PORT CLYDE, Me. — For generations fishermen have trawled for flounder, haddock and lobster in the waters off this picturesque port, unloading their catch on the docks that line the harbor.
But the fishermen here, like most others who operate on the state’s rapidly shrinking working waterfront, do not own the docks they work on. Throughout Maine, fishermen, ferry operators, boat builders and parts suppliers worry that these waterfront workplaces could be sold to the highest bidder in a real estate market with a hot demand for waterfront property.
To help stem the tide, fishermen, towns and residents are buying up Maine’s working waterfront with public grants and private money.
“We’re running out of working waterfront, and they aren’t making any more,” said Jim Barstow, who operates a ferry service from a wharf in this fishing village on the tip of a peninsula 15 miles southwest of Rockland. Mr. Barstow is part of a group considering buying the wharves here out of concern that their sale would forever change the community.