Latest news with #CascoBay
Daily Mail
16 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Gorgeous beach compound in surprising location lists for $5m in 'one-of-a-kind opportunity'
There aren't many places where you can live steps away from the beach, while staying moments from the hustle and bustle of city life. But, a beach-front property in Maine gives buyers the best of both worlds. The compound, which was listed on June 2, sits on half an acre of land just off of Willard Beach in South Portland. It consists of two homes; a main five-bedroom estate and a three-bedroom guest house, with five bathrooms across the entire property. The price tag for the over 4,300 square feet comes in at just under $5 million. Most beachfront properties of this size, especially in Maine, would be isolated on an island or secluded in a coastal town. Instead, new homeowners could enjoy nature trails, beaches, marina and local shopping, dining and nightlife right outside of their front door. Listing agent Anne Ross-Murray called it a 'one-of-a-kind opportunity on the Maine coast.' According to the listing on Ross-Murray's website, the main home was newly remodeled in 2022 and offers views of the beach and nearby Casco Bay. It was 'designed to capture the beauty of the ocean from nearly every angle.' Amenities include a heated two-car garage, expansive yard, wrap-around deck and patio, and whole-house generator. The hybrid location is perfect for anyone 'seeking a peaceful seaside residence or a property with exceptional potential,' wrote Ross-Murray. Former Southern Maine Community College President Wayne Ross, Ross-Murray's father, lived in the house for over 20 years. He bought the guest house in 2000 and retired from his position in 2002. Ross died in 2016. His daughter lived on the property following her father's death. But now she's chosen to sell it and downsize. She told Bangor Daily News: 'He loved the property. 'He'd sit out front, and when people walked by he'd ask them to come in. It was his pride and joy.' She said he also enjoyed being close to the four-acre, city-owned Willard Beach and threw the annual beach party for many years. While the price tag is a hefty one, especially for the area, Ross-Murray was confident it reflected the rare location. She told local outlets that when searching for a comparable property, she and her associates came back empty-handed. According to Redfin, the median price of a home in South Portland is $637,500. Though it's the highest it's been in the last five years, a $5 million listing is still an anomaly. The next closest listing is a 2,060 square foot home that's asking for half the price. But to Ross-Murray no other South Portland can compare to the location, amenities, and legacy of her family compound.
The Guardian
2 days ago
- Science
- The Guardian
Something in the water: how kelp is helping Maine's mussels boom
On a glimmering May morning, Tom Briggs pilots a 45ft aluminium barge through the waters of Casco Bay for one of the final days of the annual kelp harvest. Motoring past Clapboard Island, he points to a floating wooden platform where mussels have been seeded alongside ribbons of edible seaweed. 'This is our most productive mussel site,' says Briggs, the farm manager for Bangs Island Mussels, a Portland sea farm that grows, harvests and sells hundreds of thousands of pounds of shellfish and seaweed each year. 'When we come here, we get the biggest, fastest-growing mussels with the thickest shells and the best quality. To my mind, unscientifically, it's because of the kelp.' Zoe Benisek, oyster lead at Bangs Island Mussels, harvesting kelp. The seaweed changes water chemistry enough to lower the levels of carbon dioxide to nourish the mussels A growing body of science supports Briggs's intuition. The Gulf of Maine is uniquely vulnerable to ocean acidification, which can impede shell development in mussels, clams, oysters and lobster, threatening an industry that employs hundreds of people and generates $85m to $100m (£63m to £74m) annually. Atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuels is the main driver of declining ocean pH, increasing the acidity of the world's oceans by more than 40% since the preindustrial era and by more than 15% since 1985. Add carbon runoff from growing coastal communities, regular inflows of colder, more acidic water from Canada, and intense thermal stress – the Gulf of Maine is warming three times faster than the global average – and you're left with a delicate marine ecosystem and key economic resource under threat. Enter kelp. The streams of glistening, brownish-green seaweed that Bangs Island seeds on lines under frigid November skies and harvests in late spring are a natural answer to ocean acidification because they devour carbon dioxide. Sensors placed near kelp lines in Casco Bay over the past decade have shown that growing seaweed changes water chemistry enough to lower the levels of carbon dioxide in the immediate vicinity, nourishing nearby molluscs. 'We know that, in general, for shell builders, ocean acidification is bad, and we know that kelp do better in a high-CO2 environment,' says Susie Arnold, the senior ocean scientist at the Island Institute, a non-profit climate and community organisation in Rockland, Maine, and a pioneer of the Bangs Island water experiments. Working with the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, an independent Maine-based research organisation, Arnold and others began testing the water off Chebeague Island in 2015 'to see if we could detect a difference between water chemistry in the middle of all that kelp and far away from it', she says. 'We planted juvenile mussels inside and outside the kelp, and we were able to show that the mussels inside the kelp had a thicker shell. Now you see Bangs Island growing kelp around their mussels because they can make a profit on kelp and also buffer the mussels.' The Bangs Island crew harvesting kelp on their boat in the Gulf of Maine The CEO and co-owner of Bangs Island Mussels, Matt Moretti, studied marine biology in college and grad school, helped raise baby lobsters at the New England Aquarium, and worked on an oyster farm before buying the sea farm with his father in 2010. Within a year, they had started growing kelp alongside the mussels in an approach known as integrated multi-trophic aquaculture. 'Even before we started farming mussels, I was interested in that concept as an environmentally friendly way of farming, and of farming an ecosystem rather than a single species,' Moretti says from his bare-bones upstairs office in Bangs Island's warehouse on the Portland pier. As the kelp harvest grew, Moretti realised they needed a way to stabilise the seaweed, which didn't last long after it came out of the water. For a while they dried it themselves, hanging it in the warehouse and on the docks. Now, they sell the entire fresh seaweed catch to a local processor, which turns it into fermented foods such as kimchi, among other products. Gillian Prostko, chief science officer at Bangs Island Mussels. The harvested kelp is sold to a processor and turned into fermented foods such as kimchi 'We always suspected that there was this positive interaction between the mussels and kelp, and we suspected that because kelp photosynthesises, it sucks carbon out of the water, then therefore it must be good for the ocean and good for the mussels,' Moretti says. Bigelow's water testing has proven that 'we're having a positive impact'. Nichole Price, the director of Bigelow's Centre for Seafood Solutions, collaborated with Arnold on those early experiments and continues to monitor the water around Bangs Island mussel and kelp lines, an effort that has expanded to include water monitoring at seaweed farms from Alaska to Norway. In a paper published this year in the journal Nature Climate Change, Price, Arnold, and a host of co-authors documented yet another way in which seaweed farms can contribute to the health of the world's oceans: by trapping carbon at the bottom of the sea. 'When you harvest, you're not pulling up every last bit of seaweed,' Price says. 'We've been diving under farms during harvest, and you can see the bits and pieces that rain down. Then there's a culling process, the bits and pieces that get tossed over, and that's what this paper has measured: the unusable, unsellable parts of the harvest that end up on the sea floor.' Matt Moretti, founder of Bangs Island Mussels (left) and farm manager Tom Briggs Those discarded seaweed scraps can contribute to what is known as passive deposition of carbon. 'Fingers crossed, it gets covered with sediment fast enough that it's taken out of the global carbon cycle,' Price says. Given the environmental and financial benefits of growing kelp and shellfish together, you might think everyone would be doing it. But co-farming mussels and kelp at scale requires more than just planting and harvesting. With five boats, a plankton monitoring programme, and tanks on the ground floor of the warehouse where baby mussels from a nearby hatchery are carefully seeded on to lines before being placed in the ocean, Bangs Island is part farm, part science lab. Changes in mussel-spawning and seed-collection cycles in recent years have forced Moretti and his staff to pay much closer attention to the surrounding water and its inhabitants, from barnacles – a nuisance to shellfish farmers because they set on mussels – to the microscopic larvae of tunicates, pestilent sea squirts that seeded on nearly all of the farm's mussel lines several years ago, crowding out the shellfish and almost sinking the business. 'Conceptually, what we do is very simple: we grow mussels, harvest them, sell them,' Moretti said. 'But adding all the pieces together is a really big, complicated puzzle.' Today, Bangs Island harvests about 600,000lb (270,000kg) of mussels and 100,000lb of seaweed a year; last fall, they began farming oysters. The oysters, along with about half the mussels, grow in proximity to kelp. 'Climate change, ocean acidification, is a global problem. And when you try to think about it, like, what you can do? It's so daunting,' Moretti says. 'But when you think about us farming kelp in the ocean, it's really the only way we've ever been able to figure out to have a local-scale mitigation of this global problem. It's something we can do here that can help the waters around us that actually has a significant impact.' Kelp ready for harvesting in the Gulf of Maine
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Yahoo
What to eat in Portland, Maine
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). 'Oyster farming used to be really male dominated,' says Amy Gaiero. 'But that's starting to change. I'm noticing more women out here working on the water.' The morning air is still so crisp that her words produce a cloud of mist over the shiny aluminium barge as we chug towards Nauti Sisters Sea Farm: a small but mighty micro-oyster venture where Amy and her sisters Alicia and Chelsea cultivate shellfish destined for Portland's white-tablecloth restaurants. Fresh out of college, Amy isn't your typical marine farmer: she's young, female, sporting on-trend outdoorsy gear and — ironically — is allergic to shellfish. Yet, reeled in by the promise of harvesting low-impact, hyper-local food, the plucky fisherwoman has found her unlikely calling in life. Downing anchor at Nauti Sisters' offshore sea farm, a grid of 24 floating racks, Amy hauls up a dripping oyster cage, expertly shucks one open and ceremoniously baptises it with a splash of cucumber-melon infused vinegar, poured from her handy hip flask. I down it in one slurp: the meat briny, faintly sweet and rudely plump, thanks to East Coast oysters beefing up for winter. 'Eastern oysters are unique, as they go into hibernation because the Atlantic Ocean gets so cold. While this means they take longer to mature — between 18 months and three years — they're much tastier as a result,' the seafarer enthuses, as we glide back through Casco Bay to shore, shrieking seagulls hovering above like white kites in the sky. Passionate small-batch farmers like Amy are bountiful in Portland, the cultural hub of Maine set on the island-strewn New England coast. For a US city, it's a relatively small one. Eastbourne in the UK has more residents, for example. Yet when it comes to gastronomy, Portland very much holds its own against the likes of Boston and Philadelphia. A winning formula of working waterfronts, a tight-knit community of farmers and a crop of creative chefs have all provided fertile ground for Portland's thriving food scene to take root. Stepping off the salt-sprayed boat in the satellite port town of Yarmouth, I journey south towards the buzzy dining rooms of Downtown Portland, passing white clapboard and cedar-shingled homes along the way. Arriving in the Old Port district, the redbrick facade of Fore Street restaurant looks rather industrial and imposing from the pavement. But inside the former warehouse, it's a hive of activity — line cooks prepping in the bustling open plan kitchen and the tantalising scent of warm dough rising up from the basement bakery below. In the eye of the storm stands owner Sam Hayward. With a clipped grey moustache and a knitted jumper, he has the easy manner of someone at the top of their game. Known as the godfather of Portland's farm-to-table dining scene, Sam opened his pioneering restaurant back in 1996. 'I was in the right place at the right time,' he says modestly, easing into a leather chair, coffee cup in hand. Having arrived in New England at the tail end of the 1970s, the self-taught chef spent a couple of years living in a rural hippy commune, where he witnessed first-hand that change was on the horizon. Unable to compete with large-scale Midwest production, a generation of farmers abandoned their homesteads which were replaced by a surge of younger growers with a more utopian vision. 'Looking in the rear-view mirror, what I'm really describing is the back to the land movement,' Sam reflects. 'An innovative agricultural community had emerged, with self-sufficient farmers who were interested in countercultures.' Add local fisheries harvesting lobster, scallops and finfish into the mix, alongside one of the country's oldest farmers' markets, and there were all the ingredients needed for a culinary renaissance, Sam explains, as a crate of freshly harvested greens is delivered to the restaurant's entrance behind him. In 2004, Fore Street put Maine on the culinary map when Sam became the state's first chef to see a coveted James Beard Award pinned to his starched white apron. More than two decades on, his kitchen still dazzles, serving wood-fired Maine mussels, turnspit-roasted chicken and vegetables so meticulously sourced that Sam selects them from a farmer's seed catalogue each season. 'There's this constant back and forth with the growers that feels quite experimental,' he says, sunlight flooding through the dining room's large bay windows. 'It's a dialogue that was absent when I worked in kitchens in larger cities such as New Orleans and New York.' I leave Sam and his crew to their daily service rush, and venture along the cobblestone waterfront for a few blocks, passing the swirling sky-blue sign of J's Oyster, a vintage, no-frills seafood joint where celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once indulged in buttery clams. Nearby, a queue is forming outside The Holy Donut, a cult classic serving warm potato doughnuts with far-out flavour combinations including bacon cheddar and a whiskey cocktail-inspired old fashioned. Across the street, I duck into Harbor Fish Market, a ramshackle wharf relic from the 1800s that's beloved by tourists and Portlanders alike. Inside, shelves strain under the weight of glistening wild blue mussels and silver-skinned whiting, while water tanks ripple with feisty lobsters. I spot a cluster of Nauti Sisters deep cup oysters, crowning the ice at the shellfish bar, a delicacy that only that morning I'd watched Amy heave from the depths of the ocean. For the grand finale, I make my way to Portland's latest sushi spot, Mr Tuna. Decked out in soft pastel hues, with potted houseplants scattered throughout and neon signs on the walls, it's the kind of stylish hangout that's been lighting up Instagram feeds since it opened in May 2024 (although the venture actually began life as a food truck in 2017). But it's the tide-to-table seafood that's really making waves here. At the blonde wood bar, chef-owner Jordan Rubin, long black hair swept up in a high knot, slides over a plate of Atlantic bluefin sashimi. Tender slivers of tuna, as smooth as Turkish delight, dissolve luxuriously on my tongue. It's unlike anything I've tasted, I tell him, to which he nods knowingly. 'You're not the first to be amazed by the freshness,' he says, recalling a recent two-night pop-up with renowned Japanese chef Norihito Endo. 'He was stunned by the quality of Maine's seafood. Some of it's even better than what he gets back in Japan,' Jordan marvels. As I savour my next course — a Maine crab maki roll daubed with yuzu mayo and swaddled in pillowy rice — Jordan reflects on how tastes have evolved over the course of his 20-year career. 'It used to be tough to convince people to try something like sea urchin. Now, they actively seek it out.' In winter, he serves it in a hand roll with fresh wasabi and a dash of soy. 'About 80% of our menu is caught locally, so it's constantly changing with the seasons,' he adds. Like Sam at Fore Street, Jordan swapped the fast pace of a big city for the quieter charms of Portland, a decision that's clearly paid off. As I round things off with a miso caramel ice cream toastie — sweet and salty flavours woven through the creamy texture — he explains why the move was so rewarding. 'Portland's special,' he says. 'Instead of big chains, it's all independently owned restaurants, which creates a strong sense of community. Everything here just feels more collaborative.' I take the scenic route back to my hotel, passing the warm glow of dining rooms filled with patrons enjoying fresh-off-the-boat lobster rolls. Don't let the city's size fool you; in Portland, I've discovered a food scene that could go fork-to-fork with any of the US's culinary heavyweights. Published in the May 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Yahoo
Portland mock trial team prepares for first national competition in decades
May 7—The case: A young investigative reporter is shot while working on a blockbuster investigation. The prime suspect: A wealthy real estate developer and true crime podcaster who may have killed before. The attorneys: Casco Bay High School students. This week, the group of eight is representing Maine at the 2025 National High School Mock Trial Championships — the first Portland students to do so since the 1980s. Mock trial is an extracurricular competition that combines legal analysis, public speaking and theater. All competing schools receive the same case and materials, including an indictment and witness statements, then work to build a case for both the prosecution and the defense. At the competition, they'll end up representing both sides over a series of head-to-head matches against other high school teams. There's no "correct" verdict — teams are scored on the quality of their arguments. Casco Bay came in second place at the statewide competition last fall at the Cumberland County Courthouse. When the first-place winner, Brunswick High School, had to drop out, Casco Bay became Maine's sole representative to the national competition, which begins Wednesday in Arizona. 'ONE BIG PUZZLE' Jacob McNally is a math teacher and the faculty coach for the Casco Bay team. He first started overseeing mock trial at Deering High School and said the activity — which requires close reading, strategy and performing skills — typically attracts students who are interested in theater, law or just an extracurricular. The cases are intricate, involving more than 50 pages of detailed witness statements, exhibits and a convincing criminal indictment, which McNally said requires a real commitment from the team. This year, he said, a combination of great student leadership and attorney coaching propelled the team further than ever before. Jo Ellis is one of those student leaders and said her interest in mock trial is related to the complexity of the cases. "They're so meticulously thought out, the cases, that each little detail contradicts with another one or has multiple details stemming off of it, and you have to be aware of everything down to the date the witnesses gave their statement," she said. "And that's really fun for me, because it just feels like one big puzzle that you're putting together." Ellis, a senior, got involved in mock trial during her sophomore year because her brother and some friends were on the team. She'll be portraying a prosecutor at the national championships and said although the scale of this competition is larger than what the team has faced before, she knows Casco Bay is "100% putting its best foot forward." Fellow senior Maribel Creek has been a part of the mock trial team since her freshman year. At different points in the national competition, she'll be portraying the defendant and attorneys for both the prosecution and defense. Creek, who is also involved in theater, said performing the role of a witness comes naturally to her; it's just about playing a part. But being an attorney has been a fun challenge. "The reason why I've stayed in it so long is just because of the community. There's super fun, smart people in it," Creek said. "But I also like the debating, I like the arguing and I like having to think on my feet while also acting, I think that's fun." Kendall Shaughnessy, also a senior, said she's drawn to the intricacy, strategy and competition. "There's the public speaking aspect of delivering a speech, but then there's the live element element of objections, and you have to understand them and know how to respond and understand the facts," she said. "It has given me a lot more confidence in my ability to do those things, because those aren't really skills that I would exercise otherwise." MOCK TRIAL, REAL LAWYERS In addition to McNally, the team gets coaching support from local attorneys Richard O'Meara, Maria Fox and David Hillman. O'Meara, an attorney at Portland law firm Murray Plumb & Murray, has been coaching Maine mock trial teams for decades at Gray-New Gloucester, Falmouth and most successfully Cape Elizabeth, which he led to nine national competitions. McNally described him as the "Coach K of mock trial," a nod to Mike Krzyzewski, the legendary, former Duke University men's basketball coach. As the student attorneys practiced their arguments at a prep session Tuesday, O'Meara jumped in with pointers and objection strategies. "Two questions," O'Meara said, interrupting a cross-examination that combined a few points into one question. "Everyone on cross — the shorter the questions, the better they're going to be." O'Meara said he likes coaching mock trial because it allows him to sharpen up his own trial skills by teaching others. Coaching mock trial isn't about training the next generation of attorneys, he said, although sometimes that does happen. At the statewide mock trial competition last fall, Maine Supreme Court Chief Justice Valerie Stanfill made a plea to the young Mainers competing about the importance of legal careers. But O'Meara said the biggest goal is instilling confidence and analysis skills that students can apply to any career path. The Casco Bay seniors aren't necessarily considering careers in law — Ellis is headed to Vassar College in the fall and plans to study policy, Creek is taking a gap year to travel, and Shaughnessy is going to Oberlin College and is undecided on her academic path. But they all agreed that mock trial has increased their confidence and improvised speaking skills and their knowledge of the legal system. Casco Bay's team raised funds for its trip to Phoenix by soliciting from local law firms and attorney associations, who donated enough to cover the $15,000 price tag. "The fact that the Maine legal community made it so easy to do this was amazing," McNally said. O'Meara said Maine sometimes feels like an underdog at the national level because other states have more robust statewide competitions, which can be discouraging for the students. But he said he keeps telling them: "You can compete." "It's you, it's how well you're going to do," he said. "I try to pump them up, because they can do it." Copy the Story Link
