The Wrack

Chris Feurt, director of the Coastal Training Program, received the Margaret A. Davidson Award for Stewardship from the Coastal & Estuarine Research Federation in November 2021.

In October, representatives from 10 southern Maine beach communities gathered to share their experiences preparing for coastal storms, particularly in the context of rising seas. We report some of what we heard during the half-day program.

200 + plants later it just may be working

It’s too early to tally the full damage from Hurricane Matthew, but I watched closely as four research reserves in our national system took the brunt of the storm.

Beach-based businesses, a powerful economic engine for Maine, are generally little prepared for storm surge and coastal flooding. Yet lessons learned from previous disasters underscore how important the recovery of businesses is to the overall recovery of a region’s economy.

The Wells Reserve recently hosted coastal communities from Kittery to Scarborough for a workshop titled Tracking Progress - Better Safe than Sorry. The workshop was a combination of presentations and group discussions for participants to discuss how their communities are working to improve their resilience to coastal hazards and extreme weather events in light of climate change. The workshop gave participants the opportunity to identify shared goals and track progress towards these goals.

On a classic October morning, a research team heads to the Eliot–South Berwick line, where a private landowner has opened his property for a Wells Reserve study of fish and fish habitat. Parking the pickup at the end of a long hayfield, the five gather up gear and step into a middle-aged pine-oak forest, then head downslope past ferns and toppled trees till the trail goes wet underfoot, the canopy breaks, and they stand at the edge of Shoreys Brook. This is headquarters for the next few hours. It is one of eight sites along the brook’s 4.3 miles being surveyed for resident and migratory fish, and their habitat, in advance of a planned dam removal downstream.