The Boston Globe's David Abel Reports from the Maine Coast

January 16, 2022

The latest from the Maine coast and lobstermen v. whale

On this episode, hosts Peter Ravella and Tyler Buckingham reconnect with David Abel, an award winning journalist and filmmaker, to check in on the the pulse of the Maine coast heading into 2022. David has been covering the ongoing saga between the state's lobster industry and the federal government's Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan, which would impose new regulations intended to help avert the extinction of the North Atlantic Right Whale. What began as a harmonious effort, has now descended into quagmire.

David Abel is an award-winning reporter on the Globe staff since 1999, David Abel has covered war in the Balkans, unrest in Latin America, national security issues in Washington D.C., terrorism in New York and Boston, and climate change and poverty in New England. Abel, also a documentary filmmaker and an occasional professor of journalism, was part of the team that won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for the paper’s coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings. He now covers the environment for the Globe.

Show Transcription
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Peter Ravella & Tyler Buckingham

Peter and Tyler joined forces in 2015 and from the first meeting began discussing a project that would become Coastal News Today and the American Shoreline Podcast Network. At the time, Peter and Tyler were coastal consultants for Pete’s firm, PAR Consulting, LLC. In that role, they worked with coastal communities in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, engaged in grant writing, coastal project development, shoreline erosion and land use planning, permitting, and financial planning for communities undertaking big beach restoration projects. Between and among their consulting tasks, they kept talking and kept building the idea of CNT & ASPN. In almost every arena they worked, public engagement played a central role. They spent thousands of hours talking with coastal stakeholders, like business owners, hotel operators, condo managers, watermen, property owners, enviros, surfers, and fishermen. They dived deep into the value, meaning, and responsibility for the American shoreline, segment-by-segment. Common threads emerged, themes were revealed, differences uncovered. There was a big conversation going on along the American shoreline! But, no place to have it. That's where CNT and ASPN were born.