Project Ocean Stonington – Lobster Pizza and Joint Perspectives
A Quintessential Coastline
The Maine coast is everything that everyone told me it would be.
Lighthouses calling out into the sea. Little islands, big islands. The banging around of working docks where a community makes a living. Rocks. Colorful and inviting downtowns yards from the frigid North Atlantic. A haze keeping the watery horizon a beckoning mystery. A July sun warming the bones but not sweltering. Hidden gem bodies of water around every inland turn.
No wonder people love it here.
For Rod and me, it was our first time in this part of the country. We arrived to film our very last leg of Project Ocean with our 10th and final nonprofit participant, Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries.
MCCF is on a mission to sustain fishing forever, and with that comes sustaining the ecosystems, fishing heritage and fishing communities of Downeast Maine.
Spending a few days amongst the lobstermen with our cameras rolling gifted us with an understanding of what that mission means in a way we didn’t grasp when we first arrived.
Always Connected
Fishing is somewhere down in the bones of Stonington and everyone in it. We met multiple men in their 80s who still head out on the water for a day’s work because they need to. They don’t need the money, they just need to be out there.
It’s a multi-generational affair. Legacies.
As Rod and I enjoyed a post-shoot coffee/hot chocolate at a shop overlooking the water, every sense took in the soul of that place. The smell of the salt and the fish, the sight of the sea dotted with working boats, the sound of the shift’s bounty being unloaded, the feel of callouses present in every handshake. I even got the chance to try lobster mac and cheese pizza, which I admit may not be the most intuitive way to enjoy lobster, but I highly encourage you not to knock it til you try it.
Fishing is not a job here. It’s a community identity. There is no separating the people from the fish, from the water, from the rugged terrain. Nothing, no one, exists independently.
I think this is true everywhere, even if it’s less obvious.
Project Ocean
MCCF’s executive director, Alexa Dayton, made a profoundly wise statement during her interview as she discussed balancing fishing life with conservation concerns.
“Everybody has a valid perspective, but you can’t have those perspectives in isolation.”
I told her after we stopped recording that this sentiment captured so much of what Project Ocean was meant to be about.
We are all here together on our one Earth, each with our own deeply personal and nuanced relationships with our one ocean. We are here together, in it together.
If we are to move forward as effective stewards, we must do so with everyone at the table.
The Click & Pledge and Click & Pledge Foundation teams hope that the Project Ocean initiative can be a small part of facilitating this table.
We are Team Ocean.
