Two Hearts, One Ocean: Embrace the Sea/Work the Water

Call me Chuck. (I know the line has been used, but as a nine-time reader of Moby Dick and no copyright to stop me, I’m taking the liberty) And I want to talk about the ocean, so it’s a good place to start. I love Ahab, Queequeg, and I love Moby Dick. We’ll talk more of that later, the timeless issue of competing loves. I love the sea, pure, natural, and unmolested; I love the people who use and live on the bounty of the sea. Often there is conflict. This blog will primarily focus on issues dealing with our relationship with the ocean and the many characters (fish, people, birds, and beyond) who are impacted by the health and temperament of the North Atlantic. First, I must explain how I came to love both the untrammeled ocean and those who use and depend on the ocean for its natural resources, often to the point of exploitation. I do not sit alone on the horns of this dilemma.

Born in Eureka, California, one of my very first memories is sitting in a highchair surrounded by an entire garage floor covered in very large, very lively, scrabbling, claw-clacking Humbolt crabs, and later, when I got some size, watching my grandfather balanced on a rock in a tributary of the Klamath river scooping salmon out of the rushing water with a large net. Then a move to the coast of Connecticut, at the eastern edge of Long Island Sound. My Dad, who took us all to the shore during the days and worked nights on the third shift at Electric Boat, had been a hard-hat diver during WWII. His job was to defuse huge mines loaded with over a ton of explosives that could shatter and sink a battleship. Back to civilian life, he became an electrician and test-crew member for submarines, including doing sea-trials aboard the Nautilus, the first nuclear powered submarine commissioned by the US Navy. During the summer months he slept on the beach while my siblings and I spent the days spear-fishing, gigging eels, scooping blue crabs in shallow saltwater estuaries, diving for cherrystone clams, and picking bay scallops out of the waist deep water with our toes. My father taught me how to use the bounty of the sea; my mother taught me how to love it. Like many women of the fifties, she, a strong, resolute, and capable person was bound to hearth, home, children, and work with her only escape, one that filled her with joy, wonder, and the promise of freedom, being our days at and on the ocean. She flourished in the beauty and bliss that the sea delivers simply by being in its presence. Those were truly beautiful days.

Then the Marine Corps. I sailed aboard the USS Montrail, from Norfolk, Virginia to Majorca, Spain, six months cruising the Mediterranean from Algeria to Izmir, Turkey, and many ports in between, including Cannes, France, during the film-festival when I sat across a bar-room table from Wyatt Earp, (Hugh O’Brian) Then out and north to Portsmouth England, a night in Olso and through the North Sea, the Barents sea, and on to the Nordkapp, the crown of northern Europe. I spent many a night pacing the fantail of that ship, watching the moon shine a ribbon of light across the vast, imponderable sea. I surely missed my billet aboard that ship when I found myself sweltering in the bug-infested heat of an active war-zone in Vietnam to return home with three bullet holes and a big bag of PTSD which would last me for years.

Later life brought me back to Maine, brought me to a kayak, and for thirty years, I have been paddling the waters of the Gulf of Maine, from Ram Island and Fort Gorges in Casco Bay, spending time and pulling traps with a friend on Cliff Island; residing on Bailey Island, paddling to Boothbay Harbor and beyond for my first close encounter with a whale off of Thrumcap island in South Bristol, until retirement brought me to South Addison and the beautiful islands, Plummer, Big and Little Nash, Sand, Flat, and Tibbetts. From there, marriage to my sweet wife, Rhonda, brought me to Lubec, where we have lived, learned, loved, and experienced the true beauty of Downeast Maine for over thirteen years. We both love this town dearly, want for it and the people of this town, those freshly arrived, long term residents from away, and native-born, to thrive and prosper. And we want for the fish and whales, lobsters, seals, razorbills, wrinkles, mussels, bloodworms, and bladderwrack to fare well as well. That is the project, so, fare thee well until our next meet.   

Sincerely, Chuck Kniffen

Coming in future blog posts:

• Rip-rap: Yay or Nay as a tool for defending against ocean level rise.
• Styrofoam pellets in the ocean—their rapid increase within the last twenty years as pellet filled mooring buoys flood harbors and anchorages in Lubec and across the globe.
• Aquaculture: Small, local leases or large, corporate operations?
• Seaweed Harvesting
• Return of nesting Razorbills/ rapid proliferation of green crabs
• … much more to follow.