Author: kelliofthewilds

Heritage Harvest Dinner 2021

Maine Documentary Photography, New Mainers

The Harvest Heritage Dinner was more than just a dinner, it was a symbol of things to come for our increasingly diverse community in Midcoast Maine. The dinner featured recipes from all over the world and showed that being part of a thriving, welcoming community extends far beyond the geographic boundaries of our local towns and into the far reaches of the world. This collaborative community event was an example of the things that individuals can accomplish when they come together with an idea: to find ways to cultivate connections among individuals from all walks of life to promote a thriving multicultural community. 

I was thrilled to be part of this event and I was excited to see that we had fifty people of all ages in attendance, with family recipes from all over the world – sharing experiences, creating connections, and expanding their palettes, while laughing, learning, and shaping the community that we live in. My goal is to continue to facilitate collaborative programming with active participation from my English language students, whose voice is invaluable to us as we navigate our changing community. My hope is that this is just the beginning. 

Thank you to everyone who made this event happen! I look forward to many more evenings like this in the future. 

One Man’s Seaworthy Seagull Companion

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A RECIPROCAL FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN JOHN MAKOWSKY AND RED EYE

This story first appeared in the Island Institute’s The Working Waterfront newspaper, and is reproduced here with permission. Click here. 

As a lobsterman who’s spent six decades on the water, John Makowsky knows the meaning of lasting relationships—with the sea, with his boat, with his crew, and with his best friend of 16 years: a seagull named Red Eye.

Makowsky hails from Long Island Sound in Connecticut, where he grew up in the shadow of his father hauling traps in the early 1960s. He attended college in Vermont and dabbled in a variety of professional endeavors before returning to his roots as a fourth-generation fisherman, taking over the family business in the early 1980s.

In 1984, he had his dream boat built, a 42-foot Cape Dory trawler, F/V Intrepid, which he still uses to haul traps today. After the lobster die-off in Long Island Sound following Hurricane Floyd in 1999, Makowsky found himself working in an office in Massachusetts. He began adding federal permits to his boat and eventually made the jump to the New Hampshire Seacoast.

During his time on the water, Makowsky became aware of the differences in the seagulls that followed his boat.

“Most of them have their own character and individuality, besides physical things. If you have some awareness of the animals, you’ll notice different mannerisms: the way they move, the way they hop around, the way they land on the boat, the way they go after another, the way they avoid conflict or make conflict, the way they make their calls,” he said. “That’s the way I began to identify Red Eye.”

Red Eye, so named for a distinct coloring, began her tenure aboard Intrepid from the stern, where she would rotate between her go-to positions a safe distance from Makowsky.

“There’s been an increase in trust over the years. In the past, she was very camera shy. If I pulled my phone out to take a picture, she’d fly off. That was it. No pictures. Now she lets me take pictures,” said Makowsky.

“For a long time, she didn’t like me making eye contact with her. She’d turn away. Now she’ll just stand there and look right at me and I can talk to her,” he said.

The two friends are now so at ease with each other that Red Eye will eat brown hake—her favorite—from Makowsky’s hand. And quickly.

“Like today when I went out, I didn’t see any seagulls at all for five miles. All of a sudden in the sky, there was one flying toward me, and I knew it would be her. She always finds us,” Makowsky said.

He believes Red Eye spends the night on the Isle of Shoals.

“There have been times in the winter when I may drive offshore, 15-20 miles out, and I haven’t seen her. And all of a sudden, she’s there. When she wants to find me, she does.”

In June, Red Eye injured a foot, causing her to lose her balance on the offshore boat rides that she so loved.

“It was heartbreaking,” Makowsky said, and he began making calls, eventually finding the Center for Wildlife in Cape Neddick. After three weeks of attempting to wrangle Red Eye into captivity aboard the boat, Makowsky was finally successful in maneuvering his wounded companion into a lobster crate with a net and several bite marks to show for it.

“When I heard that a fisherman had brought in a gull, I was intrigued, because sometimes the gulls are seen as nuisance animals,” said Sarah Kern, community engagement specialist at the Center for Wildlife. “I didn’t realize that was just the tip of the iceberg. Red Eye truly has chosen Captain John as a companion.”

Despite a grim outlook in the early stages of treatment, Red Eye proved that a little comfort food can go a long way. Makowsky delivered her favorite brown hake, which boosted her spirits on the road to recovery.

Center for Wildlife staff members treated the older muscle and nerve damage that was restricting Red Eye’s use of her foot using a bootie designed to retrain the nerve and muscle, along with tub time for preening, waterproofing, and keeping weight off the feet and legs. Staff even turned to homeopathic remedies and reiki.

Within a few weeks, staff decided Red Eye was strong enough to heal in her natural element, with her friend by her side, and made arrangements with Makowsky to celebrate her release together at sea aboard Intrepid.

“The day on the boat solidified that she was right where she belonged,” Kern said. “Often when an animal is being prepared to be released, it’s stressful—lots of moving around, unfamiliar noises—they know something is up. The minute the boat started, Red Eye just sat down in the carrier next to John and waited. It was like she knew she was home.”

Makowsky saw the bird he knew return to form.

“She was so happy to be in the water, just like a playful child. She must have played in the water for ten minutes next to the boat,” he said. “Finally, she lifted up to fly off to Isle of Shoals.”

Since her release, Red Eye has come aboard every day.

“There’s a lot more intelligence than what we give them credit for,” Makowsky observed. “I can identify her as much as she can identify me from other people. There’s no doubt about that. She’s been on the boat longer than any person who’s ever worked with me.”

Spartan Marine: Stuck in the Bronze Age

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This story first appeared in the Island Institute’s The Working Waterfront newspaper, and is reproduced here with permission. Click here. 

Story/Photos by Kelli Park

In a world churning with change, there is a workshop in a cove in Georgetown where the strength of bronze has withstood the test of time. Spartan Marine makes the case that there are some things better left unchanged.

“The marine hardware business has endured,” says Neil Collins, general manager at Derektor Robinhood Marina, which owns and operates Spartan Marine.

“We make deck hardware that really speaks to a different time in the marine industry,” he continues. “There’s not a whole lot of people making bronze hardware anywhere anymore. I think we’re the only ones who make it in the States with these kinds of offerings.” 

The story of Spartan Marine begins in 1963, when Andy Vavolotis founded Cape Dory Yachts in Massachusetts, which produced thousands of yachts over the course of 30 years.

“Andy was dissatisfied with what was available for deck hardware, so he designed his own,” Collins said. “That’s what we still make. He started a bronze hardware business (Spartan Marine) for his own vessels,” and then sold the hardware to other yards.

“They did everything from sailboat masts to tables to architectural pieces. They did a lot,” said Collins. 

And they stuck to proven designs, explains Skip Collins (no relation to Neil), machinist at Spartan Marine and the man behind the metal since the 1980s (off and on).

“The hardware has stayed the same since 1963,” he said. “This hardware was in use in the 1800s. The cleats and everything have been like this for 300 years.”

Skip Collins, whose father ran what was formerly known as Boothbay Region Boatyard, has spent the past 60 years working in Maine’s maritime industry. He started out as a dock boy and remembers working at the boatyard in Cozy Harbor, where they “hauled boats out with a 4-wheel drive and a winch.” 

The casting for Spartan’s hardware is done at a foundry in Massachusetts, after which the pieces are transported to the workshop in Georgetown for Skip Collins’ finishing touches. He uses machinery from circa 1942 to shape and refine a variety of bronze marine hardware pieces, including cleats, ports, seacocks, and outboard motor mounts.

“We have an excellent reputation in the industry for our opening ports, which are really the finest made anywhere in the world. They’re incredibly strong,” said Neil Collins. “Our outboard brackets were adapted from a turn-of-the-century design. We’re the only ones that make these. These are very popular with people who have traditional looking boats, but still want to be able to get off and on the mooring.”

Although the hardware remains the same, the business has changed a bit with the times. In 2018, Spartan started a website for online ordering, and it uses distributors in Europe and Australia. In a time when 3-D printing is changing the concept of production and redefining the notion of efficiency, and electronics and composites are taking over more traditional aspects of the maritime industry, Spartan Marine still relies on classic craftsmanship to create works of art with a purpose. 

“A lot of it hasn’t changed at all,” said Skip Collins, whose hands are weathered by bronze. And for now, the Bronze Age continues to live on.

The Landscapes of My Life

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Kelli Park

School of Education and Human Development, University of Southern Maine

EDU 559: Aspects of Reading for Multlingual Learners

Professor Heather Alden

September 19, 2020

The Landscapes of My Life: An Autoethnography of Creativity through Sense of Place

There are undercurrents in my life that have led me near and far over the course of the past three decades, even if those undercurrents were a mystery to me at the time. When I think of my life, I think mostly of connections: to individuals, to places, to fleeting moments in time that are too beautiful for words, and to the synergy that exists among these evolving elements. 

The elements that define me have long been converging and diverging in a natural rhythm, much like the ebb and flow of the tides: always changing, but forever consistent in their change. The course of my life has been shaped by flowing parallels: as an artist, a writer, a photographer, a traveler, an entrepreneur, an educator, a mother, and an individual with an insatiable desire to explore the nature of connection, near and far. I know now that the threads that weave together these parallels are, and always have been, defined by a sense of place – the “sights, stories, feelings, and concepts” of my surroundings (Ryfield et al., 2019).

From the deserts of Texas to the last frontier of Alaska to the nostalgia of Appalachia to the birch and balsam groves of Maine, and everywhere in between, my childhood was carved by my ever-changing surroundings. As a child, I navigated this immersive lifestyle with an introverted openness that allowed me to become naturally observant, as my fifth-grade teacher once told me. This has since become the element that defines me as an artist, a writer, and a photographer, having “gained a tangible creative benefit from multicultural experience. . .with an open mindset to welcome new experiences,” (Leung et al,. 2008). 

My lifelong immersion in exploration has always felt like the most natural way to live, especially after I (unknowingly, at the time) began to dig deeper into the dynamic “relationship between multicultural experience and creativity. . .as a result of adapting and being open to new experiences,” (Leung et al,. 2008). This fluidity for being receptive to new experiences and surroundings has become a driving force in my life, fueling my endeavors back and forth across the country and beyond, while “seeking out ideas from diverse sources to use in the creative process,” (Leung et al,. 2008).  

The steady flow of change and movement in my life became ingrained in my creativity over time so that the two elements have become inextricably intertwined. My personal explorations and immersions in a changing sense of place have defined my experiences, decisions, and connections, and have shaped the essence of my creativity to “bring [sense of place] into being. . .with a complex intersection of cartography and literature, a charting of interior and exterior landscapes,”(Ryfield et al., 2019). The lens through which I view the world is how I navigate the changing landscapes of my life. My creativity is diversified by the living study of the interconnectedness that exists among individuals, communities, cultures, and their natural surroundings and is something that lives within my mind, my heart, my soul – always. 

From the Rocky Mountains to Big Sky Country to the stark vistas of the Southwest to the granite coves of Maine, and everywhere in between, my adulthood has been defined by something that, up until recently, was not satisfied with stillness. Movement was the only rhythm that felt natural to me for a long time and now that need for constant change has evolved into something more steady with the duality of the changing tides. My deepest connection, in my day to day life, lives within the natural flow of the water that surrounds me. This is another layer of sense of place to be explored, pursued, and depicted over the course of time, and my relationship with the sea, as “a way to identify and respond to the emotional and spiritual bonds people form with certain spaces” (Ryfield et al., 2019). The sea has cast its spell with the mystery of its depths and the eternity of its horizon, so that my connection with it has evolved from “aesthetic experience to part of place” (Ryfield et al., 2019).

The fluidity of movement has become interwoven with every element and parallel in the synergy of my life. It is a force to be reckoned with in my mind, my heart, my soul – always. I navigate the natural flow of my life to depict the sense of place for places that I’ve been and places that I’ll go, and to tell the stories of the individuals who are connected to these places. The spirit of my experiences with these wild places is something that I never forget. I carry it with me always and I think of it often, the feeling of standing on the edge of something faraway. 

References

Leung, A., Maddux, W., Galinsky, A., & Chiu, C. (2008). Multicultural experience enhances creativity: The when and how. American Psychologist, Volume 63(3), 169-181. https://web-b-ebscohost-com.wv-o-ursus-proxy01.ursus.maine.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=ff14e80b-584c-402b-bd98-cf40d40df7a1%40pdc-v-sessmgr04&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=pdh&AN=2008-03389-003

Ryfield, F., Cabana, D., Brannigan, J., & Crowe, T. (2019). Conceptualizing ‘sense of place’ in cultural ecosystem services: A framework for interdisciplinary research. Ecosystem Services, Volume 36, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2019.100907

Oysters – From Delicacy to Staple?

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EMILY SELINGER USES THE COMMUNITY-SUPPORTED MODEL TO BUILD HER MARKET

This story first appeared in the Island Institute’s The Working Waterfront newspaper, and is reproduced here with permission. Click here. 

August 30, 2019

Story and Photos By Kelli Park

Emily Selinger has made it her mission to change the way we look at oysters, one farm-share at a time.

Selinger spent her childhood on the Harraseeket River in Freeport, where she fell in love with working on the water. She taught sailing classes at a young age, and pursued her interest in boats by getting her captain’s license and working on schooners up and down the East Coast.

She studied art history in college in Washington and, for six years, on and off, worked on a 140-foot schooner that cruised between Boston and St. Croix.

“I learned a lot on the water in that boat, mostly about myself,” Selinger says. She eventually returned to Maine and work on a lobster boat. She also befriended Amanda Moeser, owner of Lanes Island Oyster Co. in Yarmouth, which inspired her to start a similar business.

“I was totally captivated with oyster farming from the start,” Selinger remembers. “It’s a perfect marriage of all my favorite things about working on the water—hands-on problem solving, physical maintenance, and I can always be improving and reinventing.”

Selinger began working with Moeser in 2017 and quickly decided to take the plunge, buying a small batch of oyster seed, which she grew on Moeser’s farm that fall, and began the process of establishing her own oyster farm.

“I can’t imagine going out and finding a place to grow oysters without the local knowledge from growing up here. Messing around in little boats, running aground, wandering around in the mud,” she says. “I knew, pretty much instantly, where I wanted to site my farm.”

She then acquired three limited purpose aquaculture licenses for her farm in Freeport, and so began what she calls “the most perfect self-employment opportunity on the water that I ever could have dreamed of.”

CLEAN AND SIMPLE

Selinger’s approach is clean and simple. She operates on 1,600 square feet in the Harraseeket River (with a pending application for expansion) using her 19-foot flat-bottomed, center console skiff, Mignonette. She prefers to work at low tide, when the water is about 2-feet deep, so she can get out and walk in her waders to do routine maintenance.

“I have everything rigged pretty simply right now because it’s just me, and it works well. I’m trying to keep things as minimal as I can,” she says.

After receiving a start-up business grant from the Libra Future Fund, she built a facility in her garage for safe handling and product storage in order to get her enhanced retail license, which is required to sell at farmers’ markets. Selling there is one of her goals for next year.

“I’m trying to approach oyster farming like a vegetable farmer,” she explains.

Selinger spent the past winter developing her strategy, channeling her creativity, and thinking like an entrepreneur.

“It just hit me one day. I was thinking about food and how people sell food and where people sell food,” she says, growing animated. “Where do you think of when you think of eating oysters? Portland. The restaurant scene. Fine dining.”

Oysters have been seen as a delicacy, but Selinger argues that with ideal growing conditions statewide, they can be produced “by the hundreds of thousands.” So why not work to have oysters understood by consumers as “an everyday, eat-at-home item?”

Selinger uses the traditional community-supported agriculture as her model, striving to eliminate the barriers between farmed food and delicacies. Instead of implementing a weekly CSA schedule, which always results in “rotting kale in the fridge,” as she says, this farm-share is individualized: customers purchase allotments of oysters and select year-round delivery dates that fit within their schedule.

Selinger also hopes to increase accessibility through face-to-face connections. She offers personal shucking lessons for first-time customers, and starter kits, which include an insulated cooler bag, shucking knives, and how-to instructions. She also plans to educate customers about different cooking methods (she recommends grilling) to push beyond the raw stereotype and appeal to a wider audience.

Since she launched the CSA earlier this year, Selinger already has 20 customers and has booked shucking gigs for weddings, corporate parties, fundraising events, and festivals in the coming months.

She looks forward to diversifying the local oyster industry while “running her own little experiments” to develop her oyster flavor profile—sweet, salty, and flowery, with a hint of citrus .

And she has strong feelings about the marine economy.

“If we want our working waterfront to continue to grow and be the vibrant community it is now, making some space for people in other ventures, such as aquaculture, is really important. It takes cooperation from everyone, on all sides. The more people we have working on the water here, the better it will be for keeping Maine the way it is. I wholly believe that.”

For more information, visit emilysoysters.com.

Airboats Find a Home in Maine Waters

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Long a staple for the swamps of the South, airboats are now finding their way into Maine waters. 

This story first appeared in the Island Institute’s The Working Waterfront newspaper, and is reproduced here with permission. Click here. 

Story and Photos by Kelli Park

The flat-bottomed, fan-propelled vessels have grown in popularity, and find practical use in shallow water. Airboat hulls are built with aluminum or fiberglass and are coated with polymer to protect against hard surfaces, including snow and ice.

Propulsion is achieved with an aircraft-type propeller and an aircraft or automotive engine, ranging from 50 horsepower all the way to 600 hp, and the boats can reach from 35 mph to 100 mph.

“Think of a reverse airplane,” explains Harpswell Harbormaster Paul Plummer, who uses a town-owned 20-foot airboat. “You know how airplanes have the props in front? Well, just flip it around. And put a boat on it. It’s literally pushing you with all that horsepower from behind.”

The airboat was invented in Nova Scotia by Alexander Graham Bell in 1905. Airboats were used for military purposes during World War I by the British Army in the Middle East, the Soviet Union in World War II, and by the U.S. in the Vietnam and the Iraq wars.

In the 1920s, Glen Curtiss, an American aviation pioneer and a founder of the U.S. aircraft industry developed an enclosed airboat that could comfortably seat six passengers, while frog hunters in the Everglades tinkered with what they could find to develop their own version of the airboat. In 1933, Johnny Lamb and his friend Russell Howard built a 12-foot airboat using a second-hand aircraft propeller and a plywood rudder to work more efficiently in the Everglades, where they harvested 75 pounds of frog legs a night.

Shellfish harvesters in the Midcoast agree that airboats provide increased efficiency on the flats in more ways than one. Harvesters can reach their destination on airboats when the tide has already receded from the shoreline.

“The airboat makes the job a lot easier,” says Daniel Fortin, who digs for clams at Maquoit Bay in Brunswick. “It saves your legs. It saves your hips. You only run your boat for four or five minutes each trip in and out.”

Cody Gillis, who works with Fortin, agrees.

“It beats walking. It beats waiting for the tide in a regular skiff.”

Airboats also allow for easier access to different, possibly more fruitful, areas. “You can get in and out when you need to,” says Peter Holman, who’s been clamming in Maquoit Bay for 30 years and has enjoyed the benefits of his father’s airboat for the past four years. “You couldn’t do that with a regular boat.”

Being able to arrive and depart freely on the mudflats is also important for safety during medical emergencies and severe weather.

“They’re handy in case something happens out there,” Fortin noted.

Airboats gained prominence during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 for their ability to navigate over partially submerged buildings and wreckage. The so-called Cajun Navy evacuated over 5,000 people on 30 airboats in less than 36 hours.

Marine law enforcement officials realize the value of the airboat in Brunswick, with its 67 miles of coastline, and Harpswell, with 216 miles of coastline. Brunswick introduced the airboat to the mudflats in the mid-1990s, and Harpswell recently purchased a new 20-foot airboat with a 550 hp, 6.2 liter big block engine for $76,000.

Although airboat operators take small craft advisories seriously, the vessels can work on frozen bays in winter for search-and-rescue operation. Marine wardens also use airboats to conduct shellfish surveys.

Plummer, Harpswell’s harbormaster, warns that different skills are needed to operate an airboat.

“It’s a dangerous piece of equipment. It’s good to find out what the boat’s capable of,” he cautions, before zipping off in one.

A Woman’s Place on the Working Waterfront

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JENNIE BICHREST BEGAN HAULING TRAPS BY HAND, AND NOW RUNS A LARGE BAIT BUSINESS
 

This story first appeared in the Island Institute’s The Working Waterfront newspaper, and is reproduced here with permission. Click here. 

(Personal photos courtesy of Jennie Bichrest)

August 2019

Story and Photos by Kelli Park

From hand-hauling lobster traps to selling more than 10 million pounds of bait annually, Jennie Bichrest knows the working waterfront inside out. This summer, as the lobster industry faces a shortage of herring, the bait of choice, her business—Purse Line Bait—is playing a critical role in keeping that waterfront working.

Bichrest was growing up in Illinois until a vacation brought her family to the Maine coast in the early 1970s. Her father was hooked, and family vacations were then spent on a commercial fishing boat. Later, her father bought a 46-foot sailboat with a vision of educating his children as they sailed around the world. The family moved to Cundy’s Harbor in Harpswell, and though the children did learn to sail, the around-the-world voyage never happened.

Instead, Bichrest stumbled upon old wooden lobster traps in her neighbor’s barn, which inspired her, with the help of her grandfather, to build her own by steaming and bending wooden bows using a steam-box she found in the barn.

While her father found work on fishing boats in and around Cundy’s Harbor, Bichrest hauled traps by hand with her own skiff and spent time with her friends working on the water, where she was the only woman.

“I was never a ‘girly’ girl,” she says. The group she hung out with was into fishing, so that became her focus as well. She eventually married Mark Bichrest, whose family has been fishing for five generations.

The two worked independently on the water—she lobstering, he dragging—until pogies arrived on the coast in the late 1980s. Mark was fishing for a Russian ship, Riga, which anchored offshore and processed fish into fishmeal. “They all wanted jeans, Levi jeans from Goodwill,” she remembers. “Jeans and cigarettes.”

Jennie and Mark soon started their bait business with a boatload of pogies at a time, delivering to local wharves and individual boats, until word spread and demand grew.

“When we first got in business, we knew you had to have storage,” she remembers. “The herring were only around so long. We survived more on fresh fish coming in. We had dump trucks, and we loaded the fresh fish every day and we would go to the wharves.”

But if there was no catch, her customers had no bait.

“That’s when we started barreling bait,” she explains. “Once they started with the quotas, there was more need for freezers and storage.”

Within a few short years, the business had evolved from boatloads of pogies, to truckloads of fish, to the widespread distribution of salted, barreled bait with the need for storage facilities.

Demand continued to grow and in 1996, the couple bought a facility in Sebasco once used to make ice for fishing boats, and it became home for Purse Line Bait. After their divorce in 2003, Jennie Bichrest expanded the business with the purchase of additional freezer facilities in Harpswell to meet the demand created by quotas placed upon commercial fishing—more freezer space was needed to store fish, ensuring its availability throughout the year after quotas had been met.

Bichrest currently relies on five suppliers for a steady stream of herring, pogies, and redfish from as far away as New Jersey and Canada. She stores three million pounds in each of her Phippsburg and Harpswell facilities, and another three million pounds in rented space south of Portland.

The vagaries of fish populations impact the business, she said.

“The first year pogies hit it was devastating,” because when that fish was available for bait, the demand for other bait, like that which Purse Line sold, can decrease rapidly. If her freezers are full because fishermen are buying bait from different sources, her largest supplier will find other markets for his product.
“People don’t understand that you have to keep it all going, or they’re not going to be there. That’s what frightens me,” she confesses. “They don’t think about all the other people the business supports—the carriers, the other boats.”

In February, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cut the 2019 herring quota by about 70 percent, from 110 million pounds to 33 million pounds. Herring is the most commonly used bait in the lobster industry. Bichrest believes that the cut will hit the island communities the hardest, where lobstermen rely on the carriers for bait.

“There’s not enough freezers in the state of Maine with this latest herring cut,” she says. “And really, more importantly, we’re going to lose the infrastructure.”

Bichrest has advocated for conservation measures that would ensure sustainable fisheries, including encouraging closures during spawning on Georges Banks, popular fishing grounds between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia, to promote the growth of young fish.

“You can’t continue to kill babies and expect to have a healthy fishery,” she says.

Portland Shipper Offers ‘First Pallet Free’

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This story first appeared in the Island Institute’s The Working Waterfront newspaper, and is reproduced here with permission. Click here. 

January 21, 2020

Story/Photos by Kelli Park

The Maine Port Authority and Icelandic shipping company Eimskip are collaborating on a new initiative to put Maine on the international map, one pallet-load at a time.

The initiative, launched in April, aims to remove obstacles for Maine businesses exploring international trade opportunities using Eimskip’s vast network. First Pallet Free offers free first-time shipping anywhere on the Eimskip network for local businesses to transport a 4-foot by 4-foot pallet, which can hold as much as 2,000 pounds of goods. Three Maine businesses have taken advantage of the opportunity since the program’s launch, one of which has grown significantly and is now paying to ship products internationally.

Port authority CEO Jon Nass acknowledges that taking shipping to an international market is a big step for many businesses.

“There are a lot of barriers. It’s hard to export things,” he concedes. “There are regulations, there’s cost, there’s risk. We’re taking one of those things off the table—the cost of shipping that product.”

The initiative, Nass believes, will help Maine businesses become competitive globally and have more options. The presence of Eimkip (pronounced AIM-skip) in Portland is key to those options. The Icelandic-based firm has 63 offices in 20 countries on four continents, from Vietnam, Japan, and Thailand to Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, and operates 22 vessels. Most of its shipping is in the North Atlantic, but the firm offers freight “forwarding” service elsewhere.

In Portland, Eimskip took over as the operator of the port in 2013. Monthly ship visits quickly evolved into weekly ships, sailing from Reykjavik, Iceland; to Argentia, Newfoundland; to Halifax, Nova Scotia; and to Portland, and back again—a ten-day journey one way.

“We got to weekly service several years ahead of schedule,” Nass said. “The fact that there’s a ship coming every week attracts bigger customers. It builds on itself. If you’re a company that ships every week or every month, you want to know that the option is going to be there.”

With a little help from Eimskip, the port of Portland has become a key player on the North Atlantic stage. In 2018, $460 million worth of products from 11 of Maine’s 16 counties moved through the port, including frozen blueberries from Washington County.

Portland is the first container stop for Eimskip to enter the U.S. market, with access to 60 million people within 375 miles—roughly a one-day truck drive, a standard industry measurement. This geographic area includes the cities of Quebec and Montreal, and the states of Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

Before Eimskip began operating in Portland, Maine businesses relied heavily on Boston and New Jersey for container shipping.

“Eimskip is the right size for the port we have,” Nass said. “They have a successful niche market that works well with the products we move in and out of here. It’s a great relationship. We would probably not be where we are without a company like Eimskip to prove that this can be done, and that a small port can be successful.”

In fact, Nass believes small ports are playing an increasing role in the shipping world.

“We’re proving the economics of smaller vessels, particularly between Portland and Halifax,” he said.

The First Pallet Free deal requires extensive legwork—food and alcohol regulations, shipping logistics, marketing, international trade law, product legality, tax implications, and tariffs, to name a few.

The Maine Port Authority collaborates with other organizations, such as the Maine International Trade Center and the Maine Regulatory Training and Ethics Center at the University of Southern Maine, to offer professional consulting services for start-up shipping endeavors.

“It’s altruistic to help small Maine businesses, but it’s also a business builder,” said Nass. “We’ll take the risk, and then if you’re wildly successful, we get to ship all sorts of your product and we’ll charge for that.”

The program shows the potential among North Atlantic markets.

“You can spend $1,000 to truck Maine blueberry jelly from Portland to New Jersey, where you can sell it for $2 a jar, or you can ship that same container from Portland to Tromsø, Norway for $1,000, where you can sell it for $7 a jar.”

First Pallet Free is not the first collaborative entrepreneurial endeavor for Eimskip.

“At one of our networking events, there was a brewer and there was a gentleman from Eimskip,” Nass said. “It was what I like to call the chocolate and peanut butter moment, where he said, ‘I have beer,’ and he said, ‘I have refrigerated containers.’ And they came up with this idea for marketing Maine beer overseas.”

Sean Sullivan, director of the Maine Brewers Guild, recalls the “crazy idea of retrofitting a shipping container with 78 beer taps on the side so we could ship and serve Maine beers around the world.” The moment of persuasion came, he remembers, “When Maine brewers found out it was cheaper to ship a container from Portland to Europe than it was to truck it from Portland to New York City.”

Since then, the guild has shipped and served Maine beers to Iceland, England, and Canada, and those countries have sent their products to Maine, helping cultivate a global exchange of beer.

“As an industry, Eimskip has helped Maine brewers realize that by working together and pushing geographic boundaries, business growth can be created for not only those who are exporting, but also for those who make their money by attracting people to Maine for experiences,” said Sullivan.

For more information about the First Pallet Free initiative, see: maineports.com