The news, reported by the Mount Desert Islander, that the schedule for cruise ship visits to Bar Harbor for this spring, summer and fall shows "the town on track to set a new record … with 140 scheduled port calls," is an economic indicator of sorts.

Receding ice in the Arctic is the dramatic, even shocking result of climate change, climatologists say. But despite what may be understood as environmental catastrophe, open waters in the previously ice-bound region present opportunity. Those opportunities include new shipping lanes, oil and gas exploration and even tourism.

MACHIAS—To Julie Barker, Helen's Restaurant is more than a building.

The key to success "is a single harvester, with fire in the belly, skin in the game and a sense of delayed reward."

Nine years ago, a man who had no background or any interest in creating art became an artist. Swimming along the bottom of Wiscasset harbor, 30 feet under water, bottle hunter Rick Carney was hit with an idea that would lead him down an unimagined path.

The first time Aaron Sprague and Karen Roper sat down in a yurt, owned by a friend in Maine, they experienced a deep sense of calm. "It was such a cool space and we thought...'"

It's more than a building. That was the point speakers made at the May 1 dedication of Maine Maritime Academy's new ABS Center for Engineering, Science and Research.

Picture in your mind a cargo ship and an aircraft carrier, one 900-feet and the other 1,200-feet-long and both 20 stories tall, traveling through the ocean only 100 yards away from each other.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources will hold a public hearing May 14 on a proposal to dredge Beals Harbor and Pig Island Gut Channel. The hearing, set for 6 p.m. at the Beals Elementary School, will be conducted to receive testimony solely about the impact on the fishing industry.