05]

 

CH: How would you spell that last name? Do you know?

 

TS: Yeah. N-e-u-s-s-l-e-i-n , but I’ll–let me–give me a second here. Let me give you his number, too.

 

CH: That would be great. right.

 

TS: N-u-e-s-s-l-e-i-n And it’s (207) 266-7342.

 

CH: Perfect. And what is he–what’s his background?

 

TS: He’s a whale watch captain. And he’s been in and out of the bay for ages and ages–longer than me.

 

KC: Cool. If you think of anyone else let us know.

 

CH: Yeah, please.

 

TS: Yeah, I’ll give you Gary Fagan. Gary Fagan, his number is (207) 479-9960.

 

CH: And is that F-a-g-a-n?

 

TS: Yep. And then the last person is going to be Kaitlyn Mullen: M-u-l-l-e-n, (207) 944-7379.

 

CH: Great, and what is the background for– Great!

 

[1:09:45]

 

TS: All are boat operators. But Kaitlyn is a little different. She used to run the ferry from here. So she started Frenchman Bay Research Boating. And she’s an acoustician. She got her PhD at UMaine. And she’d be interesting to talk to you. But Eddie–nobody’s gonna be able to tell you about the bottom like Eddie. But Gary Fagan does a lot of fishing–line fishing not a lot of commercial fishing but fishing pole fishing, sport fishing. And Larry of course has been running well watches but Gary’s also been running tour boats. He’s been running the Acadian for also 25 years or something–I don’t know how many years–a lot of them.  Yeah, okay.

 

KC: Thank you so much [inaudible].

 

TS: You’re most welcome!

 

CH: So if you just do the “Stop.”

 

KC: This thing?

 

CH: Yep.

 

[1:11:01]