Special Encore Presentation: Dwindling Herring and Clearing the Coastline
January 3, 2013
Hosted by Rob Moir
[Download MP3] [itunes] [Bookmark Episode]
Episode Description
Patrick Paquette, a community organizer who represents bass fishing organizations in Massachusetts and Matthew McKenzie, Maritime History Professor at the University of Connecticut, talk with Rob about where have all the herring gone and how Cape Cod has changed over two centuries from a vibrant fishing community to something completely different. Patrick Paquette explains early efforts to save herring by collaborating with diverse interest groups through the CHOIR collaboration “where different voices needed to learn to sing in harmony.” He also noted a striped bass food shortage along the East Coast caused by industrial-scale fishing of coastal herring, mackerel and menhaden. Prof McKenzie tells the social and ecological history of the rise and demise of Cape Cod’s coastal fisheries in the nineteenth century. His book, Clearing the Coastline, includes Thoreau’s thoughts on Cape Cod fisheries and how these were adjusted by posthumous publishers to better fit what they wished to promote. Matt also tells of helping out at a family’s herring weirs on Cape Cod and of a fisherman well known to Patrick Paquette.
Moir’s Environmental Dialogues
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
With the knowledge of Carson and the courage of Achilles, individuals are steadfastly going the distance to defend wildlife and ecosystems from assaults of environmental degradations and destructions. Join environmental studies scientist Dr. Rob Moir for lively dialogue and revealing narrative inquiry into how individuals are overcoming the obstacles turning forlorn hope into effective actions for oceans, rivers, watersheds, wildlife and ecosystems. Discover how listening to individuals, thinking locally, and acting in concert with other, you can act to save ecosystems. Got environmental stewardship? Become an Eco-steward. Act to bring about a greener and blue Planet Earth.
Rob Moir
Rob Moir is director and founder of the Ocean River Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Moir, an educator and scientist, has been a leader of citizen science and efforts to clean up Salem Sound and Boston Harbor, as founder of Salem Sound Harbor Monitors & Salem Sound 2000, later president of Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, and through his appointment by the Secretary of Interior to the Boston Harbor Islands Partnership. He was formerly Curator of Natural History at the Peabody Essex Museum, Curator of Education at the New England Aquarium and Executive Director of the Discovery Museums in Acton, MA. Dr. Moir was awarded a Switzer Environmental Fellowship from the Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation, and the James Centorino Award for Distinguished Performance in Marine Education by the National Marine Educators Association, which he later served as president. He was Sea Education Association’s first assistant scientist to work consecutive voyages of the R.V. Westward in 1979 and 1980, an advancement officer for his alma mater, Hampshire College and serves today on the boards of his alma mater, Cambridge School of Weston, Ocean Champions, and the Massachusetts League of Environmental Voters. Dr. Moir has a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies and a Masters of Science and Teaching from Antioch New England Graduate School in Keene, NH and certificate of studies from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.
