Maine's reopening plan not backed by big enough testing regime, experts say

On Friday, Maine took the first cautious steps toward loosening restrictions that slowed the growth of the coronavirus here, protecting hospitals from being overwhelmed. The four-phase plan opens many parts of our economy between now and August.

But experts say the scale of testing the state is intending on deploying is far too small to ensure success -- like maybe thirty times too small -- and say its likely to doom the state to have to keep opening and shutting, as asymptomatic carriers will spread it in many settings.

I have the story in this week's Maine Sunday Telegram, and also online here.

As an aside: the Press Herald's subscriptions and viewership have dramatically surged during this crisis, but the pandemic is battering newspapers around the country as the pandemic closes advertisers' businesses, theaters, and venues. The paper provides pandemic coverage free of charge, but if you value it and can afford to, please subscribe or even donate (tax deductible through this mechanism) so it can continue to provide it.

[Update, 5/17/20: The testing regime remains too small, experts say, despite a doubling of the state lab's capacity through a partnership with veterinary medical manufacturer IDEXX.]

Can a Maine-based project help farmers worldwide fight climate change by storing more carbon in their soil?

I recently reported on an applied research initiative at Maine's Wolfe's Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment that has the potential to help save the world.

Some 14 percent of human greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, and reducing that figure will be essential to mitigating climate change. One way to do that would be to help farmers have healthier, more carbon-rich soil, as that would in effect suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, while boosting farm yields, revenues, and resiliency to flooding and drought. As I reported in the Portland Press Herald, doing that is ultimately a matter of good, very high resolution data, which is hard for smaller farmers to get in an affordable, integrated fashion.

The OpenTEAM initiative -- a partnership between the Center, Stonyfield Organic, the US Department of Agriculture, and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research aims to change all that via the field testing of new hardware, software, and data sharing systems.

Maine is suddenly at the forefront of efforts to confront climate change, with statutory requirements in place to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent and become carbon neutral by mid-century.

Covering Climate Now and the Gulf of Maine

Ahead of United Nations Climate Summit in New York next week, more than 170 news outlets have signed on to Covering Climate Now, an effort organized by the Columbia Journalism Review, The Guardian, and The Nation to have reporters release local, national, and global climate stories in a singe week. This week in fact.

The Portland Press Herald signed on to the effort, and the first two stories -- by yours truly -- appeared in yesterday's Maine Sunday Telegram and today's Press Herald.

The first is on the unfolding climate crisis in the Gulf of Maine, the second fastest warming part of the world's oceans, a phenomenon scientists have linked to the rapid meltdown of the Arctic region and Greenland ice sheets, with have altered the qualities of the currents that feed the Gulf. This is essentially an update on what has been learned or experienced since our six-part series on the issue, "Mayday," appeared in 2015. (It got some additional national attention after being named a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.)

The second -- in today's paper -- is on the policy response. After years of inaction under Republican Gov. Paul LePage and his partisan allies in the legislature, Maine is now moving aggressively to make up for lost time, under a new governor and Democratic-controlled legislature. Congress, however, is still stalled. Details within.

My Press Herald colleagues continue the series this week, starting tomorrow with a story on woodlot owners and carbon sinks.

Warming of Gulf of Maine choking right whale food supply

In recent years, the endangered North Atlantic right whale has effectively abandoned summer feeding grounds in the eastern Gulf of Maine, showing up instead in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, where many were mowed down by ships before officials realized what was happening and impemented a speed ban.

Now scientists appear to have nailed down why they moved. As I reported in yesteday's Portland Press Herald, the warming of the Gulf of Maine has decimated the copepod the right whales feed on, forcing them to look elsewhere for sustenance. Details in the story.

Scientists have said the right whale could go extinct by 2040, after a spate of deaths. Last year was one of the warmest on record in the Gulf of Maine.

For more on the warming of the Gulf, copepods, and a lot of other context, consider this 2015 series.

Maine's US Senators seek federal response to warming Gulf of Maine

Last week I reported on Canadian researchers having found record-warm water pouring into the primary deepwater entrance to the Gulf of Maine and Maine scientists confirming that they've seen similar, Gulf Stream-derived water filling some of the Gulf's deepwater basins -- all worrying signs that the region's stunning long-term warming trend is continuing.

Earlier this week, I had this update: US Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Angus King (I-Maine) have written the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asking for a beefed-up federal research and monitoring response to determine causes and effects. The rest of Maine's Congressional delegation -- Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R-ME2) and Chellie Pingree (D-ME1) -- said they also strongly support the senator's actions.

Details herein.

For more on the warming of the Gulf, consider this comprehensive Press Herald series on the issue, plus this follow-up on how little the State of Maine has done to address it.

Record-warm deepwater pouring into the Gulf of Maine, researchers find

In today's Portland Press Herald, I wrote about a Canadian research team's discovery that record-warm Gulf Stream water is pouring into the Gulf of Maine, probably because of a weakening of the normally dominant, very frigid Labrador Current flowing down from Greenland via Atlantic Canada. The water - at depths of more than 200 feet - was a balmy 57F earlier this month, 11 degrees above the norm for this time of year, and other scientists say such water has been filling deepwater basins inside the Gulf for months.

Exactly what will happen next is uncertain, but the fear is that when the water upwells to the surface -- usually during winter - it could contribute to another "ocean heat wave" like the one in 2012 the wrecked havoc with just about everything in the Gulf and set off a chain of events that had New Brunswick lobstermen detaining trucks filled with Maine lobster at the gates of Canadian processing plants.

[Update, 5/2/17: Prompted by this story, US Senators Angus King and Susan Collins have asked NOAA to take action.]

For more on the warming of the Gulf of Maine and the possible consequences, consider my 2015 Press Herald series "Mayday." I last wrote on the situation -- and Maine's lack of response -- in November.

Speaking on the crisis in the oceans and Gulf of Maine, Portland, Mar. 7

I'll be speaking about the crisis in the world's oceans and in the Gulf of Maine on March 7th at the Portland Public Library here in Maine. The talk was originally to have taken place in early February, but was postponed by a winter storm.

[Update, 3/7/18: Alas, this event has again been postponed by a winter storm. The new date is April 4, same time and place.]

The event -- which kicks off at 6pm in the Rines Auditorium in the main library on Monument Square -- is the 2018 Sustainability Series Keynote. It's free and open to the public.

As a foreign correspondent, I long focused on oceans policy and global environmental reporting, and my first book, Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas, took me to Antarctica, the tiny atoll states of Central Pacific, the coral reefs of Belize, the depleted cod banks of Newfoundland and the troubled waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Black Sea. My second book, The Lobster Coast, told the story of coastal Maine and its ecosystem, and "Mayday," a 2015 series I wrote for the Portland Press Herald, was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.

I'll be speaking about the nature of the multi-faceted marine crisis, what it means for humans, and what might be done about it. Hope you can make it.

Can a fallen New Hampshire mill town become the Silicon Valley of human organ manufacturing?

Over at POLITICO, I have the story of how inventor Dean Kamen is leading a $300 million push to resolve bottlenecks in the mass production of genetically-customized human tissues and organs and, he hopes, turn Manchester, New Hampshire into the "Silicon Valley of regenerative medicine."

It's a remarkable vision, and one backed by an $80 million Pentagon grant that's ramping up research-and-development of the processes, manufacturing technology, 3D-printers, and process controls that would allow humans to print and grow their own replacement organs rather than wait on a transplant list. And Kamen has industry giants like Rockwell Automation on board, not to mention the entire political class of his tiny adopted state.

It's also taking place within the Millyard, a once-all-but-abandoned 19th century brick industrial complex that was, back in its heyday, the largest textile manufacturing facility on the planet, and a physical expression of the post-Puritan dream of what a republican industrial utopia might look like, a topic I delved into in detail for this POLITICO piece a couple of years back.

When I met with him, Kamen highlighted the remarkable similarities between what Manchester is trying to do and what I wrote about Winston-Salem, North Carolina having accomplished. I'd have to agree, the parallels are pretty remarkable, right down to the focus on growing of human organs.

Facing threat to shellfish industries, Maine doing pretty much nothing

"Mayday," the Portland Press Herald series on the effects -- now and moving forward -- of the rapid warming of the Gulf of Maine, came out two years ago and concluded that Maine wasn't doing enough to confront the threat, particularly in regards to ocean acidification, which is something experts say can actually be mitigated at the state- and local-level. So what's happened since?

As I reported in yesterday's Maine Sunday Telegram, the state government has essentially done nothing, with legislators choosing not to fund the key recommendations of the bipartisan panel they'd convened to study the problem, or even to enable it to continue working. Leadership and action on the issue has been left to a scrappy group of volunteer scientists and conservationists concerned about the problem.

With Maine's fishing and aquaculture industries at risk, there's some choice words from experts on the issue. Details herein.

For more on the problem, consider reading the "Mayday" series (which was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting) and, especially, the parts on ocean acidification and state inaction.

Turns out the American Nations left a genetic trace too

Some of you may recall the study published earlier this year in Nature Communications, where genetics researchers mapped reproductive clustering in North America in time and space. Many of you forwarded the map they produced because it so strikingly resembled those in American Nations.

I talked to the director overseeing that research at Ancestry and wrote about what the results tell us about the regional cultures for the third installment of "Balkanized America," my American Nations-powered series over at Medium.

Those unfamiliar with the American Nations paradigm will want to first take a look at the first part of the series -- an up-to-date overview of the American Nations model and its wide-ranging implications and utility.

Medium, the blog hosting site created by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, is developing a members only section, and invited me to create the series, so you do need to subscribe to read these. I hope you enjoy.

Gulf of Maine warming concentrated in summer, which is getting longer

I've been remiss in posting that in this past week's Maine Sunday Telegram I reported on new scientific research that reveals a new level of detail of how the Gulf of Maine is warming.

As discussed in detail in my 2015 series on the warming of the Gulf, the body of water is the second fastest warming part of the world ocean, with plenty of implications for life here, marine and human alike.

The new research -- by a team including many of the same scientists who worked on the previous studies -- shows Gulf summers are getting longer by two days a year, and that almost all the annual warming is concentrated in the summer months meaning, among other things, less of a cold-water "speed bump" is present to protect the Maine coast from hurricanes.

The AP followed up on this story later in the week.

In recent weeks, right whales have been dying in large numbers in the northeast Atlantic -- possibly due in part to secondary climate effects -- and researchers have estimated that many commercial fish species in the Gulf may run out of thermally appropriate habitat in coming decades.

A catastrophic year for North Atlantic right whales

This has been a terrible year for one of the most endangered marine mammals on Earth, the North Atlantic right whale, which has a surviving population of just 500. As I reported in Wednesday's Portland Press Herald, at least a dozen of the rare whales had been found dead off New England and Atlantic Canada, most of them in waters they had not previously been known to frequent.

Another whale carcass has since been reported off Massachusetts.

Why is this happening? Scientists aren't certain, but food -- and therefore climate change -- is believed to be a driving factor. Read on to learn more.

I've reported extensively on the right whales in the past, when it appeared they had finally turned a corner. For more on this, start here.

On pirates in Maine in the Press Herald and on WCSH-6

By coincidence, I both wrote about and was interviewed about pirates in Maine last week.

Maine's NBC affiliates, WCSH-6 here in Portland and WLBZ-2 in Bangor, were curious about the legendary treasure of Jewell Island in Casco Bay. Captain Kidd is said to have left his mother lode there, so could it be true? No, I told them from a float on said bay, but some of the other pirates I wrote about in Republic of Pirates definitely did visit Casco Bay, so anything's possible, however unlikely. Here's the segment.

Those pirates belonged to Black Sam Bellamy's flotilla -- the vessels that survived a spring storm off Cape Cod in 1717, that is. By coincidence, an exhibit of artifacts and treasures from the wreck of Bellamy's flagship -- which didn't make it -- has opened here in Portland, and I have this story in the Maine Sunday Telegram about the pirates and the controversies surrounding the man who found the Whydah.

For those eager to learn more about Bellamy and the golden age pirates, consider my third book.

Study predicts Gulf of Maine will become too warm for most ground fish

Regular readers will likely recall "Mayday," a series I did for the Press Herald on the warming of the Gulf of Maine and the challenges it presents for its inhabitants, human and otherwise. In this week's Maine Sunday Telegram, I have a story on a new scientific study that models temperature changes in the Gulf at a much higher resolution than previous ones did.

The results are sobering: suitable thermal habitat for many traditional commercial fish species like cod, haddock, pollock, plaice, and redfish will essentially vanish in the last decades of this century. Read on for details.

DNA study confirms American Nations map

From Nature "Clustering of 770,000 genomes reveal post-colonial population structure of North America."

Last month, the journal Nature published a genetic study on ancestral clustering in North America using the DNA tests of 775,000 Americans, ultimately tied to genealogical information, to reveal the settlement and familial patterns of the continent's settlement.

Yes, you guessed it: the results match my American Nations map -- which is based on post-1492 settlement flows -- to what even I found to be a jaw dropping degree.

Remember: American Nations isn't based on genetics. It argues there are distinct cultural regions - stateless nations even -- that were created by separate initial settlement patterns. While obviously this would leave a genetic trace, one wouldn't necessarily expect it to be super strong, especially in areas that had substantial subsequent immigration or intra-regional migration. The argument is that the underlying values of the initial settlement culture shaped the region, even in the later absence of the people themselves.

But turns out the genetic signature is strong and precise as well. Check out, for instance, how the New England settlement of Yankeedom left a strong genetic trace not just in New England, southwestern New Brunswick, and Upstate New York, but even in Michigan, which was settled in the early and middle 19th century. (That Utah is part of this genetic clustering does not surprise, given the Yankee origins of the Mormon religion and migration, as discussed in the book.) See also - despite the smaller numbers - the Yankee traces in the Left Coast parts of California, Oregon, and Washington.

Notice also the Appalachian streams: yup, they pour right through the lower parts of the "Midwestern" states, as well as the Ozarks and into Oklahoma and the Texas Hill Country, just as American Nations insisted (much to the chagrin of some in the latter regions.)

There's a lot to unpack here, and am hoping to get a chance to do so in more detail moving forward. [Update, 10/14/17: I finally did just that in an extended story for Medium.]

Climate change and the Gulf of Maine series concludes

Our six-day, seven-part series on the rapidly warming Gulf of Maine wraps up in today's Portland Press Herald with this story on what can and isn't being done to address the challenges here in Maine. I also wrote a companion story on the release yesterday of a new study in the journal Science linking the rapid warming of the gulf to the failure of its cod stock to recover.

Yesterday's installment focused on the baleful effects of ocean acidification already being visited on clams, mussels, oysters and other commercial shellfish species in the state. Wednesday's focused on the expanding range and population of warm water invaders like green crabs, blue crabs (!), squid, black sea bass, and some unplesant tunicates.

The full series, entitled Mayday: Gulf of Maine in Distress, can be found at this landing page at the Press Herald.

Thanks also to CBC-New Brunswick and WCSH-6 here in Maine for their interest in the series, and also to New Brunswick's largest paper, the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, which I understand plans to republish the entire series in their print editions.

For those in Maine interested in learning more about the crisis in the world's oceans, I'm giving a talk on my first book, Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas, at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland at noon on November 19th. It's free and open to the public. There will be a book signing afterward held by the campus bookstore.

Thanks to photographer Greg Rec, designer Brian Robitaille, web designer Karen Beaudoin managing editor Steve Greenlee, graphics designer Michael Fisher, and my other Press Herald colleagues for helping create such a powerful package.

[Update, 11/20/17: Two years later, the state has done very little to address the problem.]

Climate Change and the Gulf of Maine, Parts 1 & 2

For the past ten years, the Gulf of Maine has warmed more rapidly than anyplace else in the world's oceans, save for a section of the Kuroshio Current northeast of Japan, with 2012 the hottest year on record since observations began in the Civil War era. The effects have been manifold and sobering, particularly when you consider that even at the more gradual projected warming rates, 2012-like conditions will be the "new normal" by mid-century.

For the past few months, I've been at work on a multi-part series on this issue for the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, where I'm a staff writer. The resulting series -- seven stories over six days reported from across the region -- kicked off in this week's Telegram.

The first story provides the overview, along with a sidebar on how, under outgoing Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canadian officials interfered with my attempts to communicate with government scientists there about their research.

Today's story -- Part 2 of 6 -- is on concerns over how warming will effect the sort-of "krill of the gulf", a copepod species that most everything else int he food chain ultimately depends on. Puffins and right whales are among our canaries.

"Mayday" has its own landing page where the additional stories will be posted as they come out.

Readers of the series may also be interested in my first two books, Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas (which looks at the global crisis) and The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier (a cultural and environmental history of coastal Maine.)

I'll be speaking on Ocean's End at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, Maine November 19th.

[Update, 11/20/17: Two years later, the state has done very little to address the problem.]

Is this the future of clamming?

In this week's Maine Sunday Telegram, I write about an experimental, commercial-scale, owner operated clam farm intended to empower clam diggers and save an allegedly imperiled resource. Some diggers and clam scientists love it, others fear it, and with the future of the commons at stake, everyone has a strong opinion.

Here's a taste:

Behold Maine’s first commercial-scale soft-shell clam farm, an experimental project that aims to test whether a single owner-operated farm can earn a worthwhile return for clam diggers who heretofore relied exclusively on the whims of nature to earn a living from the seafloor. If it works, it could revolutionize Maine’s second most valuable fishery, enhance the livelihoods of diggers and stop the assault of the green crabs in their tracks.

But the project has been contentious here in Georgetown, a coastal community 6 miles south of Bath, where some clam diggers fear that self-employed clam diggers like Warner and themselves will eventually be pushed out by corporate growers if the succulent mollusks are farmed rather than gathered in the wild.

I also got to do something I haven't in a while: do a photo shoot. The scenic environment in Georgetown, Maine made it easy.



Photo credit/copyright: Colin Woodard.

Speaking on the oceans on MPBN's Speaking in Maine, Dec. 5, 1pm

As some of you know, my first book and years of my reporting career focused on the problems facing the world's oceans. In May, I joined Graham Shimmield, director of the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, in a public discussion of the challenges facing the seas.

The talk is airing tomorrow, Dec. 5, on the radio stations of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. It's part of their "Speaking in Maine" series, and starts at 1pm.

For those with further interest in this topic, my book is entitled Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas. Alas, it's the only one of my four titles not to make this week's Maine Sunday Telegram Paperback Non-Fiction Bestseller List, but that doesn't mean it isn't good!

On America's eastern frontier, a fight over fish, a river, and a Maine law

My story in today's Maine Sunday Telegram is on the fight over the future of alewives in the St.Croix River, which forms the boundary between Maine and New Brunswick.

The fish -- which serves as forage for most bigger creatures in fresh and salt water alike -- has been blocked from entering 94% of the watershed on orders from the Maine legislature because bass fishing guides fear their industry might be undermined by the alewives' spring spawning run. But environmentalists, lobstermen, the Government of Canada, and the Passamaquoddy Indians all now want that law overturned.

At stake: the ecological future of 1600 square miles of lakes and ponds and perhaps a far greater swath of the Gulf of Maine.

[Update, 6/25/19: An update on the alewives story.]