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.

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.

According to a 2014 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Maine ranked 27 on a list of 30 coastal states for water quality at beaches.

"It's about the magic of this place, the courage of these fishermen, whom we all love and admire, the last frontiersmen who brave the sea..."

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.

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

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.

On a brisk late spring morning in 1920 the Governor Bodwell was docked at Tillson's Wharf in Rockland and preparing for departure to Vinalhaven. Several capable deckhands wheeled dollies loaded with freight