Sometimes Acadia officials close certain areas of the park for reasons unrelated to finances. This past week, they announced that part of a mountain trail would be closed due to birds and that another area adjacent to a waterfront trail would be roped off to protect vegetation.

Peregrine falcons have been observed defending nesting territories and engaging in breeding behavior at Jordan Cliffs, park officials indicated last week in a prepared statement. The species is listed as an endangered species under the Maine Endangered Species Act.

Acadia has closed the cliff area and trail to all visitor and operational activities until further notice. The closure includes the area known as Jordan Cliffs and Jordan Cliffs Trail, on the eastern side of Jordan Ridge and Penobscot Mountain. If chicks are born, the trail will remain closed for several weeks until after the chicks take their first flight, or fledge, from their nests, which likely would be in early August. If the park biologist determines later this spring or in early summer that the nesting attempt has failed, the trail may be opened earlier, park officials indicated.

Park officials also indicated they planned to install rope barriers along the edges of the Wonderland Trail, off Route 102A between Seawall and Bass Harbor, in order to protect an rare oceanfront plant community from foot traffic.

Acadia officials said the mixed vegetation, a combination of pitch pine and broom crowberry, is an unusual association of the two plants, according to the U.S. National Vegetation Classification system. The combination is known to occur only in Maine and New York, and only 20 to 30 occurrences have been documented.

Foot traffic can be especially damaging to broom crowberry, a small, densely branched
evergreen shrub that forms a springy carpet less than a foot tall. It is a rare plant in Acadia and in the northeast generally, park officials said. It can live up to 50 years and prefers sandy soils or, as is the case in Acadia, open rocky ledges.

“Pitch pine prefers the same type of habitat, and while common in the park, is near the northern limit of its range,” Acadia officials added. “In other parts of their ranges, both species are dependent on fire to encourage reproduction, but ecologists are uncertain whether that is the case in the harsh, rocky, and barren habitats where it is found in the park.”

Park ecologists regularly monitor the condition of the 13.5-acre plant community off the Wonderland Trail. They ask visitors to help protect this rare area by staying on the trail.

My hunch was right.

Turns out, the woman profiled in the piece is an artist who gets large quantities of her preferred medium from the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation, which for years collected tons of old float rope from fishermen who, due to federal laws that mandate protections for endangered whales, can no longer use it. Rope designed to float in the water column is believed to pose a hazard to diving whales, so federal regulators require fishermen who use gear beyond a certain distance from shore to use ground lines that sink to the bottom between traps that are set in a line with buoys at the end.

The NYTimes article says that, for the past two years, the artist and her assistants “have spent almost every day in her studio cleaning lobster claws and fish bones out of the rope and crocheting it into the chunky scarflike strips, some 150 feet long, that she used as building blocks.”

I know very little about the prevailing economics of the modern art world, but given the scale she works at and the attention she is getting for her work, I’d bet a wealthy collector or institution would be willing to pay a seven-figure sum for one of her major pieces. If that were to happen, I wonder what Maine lobstermen would think of artwork made from something they had to sell for a song (50 cents a pound, according to this AP story) fetching that kind of price?

Another online item about art made from material pulled from the Gulf of Maine also caught my eye this week.

Last summer, the BDN had two stories in a span of a few weeks about leatherback turtles spotted floating in the waters off Mount Desert Island – one about an entangled turtle freed by the Coast Guard and the other about a dead turtle found off Schoodic Point. Officials said they were not sure if it was the same leatherback turtle in each instance.

Turns out, a necropsy later performed by Allied Whale on the dead turtle revealed that it had a “cache of plastic” in its stomach, according to a release from College of the Atlantic. The discovery made an impression with COA senior Phinn Onens who decided to try to spread the word about the hazards of plastic pollution in the ocean through an art project. He collected plastic items he found on the shore of MDI and pieced them together into a sculpture now on display at the college.

I am familiar enough with art to know that undergraduate student works rarely sell for more than a few hundred bucks (and are out of my price range as a result). But with Onens’ piece, the kind of price it represents may end up being more about the environment than about art world economics.

The story has attracted national and international attention, for obvious reasons. It’s just plain weird. Really weird. People don’t do things like that and, if they try to, 999 times out of 1,000 they will give up or get caught long before 27 cold Maine winters come and go. And hermits of such longevity are unusual enough without them (allegedly) committing more than 1,000 burglaries. I’ve been reading and writing about crimes in Maine for 15 years, and I’ve never seen an estimate that high for just one burglar. I am sure I never will again.

As much as I or anyone likes stories about flamboyant, notorious or even dumb criminals, real or imagined, the most interesting thing about the North Pond Hermit case is the reactions it has elicited from people. Comments I’ve seen or heard range from ‘he must be mentally ill’ to ‘he’s my freaking hero!’ to ‘he’s a lowlife thieving scum.’ It runs the gamut. Debates have raged on social media and in online comments sections throughout the country and overseas.

Feedback on media coverage of the case also runs to the extremes, from people who say they can’t get enough – be it articles, songs or parody Twitter or Facebook accounts – to others who say the hermit is getting too much ink and is being inappropriately glorified. As much as I’ve been fascinated, I (for what it’s worth) think he should be tried for his alleged crimes and, if found guilty, should serve an appropriate punishment. But God only knows how his life will change yet again come the day he is let out of jail.

I do think he has been glorified by some for what they interpret as some sort of anti-establishment protest against modern society, but I haven’t seen any media coverage that suggests he was justified in (allegedly) trespassing and stealing. The song written by my colleague Troy Bennett, in my opinion, is simply an acknowledgement of the folkloric proportions the hermit’s story has attained around the world. People frequently write and sing songs about things they don’t endorse (Mack the Knife, anyone?), and the practice of journalism through storytelling or song has been around longer than any newspaper I can think of.

So, while there’s still a lot about him that we don’t know, such as why he did it (he’s not giving jailhouse interviews to the media, just maybe, BECAUSE HE’S A HERMIT), I have learned a lot about other people from their reactions to his story. Isn’t it odd that a guy who went without looking at himself in a mirror for 27 years and just wanted to get away from everybody could end up being so effective at holding up a mirror to the society he left behind?

One in particular, in Bar Harbor overlooking Frenchman Bay, has been on the market for several years but, according to the listing agent, it has finally sold – for about $1 million less than the owner originally wanted.

Former state senator W. Tom Sawyer had asked for $4.9 million for the home in 2009 (I’ve been keeping track), but according to this post on the listing agent’s Facebook page, it sold late last month for $3,975,000.

That would seem like a big hit, but according to the town’s property tax records, the 3.3-acre shorefront property has an assessed value of $3.2 million. Sawyer bought the land in 2000 for less than $1 million and now it (the land) has an assessed value of over $700,000. The assessed value of the house, which was built in 2003, is $2.5 million. The $4.9 million price tag in 2009 may have been more a lingering reflection of the now-popped housing bubble than of anything else.

But I have no idea what the 2003 construction bill amounted to, or what kind of intangibles may have contributed to Sawyer’s former $4.9 million asking price. It can be hard to put a price on a labor of love which – given the name of “Highland Rose” that Sawyer bestowed upon the property and his outward affection for his Scottish heritage - is what the project seems to have been. (Check out this property slide show - that painting over the fireplace of a Highland drum major may well be a portrait of the erstwhile owner).

Housing bubbles aren’t a good thing – not for the millionaires and billionaires who own seasonal vacation homes on Mount Desert Island, and not for working people who get priced out of communities where they would like to live. Modest home prices on MDI might be more affordable now than they were five or six years ago, but it can be tough to buy if you work as a caretaker, carpenter or (as my wife used to) an estate gardener and the “big” houses are shuttered or left unimproved while the owners try to unload them.

So perhaps the sale of Highland Rose bodes well for the real estate and related sectors on MDI and elsewhere along the coast. Whether it does or not, I am sure the debate about the availability of affordable housing on the island will continue.

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association presented two awards to Maine Department of Marine Resources officials at the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport last weekend, according to a prepared statement released Wednesday by DMR. Marine Patrol Specialist Matt Talbot was given the annual Officer of the Year award and DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher received the MLA award for Outstanding Achievement.

Talbot was responsible for the arrest of two midcoast men for possession of more than 400 v-notch lobsters. In Maine, it is illegal to possess lobsters that have small “v”-shaped notches that fishermen cut into their tails to mark them as egg-bearing females. The measure is aimed at preserving the breeding population of the resource.

Talbot is a twelve year veteran of the Marine Patrol, serves in the Rockland to Searsport area, and is married with two children, according to the release.

Keliher was honored for his outreach efforts to industry and for his work to improve department morale and effectiveness, the release indicated. Keliher and his staff recently concluded a series of 16 meetings with lobster industry stakeholders in communities from Machias to York to solicit input on the state of the fishery.

David Cousens, a Spruce Head lobsterman and president of MLA, acknowledged in the release that it is rare for an industry group to honor a governmental agency that regulates and polices it. He thanked Talbot for helping to protect the lobster resource and Keliher for “building a strong team” at DMR and for reaching out and involving fishermen in the decision-making process.

“The MLA feels strongly that DMR and Marine Patrol work in partnership with lobster industry to make sure that we have a healthy resource,” Cousens said. “It means a great deal to know that a state official charged with regulating us is committed to working with industry as a partner.”

Gov. Paul LePage said in the release that the awards were well-deserved.

“The award for Commissioner Keliher provides further confirmation of what I’ve long known for a long time,” LePage said. “His depth of knowledge and commitment to dialogue has won great respect among fishermen. I’m also very proud of Specialist Talbot. He has clearly balanced the need for enforcement with a dedication to supporting Mainers who make a living on the water.”

MLA was founded in 1954 and currently is the oldest and, with 1,200 members, the largest fishing industry association on the East Coast.

In the photograph above are (from left to right) Marine Patrol Colonel Joseph Fessenden, Cousens, Marine Patrol Major Alan Talbot, Specialist Matt Talbot, and MLA Executive Director Patrice McCarron.

The latest is The Colbert Report, which on Monday aired a humorous segment it filmed last month on MDI about a scallop fisherman who lost a delivery of scallop gonads to a marine scientist when he placed them in the wrong unlocked car at a convenience store in Somesville.

Off the top of my head, I can think of eight or nine other examples of television crews from national TV shows filming in Maine in the past decade or so. There probably are more examples that have escaped me.

The first obvious one that comes to mind is North Woods Law, the popular Animal Planet show that features the working lives of Maine game wardens.

Another is “Dirty Jobs,” the Discovery Channel show hosted by Mike Rowe, which visited Maine multiple times, filming segments on worm digging, on slime eels, and on blueberries (from both the picking and pie baking angles). In 2007, when Rowe was in Milbridge for the slime eel episode, the same Washington County town also hosted ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” which built a new home for a local family.

Earlier this year, prior to the Colbert Report bit, Headline News aired an episode of a new program called ”American Journey” that it filmed at offshore island communities near MDI. The show (hosted by former “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” host Ty Pennington) came to Maine for a few days last summer to highlight the working lives of Maine lobstermen.

There are more. In 2001, the short-lived Fox program “Murder in Small Town X” filmed several episodes in Eastport. Two years later, the PBS program “Colonial House” built a settlement in a remote part of Machiasport and filmed eight episodes. In 2006, the Food Network show Dinner Impossible filmed an episode on Little Cranberry Island, where celebrity chef Robert Irvine and his assistants had only a few hours to set up and prepare an island-wide harvest supper.

“Reality” is a relative term – especially if the approach is as, shall we say, imaginative as the one the Colbert Report took with the missing scallop gonads story. However, The Colbert Report deserves some extra credit for filing in Maine in the winter – unlike most of the other programs listed here. For many of us who live in coastal Maine, our communities seem more ‘real’ when the tourists aren’t around.

In a prepared statement released Friday morning by NOAA Fisheries, Bill Karp, director of its Northeast Fisheries Science Center, said that eventually the fishing industry will have to pick up the bill. But given current low groundfish stocks and quotas, he said, the agency feels now is not the time to place such a financial burden on the industry.

“This will be an exceptionally difficult year for fishermen so we are working on a plan to cover as much of these costs as possible at NOAA,’’  Karp said in the statement. ‘‘We cannot definitively commit to this because of the high degree of uncertainty due to the potential effects of sequestration and the lack of a FY13 budget.’’

In a separate statement released Friday, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree said she wrote a letter last month to NOAA asking them to pay for the monitoring program. All members of Maine’s congressional delegation, as well as other members of Congress from New England, signed the letter, she said.

“It’s not a firm commitment from NOAA but this is a good step in the right direction.  I’m going to keep urging them to follow through and pay for these expenses,” Pingree wrote in her statement.  “With costs of things like fuel continuing to go up and the quotas fishermen are getting going down, it’s just becoming harder and harder to make ends meet and the last thing they need is to have to pay the costs of federal monitoring.”

Pingree said NOAA is expected to pay monitoring costs beginning on May 1. According to the Associated Press, the cost of paying for at-sea monitors is expected to cost $6.7 million.

U.S. Senator Angus King also weighed in, saying the announcement is welcome news but much work remains to be done.

“Maine’s fishermen are important to our state’s economy, landing five million pounds of groundfish [worth] almost $5.8 million in Maine just last year,” King said. “At the same time, they’ve also endured incredible hardship over the past few years, experiencing massive reductions in catch limits that threaten the industry’s future.”

The groundfish industry in Maine has dropped off considerably in recent decades as catches have declined sharply, becoming virtually non-existent in the eastern Gulf of Maine, but fishermen and regulators have held out hope that, with the help of sufficient management measures, the fishery one day might rebound.

But I’ve learned that what most people might not take to be a big difference (say, three or four degrees) can mean a lot when it comes to ocean habitat ecology. Data from F01 show that surface temperatures taken from the waters off Owl’s Head have been consistently two or thee degrees below 38 degrees, which is what they were a year ago (as of this posting)

Waters in the western Gulf of Maine, off the New Hampshire coast, from the surface to 50 meters in depth, are around 42 degrees Fahrenheit, as they were one year ago, according to data collected by B01. Data collected by I01, off Mount Desert island, show temperatures are slightly higher, 1.7 degrees at the surface and 0.4 degrees at 50 meters deep, than they were ago.

The most immediate concern is whether the water temperatures this winter may result in a lobster fishing season as bizarre as last year’s, when lobsters molted and were caught in large numbers earlier than usual, which made prices plummet and led to a trade blockade in New Brunswick. Again, I’m not in a position to interpret the temperature data or  to know what it might suggest about any upcoming fishing season, but I am not alone in wondering what commercial fishing along the coast of Maine might be like in the coming year, the year after that, and so on.

The annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum is coming up this week, running from Thursday, Feb. 28 through Saturday, March 2, at the Samoset Resort in Rockport. The event usually attracts between 2,000 and 3,000 people each year.

This year, at least three of the planned sessions, one each on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, will focus upon changing water conditions as they effect pH levels (acidification), the recovery of the groundfish fishery, and the specific implications of increasing temperatures. Given what happened to Maine’s $330 million lobster industry last year, my guess is that these sessions (and others about ocean energy initiatives) will be among the best-attended sessions at the conference.

King is replacing retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe, who has served on the Commerce committee since she was first sworn in as a U.S. Senator 18 years ago. It has been an important appointment to Mainers for many reasons, not the least of which is Snowe’s role as the ranking member of the subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and the Coast Guard. As the subcommittee’s ranking member, she has taken a keen interest in issues that affect Maine fishermen.

It would be hard to argue that the Commerce committee is more important that the ones King plans to serve on - Armed Services, Budget, Rules and Intelligence – but it’s safe to say that many, if not most, of the thousands of commercial fishermen in Maine appreciate Snowe’s advocacy on their behalf and that of the state’s seafood industry.

This past summer, Snowe called upon Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to investigate whether blockades by Canadian fishermen of Maine lobster imports violated trade agreements. In 2010, she criticized Bumble Bee Foods after it decided, despite what had been recent assurances it had given to the contrary, to shut down the Stinson Seafood sardine cannery on Gouldsboro (which was the last such cannery in the country)

That same year, Snowe proposed creating a National Endowment for the Oceans that would fund research on the marine environment. And, among other things, she has been a vocal advocate for not putting too much financial or regulatory burden on Maine lobstermen when new rules aimed at protecting endangered whales have been adopted.

Snowe has taken on a lot of issues in her congressional career, and she is not the only member of Maine’s delegation to take an interest in and advocate for Maine fishermen. Sen. Susan Collins and U.S. Reps Chellie Pingree and Michael Michaud all have weighed in on fisheries issues to varying extents and will continue to do so.

King, given his two terms as Maine’s governor, presumably understands the importance of Maine’s commercial fishing to the state economy (lobster alone generated $334 million in direct revenue to Maine fishermen in 2011) and is expected to follow suit. An independent, King has said he plans to caucus with Democrats, which is the majority party in the chamber, and so stands to have more influence than he would if he was a newcomer allied with the minority GOP.

But my sense is that, despite his political experience and his allegiance with the Senate’s majority party, as long as he’s not on the Commerce committee, he won’t be able to take on as active a role in advocating for Maine fishermen as Snowe did.

According to DEP the expanded pit, if approved, would be the largest permitted mining site in Hancock County and in the top 20 for the state. The largest permitted mining site in Maine is a 345-acre quarry in Poland, while the largest permitted gravel pit in the state is a 238-acre site in the York County town of Dayton.

Other large mining sites in Maine include a 200-acre gravel pit in Hampden, a 231-acre gravel pit in New Gloucester, and a 163-acre quarry in Jonesboro. An 84-acre gravel pit in Hancock already operated by Harold MacQuinn Inc., the applicant for the proposed 110-acre pit in Lamoine, does not register in the top 25 largest permitted mining sites in Maine.

To see the top 25 list, click here. Note that even though the 110-acre site in Lamoine is on the list, the expanded pit has yet to be approved by DEP or the Lamoine planning board.