About Maine Aquaculture - Stories of Resilience and Innovation
Rising Tides: Adapting to Coastal Maine’s Future captures the voices of people living and working along Maine’s changing coast. Through long-form conversations with oyster farmers and other aquaculturalists, fishermen, scientists, and community leaders, the series explores how environmental, economic, and cultural forces are reshaping the working waterfront.
Maine’s coast sits on the frontlines of global change. Warming waters, shifting fisheries, new industries, and increasing pressure on access and infrastructure are transforming ways of life that have endured for generations. Rather than focusing on headlines or ideology, Rising Tides listens closely to lived experience – how people are adapting, what is being lost, and what might still be preserved.
These are local stories with global relevance, told thoughtfully and without haste, offering insight into the challenges and possibilities facing coastal communities in Maine and beyond.
Rising Tides: Two Scallop Farms, Two Bets — with Dana Morse
Send us Fan Mail Two Maine scallop farms are betting on two different futures: one building a premium shucked-meat business, the other building a market for whole, live scallops — a market that depends on testing infrastructure more fragile than it looks. In this episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna talks with Dana Morse, whose work on Maine's scallop farming industry stretches back to early research trips to Japan and years of applied science that helped develop the growing techniques behind ...
2 Jun 2026
Rising Tides: Mere Point Oyster and a Love of the Coast — with Dan Devereux
Send us Fan Mail Dan Devereux has spent more than thirty years working Maine's coast. He'll tell you the hardest part has never been the oysters. In this episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna speaks with Dan Devereux, co-founder of Mere Point Oyster Company in Brunswick, about the people who show up every day to do this work — and what it means to build something that earns its place in a community, while helping to open the door for the next generation of people who want to make a life on the ...
19 May 2026
Rising Tides: Johns River Oyster and a 4,000-Year-Old Tradition — with David Cheney
Send us Fan Mail Maine's Damariscotta River has been producing oysters for thousands of years. The shell middens that line its banks — some rising 31 vertical feet — are evidence that Native Americans were harvesting here at commercial scale long before lobstering, clamming, or any other fishery Maine is known for. David Cheney farms 650 feet from the largest of them, and he'll tell you that's all the science he needs. In this episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna speaks with David Cheney, foun...
5 May 2026
Rising Tides: Turning Waste into Value on the Maine Coast – with Liam Fisher
Send us Fan Mail Maine's working waterfront generates enormous amounts of waste — fish heads, viscera, eel trim — material that processors pay to get rid of. Liam Fisher thinks that's an opportunity hiding in plain sight. In this episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna speaks with Liam about the unlikely path that brought him from mechanical engineering in Worcester to hand-cutting eels on the Maine coast, and how a bucket of smelts from a roommate set him on the road to building Maine's first wa...
7 Apr 2026
Rising Tides: The Hidden Work Behind Maine’s Coastal Economy – with Dana Morse
Send us Fan Mail Maine’s coastal economy is being quietly reshaped by new industries, new pressures, and the people working to connect them. In this episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna speaks with Dana Morse about what it really takes to support a changing working waterfront. With decades of experience at Maine Sea Grant and the University of Maine’s Marine Extension program, Dana reflects on his role at the intersection of science, industry, and community. From helping shellfish farmers get ...
17 Feb 2026
Rising Tides: Oyster Farming in Lobster Country – with Abby Barrows
Maine’s working waterfronts are evolving, as aquaculture, climate change, and shifting access reshape how coastal communities make a living. In this episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna speaks with Abby Barrows about her path from environmental science into oyster farming, and what that shift reveals about the future of Maine’s coast. Abby reflects on why she chose to buy an oyster farm on Deer Isle, what makes that particular stretch of water unique, and the practical challenges of operating ...
4 Feb 2026
Rising Tides: Why So Much Sustainable Fish Never Reaches Our Plates – with Ben Martens
Maine has abundant, sustainably managed fisheries, yet much of that fish never reaches local plates. In this episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna speaks with Ben Martens about why disconnects between fishing, markets, and access continue to shape who benefits from Maine’s coastal resources. Ben reflects on how working waterfront access, unstable markets, and shifting priorities affect fishing communities, even when fish stocks are healthy. Their conversation explores efforts to strengthen loca...
20 Jan 2026
Rising Tides: How Science Is Shaping Maine's Coastal Future - with Bill Mook
Decisions made today will shape Maine’s coast for decades to come. In this episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna speaks with Bill Mook about how science, regulation, and long-term thinking influence the future of the working waterfront. Bill Mook reflects on the role of research and governance in managing coastal change, from aquaculture development to broader environmental pressures in the Gulf of Maine. Their conversation explores how evidence, public process, and collaboration help guide dif...
9 Jan 2026
Adapting to Change on the Working Waterfront - with Jeff Auger
Maine’s coastal future is being shaped by people adapting in real time. In this opening episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna speaks with oyster farmer Jeff Auger about the forces reshaping the working waterfront. Jeff reflects on his path into aquaculture and the realities of building a livelihood on the water today. Together, they discuss cooperation between fishermen, farmers, regulators, and coastal communities, and how environmental change, access, and local knowledge increasingly shape ev...
16 Mar 2021
Maine Aquaculture - Episode 8 - Eric Oransky, Maine Ocean Farms
Eric Oransky grew up in Freeport, Maine. He spent a lot of time on Casco Bay. When he was 21, he apprenticed with the Scottish master cabinet maker James Bowie for furniture making in northern California. In 2007, at 23, Eric moved back to Maine and started his first business, all the while spending time on the water any chance he got. He focused on woodworking, including furniture, and building for about seven years. He found he missed working on the water. So, in 2017 he formed ...
2 Feb 2021
Maine Oyster Aquaculture - Episode 7 - Ben Martens, Maine Coast Fishermens Association
19 Jan 2021
Maine Oyster Aquaculture - Episode 6 - Smokey McKeen, Pemaquid Oyster Company
29 Dec 2020
Maine Oyster Aquaculture - Episode 5, George Parr, Upstream Trucking
George Parr has been in the seafood business for four decades. He has been instrumental in creating the reputation of Maine oysters. George takes a firm stand when buyers “From Away” come to Maine and try to drive down oyster prices rather than pay a fair price for what many consider to be among the world’s best oysters. His sense of fairness has benefited not just his clients but all of Maine’s oyster growers. George came to Maine from New York City He is candid, funny, and direct. To say Ge...
15 Dec 2020
Maine Oyster Aquaculture - Episode 4, Abigail Carroll, Nonesuch Oysters
In 2010, Abigail Carroll started NONESUCH oysters. It began as a small oyster farm in a nature conservancy in Scarborough, Maine, which just south of Portland. Today Nonesuch Oyster is an award-winning company whose oysters are in found top restaurants across the country. NONESUCH also offers (which I find interesting) a range of healthy Maine seafood and handmade skincare products made with Maine marine ingredients.
1 Nov 2020
Maine Oyster Aquaculture - Episode 1, Bill Mook, Mook Sea Farm
Today we are with Bill Mook, an industry pioneer who is the founder of Mook Sea Farm, an oyster farm on the Damariscotta River. Bill has been recognized by the Gulf of Maine Council's Sustainable Industry Awards for his efforts to improve the Gulf of Maine ecosystem and the coastal communities. He was a member of the Maine Ocean Acidification Commission that convened, wrote, and submitted a report to the Maine Legislature on the effects of coastal and ocean acidification on comme...
27 Oct 2020
Maine Oyster Aquaculture - Episode 3, Ben Hamilton, Love Point Oyster
26 Oct 2020
Maine Oyster Aquaculture - Episode 2, Boe Marsh, Community Shellfish
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