Blood donations needed ahead of summer

When schools let out for summer and families set off on vacation, the American Red Cross typically sees a decline in donors, which can impact patient care. It’s critically important that donors make an appointment to give now before heading out for summer activities to help maintain a stable blood supply in the coming months.

Unfortunately, the need for blood doesn’t take a summer break. Volunteer donors are the only source of blood and platelets for patients with blood disorders, trauma victims and those experiencing difficult childbirths.

In thanks for helping boost the blood supply, all who come to give through May 19, 2022, will receive a $10 e-gift card to a merchant of choice and will also be automatically entered to win a travel trailer camper that sleeps eight. Details are available at rcblood.org/camper. Those who come to give May 20-31 will receive an exclusive 20-ounce Red Cross aluminum water bottle and customizable sticker set, while supplies last.

Donors can help save a life in just an hour. To schedule an appointment to donate blood, platelets or plasma, download the Red Cross Blood Donor App, visit RedCrossBlood.org or call 1-800-CROSS (1-800-733-2767).

Health insights for donors

The Red Cross is testing all donations for COVID-19 antibodies for a limited time. Results may indicate if the donor’s immune system has produced antibodies to this coronavirus after vaccination or past exposure, regardless of whether they developed symptoms.

Plasma from routine blood, platelet and plasma donations that have high levels of COVID-19 antibodies may be used as convalescent plasma to meet potential future needs of COVID-19 patients with a weakened immune system.

The Red Cross is not testing donors to diagnose infection, referred to as a diagnostic test. To protect the health and safety of Red Cross staff and donors, it is important that individuals who have been asked to quarantine or believe they may be ill with COVID-19 postpone donation until they are symptom free for 10 days and feeling well and healthy.

At a time when health information has never been more important, the Red Cross is screening all blood, platelet and plasma donations from self-identified African American donors for the sickle cell trait. This additional screening will provide Black donors with an additional health insight and help the Red Cross identify compatible blood types more quickly to help patients with sickle cell disease. Blood transfusion is an essential treatment for those with sickle cell disease, and blood donations from individuals of the same race, ethnicity and blood type have a unique ability to help patients fighting sickle cell disease.

Donors can expect to receive antibody testing results and sickle cell trait screening results, if applicable, within one to two weeks through the Red Cross Blood Donor App and the online donor portal at RedCrossBlood.org.

Blood drive safety

The Red Cross follows a high standard of safety and infection control. The Red cross will continue to socially distance wherever possible at blood drives, donation centers and facilities. While donors are no longer required to wear a face mask, individuals may choose to continue to wear a mask for any reason. The Red Cross will also adhere to more stringent face mask requirements per state and/or local guidance, or at the request of blood drive sponsors. Donors are asked to schedule an appointment prior to arriving at a drive.

How to donate blood

Simply download the American Red Cross Blood Donor App, visit RedCrossBlood.org, call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767) or enable the Blood Donor Skill on any Alexa Echo device to make an appointment or for more information. All blood types are needed to ensure a reliable supply for patients. A blood donor card or driver’s license or two other forms of identification are required at check-in. Individuals who are 17 years of age in most states (16 with parental consent where allowed by state law), weigh at least 110 pounds and are in generally good health may be eligible to donate blood. High school students and other donors 18 years of age and younger also have to meet certain height and weight requirements.

Up and down the Kennebec Valley: French-Canadians – Part 1

St. Augustine Church in Augusta (photo by Eric Austin)

by Mary Grow

Augusta

Two distinctly non-British peoples who came to live mainly in Augusta and Waterville, the largest manufacturing centers in the central Kennebec Valley in the 19th and early 20th centuries, were French-Canadians who came south from Canada’s Québec Province, and Middle Easterners, especially Lebanese and Syrians.

This article will talk about French-Canadians in the Kennebec Valley and specifically in Augusta. The next article in the series will be about French-Canadians in Waterville and Fairfield and, if space permits, Middle Eastern immigrants.

* * * * * *

Wikipedia says the first European to visit what is now the Canadian Province of Québec was the Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano, whose expedition in 1522 or 1523 was authorized by King Francis I, of France. Successive French explorers followed, and in 1608 Samuel de Champlain founded Québec City.

The area was a French colony from then until the British conquered it, a victory recognized by the 1764 Treaty of Paris. The province has been under British rule ever since, in varying forms.

However, relations with the British government and with the rest of British Canada have been stormy at times. The Catholic Church has been important in the province, and French remains the official language. French-Canadians brought a distinctive culture and formed separate communities when they came to Maine.

Le Club Calumet’s on-line history (see box #1) says there have been French-Canadians in the area that is now Maine since 1611. Around 1830, improvements to the route called the Kennebec Road or the Canada Road facilitated north-south movement.

An on-line genealogy of a family whose ancestors followed the Kennebec Road describes it thus: “The road begins in Beauce, Québec, then in Maine in the Jackman area and follows the Kennebec River through Skowhegan, Waterville, southeast to Phippsburg, Maine.”

Another on-line source calls it “a system of water and portage routes linking the Chaudiere River in Québec to the Kennebec River in Maine” and says it “served as the primary transportation corridor between Canada and Maine until the construction of the Grand Trunk Railway in 1853.” Used for thousands of years by Native Americans and since the 17th century by European missionaries, traders and other wanderers (and occasionally soldiers), it remained in primitive condition until the 1830s.

By then the Kennebec Road was used mostly by “drovers taking livestock to the market in Québec City,” the source says. A few people lived along the route, though, and as they became more numerous they got the clout to demand improvements, especially after Maine became a separate state in 1820.

Between 1828 and 1835, the source continues, Maine state officials added “a customs house, postal service, a stage line and roadhouses. A ten-dollar ticket would buy a two-day stage coach ride from Québec City to Skowhegan.

“Construction of the state capital (1829) and the Kennebec dam (1834) in Augusta drew French Canadian workers with their families to Maine. A cholera epidemic in 1832 and the depression, famine and rebellion of 1837 [against British monarchical rule] hastened this migration.”

Urban jobs were not the only attraction for French-Canadians. Robert P. Tristram Coffin, in Kennebec Cradle of Americans, described 19th-century Maine loggers:

“Yellow and brown mustaches and many more black ones, for a great many of the men were ones who had stemmed from ‘P.Q.,’—the Province of Québec, – who had followed the Maine rivers down from the forests of the St. Lawrence, who spoke Canuck, and who handled their slim symphonies of curving wood and steel, their axes, as if they were attractive and tender young women.”

In a later chapter titled Yankees from the Province of Québec, Coffin described French-Canadian mill workers. From the early 1800s, and especially from the 1860s, large mills making cloth, paper and other products were powered by the Kennebec and needed workers, and many of those workers came from Québec.

In mill towns and cities, Coffin saw the French immigrants as a separate group in the second half of the 19th century. He imaginatively described the original Yankee home-owners moving uphill away from the river as French families settled near the mills – and moving farther as the French multiplied and prospered and they, too, claimed more living space.

Each riverside town and city had its Frenchtown, he wrote. “Two nations keeping apart, eating their different foods, having their own ways, their own schools, their own barbers and bakers.”

The Yankees considered the French-Canadians foreigners, Coffin wrote, even though they had been on the continent longer than most of their detractors. He praised them as holding onto the values of the “most civilized of all the Europeans,” describing them as family-loving, religious and hard-working.

* * * * * *

Thomas J. Lynch, contributing to Kingsbury’s Kennebec County history, traced the first French Catholic influence in the Augusta area to September 1646, when Father Gabriel Druillettes, a Jesuit, opened a mission to the Abenakis. The Mission of the Assumption was in a log cabin on the east side of the Kennebec, about three miles north of the Cushnoc trading post.

Lynch saw Augusta’s St. Mary’s Catholic Church as the successor to the Mission of the Assumption, even though by the time the Kennebec County history was finished in 1892, it was “restricted to the English-speaking Catholics of the city” and there was a second Catholic church for the French-speakers.

In the 1880s, French immigrants found jobs in the Edwards Manufacturing Company’s cotton mill at the river end of Northern Avenue. The Franco-American community formed near the mill in the north end of the city, an area variously called Sand Hill, Cushnoc, Cushnoc Heights or simply “the hill.”

The mill owners provided housing for some of their employees, and in 1887, in response to French-speakers who wanted services in their own language, provided space for a French Catholic church on Washington Street, which runs north off Northern Avenue part way up Sand Hill. The company sold one lot for $600 and donated a second lot.

St. Augustine Church’s website says most of the parishioners in the late 19th century were from rural parts of Québec and New Brunswick. Whole families worked in the mill, including “children as young as ten years old.”

Working hours were long, and non-French neighbors were often unfriendly. To the French-speaking families, “Sunday was a day to worship God and rest, beginning with attending Mass, followed by getting together with friends and relatives, as well as getting ready for next week’s labor.”

Bishop James Augustine Healy

Bishop James Augustine Healy, who served in Portland from 1885 to 1900, came to Augusta to bless the cornerstone for the new church on Aug. 28, 1888, and it was built that year. Kingsbury called the wooden building “second to none in the city in the beauty and richness of its interior decorations.”

“Folklore has it that the parish was named after Bishop Healy,” the website says. The parish at that time consisted of 160 families.

The church was accompanied by a school, taught from 1892 by the Ursuline Sisters and from 1904 by the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary. Rev. Telesphore Plante served as pastor from October 1887 until he retired Nov. 27, 1889. His successor was Rev. Arthur Hamel, who serve until he moved to Lewiston in 1907.

Under Rev. Hamel’s guidance, the website says, the construction debt was reduced; the church’s interior was redecorated; and the parish cemetery was opened in 1894, “with a solemn blessing by Bishop Lafleche of Trois-Rivières [Québec] with permission extended by Bishop Healy.”

The parish women’s organization, “Les Dames de Sainte Anne,” was organized in 1897. The website credits its members with raising thousands of dollars for “the betterment of the parish” and for “scholarships and other school-related activities.”

Construction of the present granite church building began in 1913, on land donated by Edwards Manufacturing. By then, the website says, the parish included 2,783 people from 553 families. The first service in the new church was the December 1916 Christmas Mass.

Le Club Calumet, Augusta

Le Club Calumet

On Sept.21, 1922, two dozen members of Augusta’s Franco-American community met “in the basement of Morin’s Shoe Store, on Water Street,” and organized Le Club Calumet, called on its website, calumetclub.com, “one of the foremost of Augusta’s civic organizations.” Its motto is “Unis pour toujours” (United forever); its headquarters is at 334 West River Road (Route 104), in Augusta.

The organizers’ goal was to give the Franco-American community more of a voice in city affairs. The website quotes: “The purpose of Le Club Calumet shall be for the propagation of the French language and intellectual development, by means of music, literature, education, and anything else the club shall judge beneficial to the interest of Franco-Americans.”

The club sponsors multiple activities open to the public, including at 8 p.m., on May 21, Comedy Night with The River Comics (ticket information is on the website). A Hundredth Anniversary Dance was held May 7, and a hundredth anniversary celebration is scheduled for Sept. 22 through 25.

Club members have always supported education for local Franco-American youngsters. In 1922, the club’s Calumet Educational & Literary Foundation website (calumeteducationfoundation.org) says, the club “appointed a committee to encourage students to continue their education by enrolling at Cony High School.” Now scholarships and grants are offered for education beyond high school; the website does not say whether aid is still limited to students of Franco-American heritage.

Since 1957, part of the scholarship money has come from the club’s “birthday dollar program,” started at the suggestion of Irenee Pelletier: club members pay one dollar into the education fund on their birthdays. The calumeteducationfoundation.org website has information on making tax-deductible donations. The website says for 2020-21, the foundation provided 20 scholarships with a total value of $107,000.

Augusta’s historic Colonial Theater, revisited

Colonial Theater

In the Feb. 4, 2021, issue of The Town Line, the Colonial Theater on Water Street, in Augusta, was described as an individually-listed historic building within the downtown Augusta historic district. Built in 1913, after a fire destroyed its predecessor, and rebuilt again after another fire in 1926, its style was described as “Beaux Arts and Georgian Revival…[with] Art Deco features.”

The 2014 historic register listing called it “an eclectic example of early 20th century design by a noted architect.” The architect was Harry S. Coombs (1878 – 1939), based in Lewiston.

The 2021 The Town Line article drew on Keith Edwards’ article in the Dec. 2, 2019, Kennebec Journal describing work to restore the historic building. Edwards’ follow-up article in the May 5, 2022, Kennebec Journal was headlined “Colonial Theater to host its first show in 53 years in downtown Augusta.”

Edwards described the theater as “in the midst of a major renovation project to bring it back to life.” For the May 6 show by Las Vegas magician and mind reader Kent Axell (a Manchester, Maine native, Edwards wrote), seating capacity was 300; Edwards quoted executive director Kathi Wall as aiming for 1,000 seats.

The theater website, colonialtheater.org, says more than $3 million of the estimated $8.5 million cost has been raised so far. In April 2022 the National Park Service awarded the theater $160,229 that will be used to restore windows and exterior doors.

The website has information and illustrations about the theater’s history and the restoration plans, as well as an on-line donation button and contact information.

Main sources

Coffin, Robert P. Tristram, Kennebec Cradle of Americans 1937.
Kingsbury, Henry D., ed., Illustrated History of Kennebec County Maine 1625-1892 (1892).

Websites, miscellaneous.

Local residents named to Simmons University dean’s list

The following local students were named to the 2021 fall semester dean’s list at Simmons University, in Boston, Massachusetts. To qualify for dean’s list status, undergraduate students must obtain a grade point average of 3.5 or higher, based on 12 or more credit hours of work in classes using the letter grade system.

Allyson Cunningham, of Augusta; Kaili Shorey, of Vassalboro, Abigail Bloom, of Waterville, and Maddie Beckwith, of Winslow.

Legion auxiliary donates backpacks and essentials to children

From left to right, Tardiff-Belanger American Legion Auxiliary, Unit #39, of Madison members, Tammy Giguere, Karen Lytle, Tina Boudreau, Harriet Bryant, Merrilyn Vieira, Vicki Anderson, and Irma Fluet. (contributed photo)

In observance of April as Children and Youth Month, members of the Tardiff-Belanger American Legion Auxiliary, Unit #39, Madison donated backpacks and many essential items such as clothes, Pj’s, toothpaste, toothbrushes, diapers, jackets, socks, hygiene products for the older children and toys.

These items benefit the children who will enter the Department of Health and Human Services System. Most children enter with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. These backpacks provide them with items they can call their own in hopes that it makes the transition a little easier for them. This year with generous donations of items from the members of the local community and membership as well as the Auxiliary purchases, the Auxiliary donated over $1,300 worth of items!

To learn more about the American Legion Auxiliary’s mission or to volunteer, donate, visit www.ALAforveterans.org. To join the Madison American Legion Auxiliary Unit, contact Karen Lytle, President – American Legion Auxiliary, PO Box 325, Madison, ME 04950, or karen.lytle364@gmail.com, or (207) 696-4445.

Local residents receive Academic honors at Northeastern

Northeastern University, in Boston, Massachusetts, is pleased to recognize those students who distinguish themselves academically during the course of the school year. The following local students were recently named to the University’s dean’s list for the Fall semester, which ended in December 2021.

Augusta resident Mandy Cooper, majoring in business administration.

Augusta resident Lauren Murray, majoring in economics.

Chelsea resident Michael Nicholas, majoring in mechanical engineering/physics. In addition to achieving distinction through the dean’s list, Nicholas is a member of the University Honors Program.

To achieve the dean’s list distinction, students must carry a full program of at least four courses, have a quality point average of 3.5 or greater out of a possible 4.0 and carry no single grade lower than a C- during the course of their college career. Each student receives a letter of commendation and congratulation from their college dean.

SMALL SPACE GARDENING: Use rain barrels to capture rainwater

by Melinda Myers

Put rainwater to use in your landscape with the help of rain barrels. This centuries old technique allows you to capture rainfall to use for watering ornamental gardens and containers.

Always start with a call to your local municipality. Some have restrictions on water harvesting, but most encourage this practice and some even offer rebates or rain barrels at a discounted rate.

Purchase a rain barrel or make your own from a large, recycled food grade container. In either case, there are some features to consider when purchasing, creating, and adding a rain barrel to your landscape.

Make sure the top is covered to keep out bugs and debris. Some come equipped with a solid lid with an opening just big enough to accommodate the downspout. Others use a screen to keep out debris, while letting in the rain.

Don’t worry about mosquitoes breeding inside your rain barrel. Just use an organic mosquito control like Mosquito Dunks and Mosquito Bits (Summit­ResponsibleSolutions.com) in rain barrels and other water features. Mosquito Bits quickly knock down the mosquito larval population, while Mosquito Dunks provide 30 days of control. They are both safe for people, pets, fish, wildlife and beneficial insects.

Look for one with the spigot near the base of the barrel so water does not stagnate in the bottom. Use the spigot to fill watering cans or attach a hose for watering.

Include an overflow outlet near the top of the barrel to direct excess water away from the house or for connecting adjacent barrels. A downspout diverter is another way to manage rain barrel overflows. When the rain barrels are full, this device diverts the water back to the downspout where it is carried away from your home’s foundation.

Elevate your rain barrel on cement blocks, decorative stands, or similar supports. This provides easier access to the spigot for filling containers and speeds water flow with the help of gravity. A water pump will boost water pressure for a nice steady flow of water.

Dress up your container with a bit of paint suited for outdoor use on plastic surfaces. And don’t worry if you are not an artist, you can hide your rain barrels with some decorative screens or plantings or upright shrubs, perennials or ornamental grasses. Just make sure you have easy access to the spout for retrieving water.

Start your conversion to rain barrels one downspout at a time. You can capture as much as 623 gallons of water from 1,000 square feet of roof in a one-inch rainfall. This can be a lot to manage when first adjusting to this change of habit. Disconnecting one downspout at a time allows you to successfully match the use of rain barrels and other rain harvesting techniques to your gardening style and schedule.

The choices are many, making it easy for you to conserve water and grow a beautiful landscape.

Melinda Myers has written more than 20 gardening books, including The Midwest Gardener’s Handbook, 2nd Edition and Small Space Gardening. She hosts The Great Courses “How to Grow Anything” DVD series and the nationally-syndicated Melinda’s Garden Moment TV & radio program. Myers is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine and was commissioned by Summit for her expertise to write this article. Her website is www.MelindaMyers.com.

FINANCIAL FOCUS: Use your financial strategy like GPS

submitted by Sasha Fitzpatrick

When you’re driving these days, it’s pretty hard to get lost because your smartphone’s Global Positioning System (GPS) can get you just about anywhere. And as an investor, you can have a similar experience by employing another directional tool – a personalized financial strategy.

Let’s look at the parallels between your GPS and this type of strategy.

To begin with, your GPS pinpoints your exact location at the start of your trip – in other words, it tells you where you are. And when you create a financial strategy, your first step is to evaluate your current situation by answering these types of questions: What are your assets? How much do you earn? How much do you owe? How much are you contributing to your IRA, 401(k) or other retirement accounts? Once you’ve got a clear picture of your finances, you’ll be ready to begin your journey toward your long-term goals.

Once your GPS has identified your starting point, it will then show you where you want to go and the routes to help you get there. And it’s the same with your financial strategy – you want it to help lead you to a particular place in your life. In fact, a well-designed strategy can show you the steps you need to take to help reach more than one destination – to a place where you can send your children to college, a place where you can retire comfortably, a place where you can leave the type of legacy you want, and so on.

Here’s another element of your GPS that applies to your financial strategy – the warnings. You’re certainly familiar with those thick red lines your GPS shows to indicate traffic slowdowns ahead. And while they’re annoying, they’re also useful in cautioning you that you may arrive at your destination later than you had originally planned. Your financial strategy can also express “warnings” about events that could hinder you from reaching your goals. These obstacles might include an illness or disability that could keep you out of work for a while, or the need for some type of long-term care, such as a nursing home stay or the services of a home health aide. Your financial strategy can not only identify these threats, but with the guidance of a financial professional, suggest potential solutions.

In addition to providing warnings about things such as heavy traffic and road construction, your GPS can change your route if you miss a turn or if you decide, for whatever reason, to go a slightly different way. Your financial strategy can also show you alternatives, if it’s comprehensive and overseen by a financial professional, who, using specialized software, can create hypotheticals – illustrations that provide alternative outcomes for different steps, such as retiring at various ages, investing different amounts each year or earning different rates of return. These hypotheticals can be quite helpful to you as your chart your course toward your goals, especially if you need to change your plans along the way.

Your GPS and your financial strategy are two great tools for helping get you where you want to go.

This article was written by Edward Jones for use by your local Edward Jones Financial Advisor.

Edward Jones, Member SIPC.

Teenage historians honored

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

On April 2, at the Winslow Congregational Church, the Fort Halifax Chapter, NSDAR presented awards to six young adults at a Student Tea held in their honor. The American History Contest is offered to students in grades 5-12. The fifth grade winner was Elizabeth Longfellow, the daughter of Hailey Longfellow and Patrick Morrison. Dominique Giroux-Paré the daughter of Michelle and Rick Giroux-Paré was chosen as the winner from the eighth grade. They both wrote on the “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier” and were presented Certificates of Participation. They also both received a historical coloring book published by the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.

Carrina Chen, the daughter of Sandy and Wing Chen received the Jennie Paine Howard Award for achieving the highest rank in American History in her junior class. She was presented a medal and certificate for her outstanding work. Carrina also received a historical coloring book.

Three students were chosen by the faculty from area schools as the DAR Good Citizen Candidate. They included Megan Huesers, daughter of Katie and Thomas Huesers, of Winslow High School, Kloe McEachirn, daughter of Brandy and Corey Dow, of the Maine Arts Academy, and Sawyer Inman, the son of David Inman and Frieda Mavor, of Mt. View High School. Megan Huesers wrote the winning essay for the Fort Halifax Chapter entitled “Our American Heritage and Our Responsibility for Preserving It.” They all received the DAR Good Citizen certificate and pin. Megan will receive an American flag that has been flown at the Maine State Capitol.

Search for wolves in northeast

Eastern wolf

John M. Glowa, Sr., president of The Maine Wolf Coalition, Inc., (MWC) a 501c(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to wolf recovery in Maine through research, education and protection, is pleased to announce a new collaboration with Princeton University and Michigan Technological University. This collaboration will include the collection, preservation and analysis of wild canid scats, primarily from Maine, and is the latest development in a citizen science project to assess the status of wolves in Maine begun by MWC in 2019.

Wolves were documented to have been killed in Maine in 1993 and 1996. Since then, other than MWC’s efforts, little has been done to assess the status of wolves in Maine and the northeast. Given their similarity of appearance to eastern coyotes, it is likely that additional wolves have been killed in Maine, and in fact, since 1993, no less than nine wolves have been documented killed south of the St. Lawrence River from Massachusetts to New Brunswick.

Canada’s wolf range in Ontario and Québec is just 60 miles from New York and 75 miles from Maine. In fact, an 85-pound probable wolf was killed this past winter in central New York. Wolves have been documented to travel more than 1,000 miles during dispersal, making the northeast U.S. well within range for natural wolf recolonization. Furthermore, the northeast U.S. and maritime Canada contain tens of thousands of square miles of potential wolf habitat and abundant prey, making the region suitable for the natural return of wolves.

In 2019, MWC volunteers found scat from the first live Eastern wolf ever documented in Maine. The Eastern wolf is a smaller wolf found in southern Ontario and Québec, which typically averages approximately 60 pounds. It is similar in appearance and size to the eastern coyote (aka coywolf) with which it can interbreed.

Maine may also be home to larger gray wolves dispersing south from central Canada and the Great Lakes region. To date, MWC has collected more than one hundred wild canid scats, primarily in a 3.3 million acre region of Maine called the North Maine Woods.

The assistance from Princeton and Michigan Technological Universities will help to assess the status of wolves in Maine by analyzing the scats and interpreting the results. Event­ually, our hope is to have one or more graduate students in the woods of northern Maine monitoring radio-collared wolves.

Any wolves in the northeast are currently protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has claimed that their populations have recovered in most of the U.S. They have not recovered in the northeast, despite abundant habitat and prey, and the region’s proximity to wolf range in Ontario and Québec. MWC hopes to gather information to support the continued listing of wolves in the region under the Endangered Species Act and to promote natural wolf recolonization through research, education, and protection.

For more information, contact the following: The Maine Wolf Coalition, Inc.

John Glowa jglowa@roadrunner.com; Eastern Coyote/Coywolf Research
Jon Way, PhD. jon@easterncoyoteresearch.com; Princeton University
Bridgett vonHoldt, PhD. vonholdt@princeton.edu; Michigan Technological University
Kristin E. Brzeski, PhD. kbrzeski@mtu.edu.

SCORES & OUTDOORS: Over 100 whales spotted during aerial survey

Northern Right Whale

Roland D. Halleeby Roland D. Hallee

There has been a lot of discussion and controversy lately about the plight of whales in the North Atlantic, in particular about the Right Whale, and their interaction with lobstermen.

Maine’s lobstermen have fought national conservation groups over federal gear rules and fishery closures intended to protect endangered whales.

During a special research flight on April 25, the New England Aquarium aerial survey team sighted more than 100 whales of several species, including 27 critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

Aquarium researchers, Associate Scientist Orla O’Brien and Research Assistant Katherine McKenna, flew a five-hour flight on April 25 focused on how survey altitude affects researchers’ ability to detect whales. The New England Aquarium primarily flies aerial surveys over the waters south of Nantucket that are designated for offshore wind development, but this week’s flight in Massachusetts Bay was a strategic effort to better understand how to merge survey data collected before, during, and after wind energy construction. Surveys that occur during and after wind turbine construction will need to be flown at a higher altitude to account for the turbine height, which is about 800 feet. This special survey was flown over Massachusetts Bay and Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary because these areas typically contain many whales, giving researchers the best opportunity to collect the data they need to address questions about changes in flight altitude.

“On this special flight, we flew each track line at a lower and higher altitude. Comparing these data, and data from previous flights, ensures that we can correctly identify and interpret any changes in the number of animals seen before, during, and after construction,” said Dr. Jessica Redfern, Senior Scientist and Chair of the Aquarium’s Spatial Ecology, Mapping, and Assessment (EcoMap) program.

While aboard the five-hour flight, researchers O’Brien and McKenna spotted multiple marine mammal species, including critically endangered right whales, and an abundance of humpback whales, fin whales, sei whales, and dolphins. They also noted some right whales close to the entrance of Boston Harbor. Passengers aboard New England Aquarium Whale Watches in partnership with Boston Harbor City Cruises have been seeing right whales recently.

“We were really pleased to see so many whales and collect valuable data needed for our project. Massachusetts Bay and Stellwagen Bank are hotspots for whales, and we were grateful to our research colleagues for helping us collect valuable information on this flight,” O’Brien said.

While wind turbine construction in southern New England has not yet begun, the surveys help monitor changes in animal populations, identify various animal species, and recognize trends using standardized data that has been collected over many years. Determining where right whales occur and how they are using these habitats provides crucial information that can be used to better protect the species. Aqua­rium scientists are also monitoring the occurrence of sharks, tunas, and billfishes in the offshore wind lease areas.

North Atlantic right whales are a critically endangered species, with an estimated population of less than 350 individuals. The whales travel hundreds of miles while searching for tiny crustaceans, which they feed on in large volumes. Warming waters in the northern Atlantic Ocean have led to shifts in right whale habitat use, with the animals adjusting where they feed off the northeast U.S. and Canada. Southern New England waters have become an increasingly important habitat for the species in the past 12 years.

The New England Aquarium is the main source for this article.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Who has hit the most career home runs for the Boston Red Sox?

Answer can be found here.