Shore access is as simple as it sounds. Trails, roads and other routes to the intertidal are crucial for many local shellfish harvesters to access their marine workspace.

As old waterfront properties change hands, marine harvesters often lose access to the shore. It’s often a simple problem: New property owners simply aren’t aware of historical routes or shore access easements. But the impacts can have cascading effects. If marine harvesters suddenly have to travel much farther to access the intertidal, their livelihood, health and safety take a hit. Plus, it’s simply hard for anyone to be forced to let go of lifelong and traditional ways of work.

Maine’s coast is one, long fishing community. Everybody knows about lobster! The working wharfs, buoy-enshrined sheds and lobster boats are so tough to miss that the lobster fishery has become symbolic of our coast. Clam diggers and other wild harvesters of the intertidal aren’t so recognizable. Their working waterfronts lack the big infrastructure of wharves. They rarely need boats to access the flats–though loss of historical routes can increase the need for smaller boats, as the distance between access point and solid digging grounds gets wider. It’s a quieter fishery. As property changes hands, informal, “handshake” agreements can be forgotten.

There are many ways to offer access. Some are quite casual. Traditionally, access over privately owned land was often agreed upon by handshake–often between community members who had known each other for a long time.

Maybe you’d like to provide Phippsburg shore access to harvesters, but have “best-use” practices in mind as a requirement of access.

(“Best-use” can outline such things as noise levels, specific areas of use, times of day, or seasonality of use.)

This makes sense! If that’s the case, we can work with you to create a detailed outline of such best-use practices, that will allow some or all license-holding shellfish harvesters to access the shore.

This outline has specific language that each party can rely on as a guide for sustainable future use.

Should any issues arise, the shellfish warden, Erick Halpin, will then be your liaison to the Shellfish Commission.

Up and down the coast of Maine, towns with wild shellfish harvesters are finding their own unique ways to encourage collaboration between landowners and harvesters.

Here in rural, coastal Maine, caring for one’s neighbors can mean different things than it does in city centers. Allowing historical land use to remain is just one way to participate in this community.

We live among the tides here–a meandering community of little people neighboring one large ocean. The littoral edge is a finite, absurdly dynamic space. It makes sense that land use agreements can be tricky. Tricky, but not impossible.