These days, only Lubec Packing Company remains. Fishermen must travel far away to bring in the herring they once harvested in nearby waters. Other local fisheries are dwindling, and several tidal flats where clams have been dug for generations are off-limits because of pollution fears. Green sea-urchins, so prized for their roe in Japan, are smaller and less plentiful on an ocean floor increasingly barren of the kelp beds which nourish and protect a multitude of marine life. Local people harvest blueberries, tip trees, and fashion wreaths for the holiday season, and hope for the best.
Children learn responsibility for themselves and for others at a very early age.
Yet there is a chance that things may get better if the community and its residents can adjust to changing opportunities. Over the past decade, salmon pens have proliferated around Cobscook and Johnson's Bays, waters adjacent to the town of Lubec. Farming fish and other forms of ocean life has become a viable opportunity for those with scientific and technological know-how. Students are learning about the latest in aquaculture technology in a laboratory they themselves helped to design and construct. Students and community built a school greenhouse which allows them to grow vegetables reutilizing waste water from the aquaculture tanks.