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Two Maine scallop farms are betting on two different futures: one building a premium shucked-meat business, the other building a market for whole, live scallops — a market that depends on testing infrastructure more fragile than it looks.

In this episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna talks with Dana Morse, whose work on Maine's scallop farming industry stretches back to early research trips to Japan and years of applied science that helped develop the growing techniques behind both these businesses. His story is part history, part economics, and part open question about what comes next for the people growing Maine's newest crop.

Perna Content's Rising Tides explores how coastal Maine is adapting to environmental, economic, and cultural change through long-form conversations with people working on and alongside the water. New episodes are released fortnightly.

The podcast accompanies the book Rising Tides: Adapting to Maine’s Coastal Future, available at www.pernacontent.com/publishing

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Dan Devereux has spent more than thirty years working Maine's coast. He'll tell you the hardest part has never been the oysters.

In this episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna speaks with Dan Devereux, co-founder of Mere Point Oyster Company in Brunswick, about the people who show up every day to do this work — and what it means to build something that earns its place in a community, while helping to open the door for the next generation of people who want to make a life on the water.

Mere Point has become a launchpad for careers in aquaculture and coastal conservation. Dan calls his crew climate warriors: younger people drawn to the water because they believe in what they're building there. At the heart of it, for Dan, is a love of working with the natural world, and a conviction that the best thing people can do for Maine's coast is to take care of it.

Their conversation is as much about community as it is about challenge — and why, for Dan, none of this has ever really been a battle.

Perna Content's Rising Tides explores how coastal Maine is adapting to environmental, economic, and cultural change through long-form conversations with people working on and alongside the water. New episodes are released fortnightly.

The podcast accompanies the book Rising Tides: Adapting to Maine’s Coastal Future, available at www.pernacontent.com/publishing

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Maine's Damariscotta River has been producing oysters for thousands of years. The shell middens that line its banks — some rising 31 vertical feet — are evidence that Native Americans were harvesting here at commercial scale long before lobstering, clamming, or any other fishery Maine is known for. David Cheney farms 650 feet from the largest of them, and he'll tell you that's all the science he needs.

In this episode of Rising Tides, Bill Perna speaks with David Cheney, founder of Johns River Oyster, about a life spent entirely in and on the water — digging clams commercially from fourth grade, lobstering out of New Harbor for sixteen years, and ultimately building one of Maine's more distinctive oyster operations from the ground up.

David's farm runs across two sites: oysters are started in the nutrient-rich, fast-growing waters of the upper Damariscotta River, then relayed twenty-two miles to Johns River — where he grew up — to finish in higher-salinity water that hardens the shell and produces what he calls a clean finish. His Whaleback oysters are named for the shell midden on whose doorstep he farms.

Their conversation covers the economics of leaving lobstering behind, the science of oyster flavour and terroir, what warming waters mean for the species that can thrive on Maine's coast, and why David believes aquaculture here is still just the beginning.

Perna Content's Rising Tides explores how coastal Maine is adapting to environmental, economic, and cultural change through long-form conversations with people working on and alongside the water. New episodes are released fortnightly.

The podcast accompanies the book Rising Tides: Adapting to Maine’s Coastal Future, available at www.pernacontent.com/publishing