Dwayne Tomah, the Passamaquoddy language keeper, speaks at a public event promoting the 2019 novel “Stories from the Magic Canoe of Wa’xaid.” Glenn Page photo

At a bend in the Presumpscot River, Passamaquoddy language keeper Dwayne Tomah listened to the rapids flowing into Casco Bay and took in the surrounding landscape, pine trees rising from a floor of moss and fallen needles. 

Much had changed since he was a boy. 

“Now,” he said, “it’s time to heal Mother Earth.”

The polycrisis (when problems with multiple global issues become entangled and cause human harm) may seem overwhelming, but Tomah believes the solution is simple. It starts with deepening our connection to the land.

“It’s painful to see how domination has hurt this place,” Tomah said. “But we must carry our sorrow with equal parts love. We must share the knowledge our ancestors gave to us. We’re all in need of pisun [medicine].”

On Sept. 12, 15 climate leaders launched their sea kayaks off East End Beach, paddling for three days across Casco Bay and then biking back for three days. The COBALT bioregional learning journey was meant to show who’s doing what and where regarding coastal resilience — to map out local climate actions and form new, collective solutions. 

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Participants took an overnight break, stopping at the Schiller Coastal Studies Center (SCSC) on Saturday night. While there, they assisted in processing 30,000 eelgrass (Zostera marina) seeds to support an ongoing pilot-scale restoration in Casco Bay.

Eager to shower and get a good night’s rest, a few people were willing to share wisdom from their time out in the field, including wildlife they saw and a special cloud sighting that, as Tomah has referenced in the past, looked just like a “magic canoe.” 

During the 2024 COBALT bioregional learning journey, Glenn Page took a picture of a cloud that he said resembles “a magic canoe.”  Glenn Page photo

‘Mawulkhotine’

For starters, what is bioregionalism? 

Glenn Page, the founder of COBALT (Collaborative for Bioregional Action Learning and Transformation), explained that the concept refers to all the interconnected systems relevant to a specific area, such as food, energy, waste, water, health care and education. As a bioregional journey, the aim is to integrate Indigenous wisdom with Western science and expressions of art, poetry and music. 

Take, for instance, a seagrass meadow — often praised for its role as a protective nursery for critters that bolster Maine’s blue economy. Interpreted through a bioregional lens, however, it becomes more than that and is seen as a keystone species for the broader collective of marine systems — burying carbon and serving as a lawn in the estuary, reducing the effects of storms, waves and erosion. 

“Eelgrass is our canary in the coal mine,” Page said. “We have a great barrier reef equivalent in our backyard, and yet it’s in decline, and no one is paying attention.” 

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COBALT has held various journeys abroad — the Westfjords, Iceland; Tayside, Scotland; Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica; Sacred Headwaters of the Amazon, Ecuador; and in Maine — for the past four summers. 

“Like a child, each journey has a life of its own,” Page said. “In 2021, we worked with Indigenous partners, that to accomplish healing, we must appreciate many perspectives. In 2022, we focused on food systems and spoke with harbormasters about alternative mooring locations for seagrass meadows. And last year, we kayaked through eelgrass beds.” 

By embracing a long-term view, what Page calls a “macroscopic perspective,” the goal is to enhance existing conservation efforts. Weaving in native content plays a key role as it requires a “multigenerational, multiethnic and multidisciplinary lens that considers the continuum of lifetimes (humans and nature) of those that preceded this moment and those yet unborn,” he said. 

“Mawulkhotine,” said Page, reciting the Passamaquoddy phrase “Let’s work together.” “This concept has been around for thousands of years, but now, more than ever, it’s required to form a new care ethic rooted in deep listening and engagement.” 

Page said humans are good at looking into the past (microscope) and the future (telescope) but often need help seeing the gamut of interwoven events that make up the present (macroscope). The 2024 COBALT journey aims to bridge the gap, developing the collective skills necessary to navigate an uncertain future.

An aerial view of participants in the 2024 learning journey standing in a circle after completing a three-day paddle from East End Beach in Portland to the Schiller Coastal Studies Center on Orr’s Island. Stefan Claeson photo

Participants’ POV

Salty and smiling, a few crew members shared their experiences before heading to their cabins.

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“I speak for most when I say it was fabulous,” said Michele Iannuzzi Suich, who brought a background in public health to the trip. “It was nice to get back to the basics, filter out everyday life’s noise and have some great conversations.” 

En route to Harpswell, Suzanne Watson, executive director of Meetinghouse Arts in Freeport, said the group had passed over seagrass meadows. At Bang’s Island, hope was high, with signs of vitality beyond the usual reproductive season.

“Eelgrass is in flux,” Watson said. “It’s disappearing and it’s moving. Glenn’s team is trying to track where those fertile pockets are and reseed in areas the shoots will take. The research is just beginning.” 

Many in the group recognized the rewarding experience of discovering the interconnectedness of Maine’s islands, which goes beyond what maps indicate. But some sights weren’t so easy to see. 

“We saw a washed-up humpback whale carcass,” said Kathleen Sullivan, who helped organize Freeport Climate Action Now. “There was the sweeping beauty of the bay, contrasted with the death of a large mammal, showing the system’s inability to support it. We also saw coastal erosion and depleted eelgrass meadows. To hold such beauty and sorrow at the same time has made this trip emotional.” 

Reproductive eelgrass shoots collected by Glenn Page and Lucy Dutto have been submerged in seawater at the Schiller Coastal Studies Center wet lab, awaiting processing. Laura Sitterly / The Times Record

Casco Bay seagrass restoration

The learning journey is the second to emerge from a local initiative known as “Team Zostera,” a citizen science effort to map and monitor the health of eelgrass meadows.

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According to the state Department of Environmental Protection, more than 50% of the eelgrass native to the area has declined over recent years. Many factors have contributed, from stormwater pollution (nutrient loading) to invasive green crabs that munch on the grass beds. 

Lucy Dutton holds a reproductive eelgrass shoot, pointing to the enclosed period-sized seeds. Laura Sitterly / The Times Record

In 2021, COBALT held meetings with local leaders, researchers, baykeepers and the DEP to coordinate the next steps for eelgrass restoration. Last spring, the team, including Page and Bowdoin College student Lucy Dutton, began a five-month project to record the timing of eelgrass’s reproductive stages. They monitored Mackworth Island State Park in Falmouth and East End Beach in Portland.

The goal of the phenology study was to document evidence of flowering seedlings, to provide insight into the ideal window for seed collection, which is valuable for planning long-term conservation and restoration. 

Subsequent data found that the peak seagrass reproductive season is from June to August, so July is the best time for seed collection. That said, on Sept. 14 — months after the initial collection — the seeds stored at the Schiller Center were ready to be processed. 

“Tidal marsh restoration is like playing checkers,” Page said. “You know what conditions are needed to achieve the outcome, and you can engineer the solution. Seagrass restoration is like 3D chess on a mountaintop in a rainstorm at night.” 

Lucy Dutton places three eelgrass seeds under a microscope in the dry lab at the Schiller Coastal Studies Center. Laura Sitterly / The Times Record

Seed processing

Throughout the summer, the wet lab kept six tanks of eelgrass shoots submerged in seawater from Harpswell Sound, only minimally filtered to prevent the seeds from getting covered in tunicates.

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Note that at each site, Page and Dutton only collected 50 reproductive shoots, leaving thousands intact. Still, Page underscored that this study’s potential for pilot-scale restoration “is extraordinary.” 

Processing involves using a series of sieves to remove small seeds (half the size of a grain of rice) from the shoots in which they are stored. While fairly rudimentary, with 30,000 seeds to sift through, a team effort was required, including learning journey participants, Bowdoin students, faculty, staff and volunteers.

The results from Saturday will indicate the number of seeds in the shoots at each sample site. Next, Dutton will analyze the germination rate.

“Before last year, no one studied the timing of seagrass seed reproduction,” Page said. “On the learning journey, we saw flowering meadows at Bang’s Island, which is hopeful but interesting — we haven’t yet found the precise seasonal schedule. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. We want to take our time to understand the ecosystem.” 

The team will soon reconvene to decide whether to focus on lab-based germination this year or explore the possibility of test transplantation.

COBALT bioregional journey participants, Bowdoin students and faculty help process eelgrass seeds for a restoration project on Sept. 14. Glenn Page demonstrated the seeds’ delicacy during sieving. Laura Sitterly / The Times Record

A digital twin

COBALT will host an event in October to share journey results with others involved in coastal conservation, adaptation and habitat restoration in the Casco Bay area.

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When asked how Page would determine the event’s success, he said it would depend on the participants’ safety and happiness. The latter, which is trickier to measure, will be gauged through participants’ responses using blue-marble evaluation. This involves recounting the emotions felt and thoughts shared along different legs of the expedition.

In the future, COBALT plans to create a self-guided learning journey. It is currently developing a digital twin that uses real-time sensor technology and artificial intelligence. Instead of a video game experience that takes viewers away from the natural world, the hope is to inspire action, stewardship and dedication to the environment. 

“We’re years away from a prototype,” Page said. “But once complete,  it could be used as a tool in food systems, wastewater treatment and coastal adaptations. Essentially, it’d be a meta-place to store local ecological data while crowdsourcing information from the greater bioregion.” 

Sullivan agreed that such a tool would be helpful for climate planning. As a Freeport resident, she said she only vaguely knows what Falmouth, Brunswick and Bath are doing nearby. 

“It’s hard to think in that drone-like way,” Sullivan said. “We’re so used to our municipal governance structures. But Mother Nature doesn’t know where town borders stop — nor did the Abenaki people; they managed shared waterways as one, as we ought to.” 

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified the river in the lede. It was the Presumpscot. 

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