Each spring, millions of fish return to Maine’s coastal rivers to spawn. For thousands of years, these fish runs have helped people build and sustain communities, economies, and cultures. Over time, dams, pollution, and other threats have fractured habitat and diminished historic numbers and species of migrating fish. As scientists, conservationists, and anglers seek to restore and protect these rivers and streams, it is their stories, both new and old, which carry hope for the future and connect new generations to our rivers. Join co-hosts Maine Audubon and The Nature Conservancy in Maine on May 1, 7 pm, at Gilsland Farm Audubon Center in Falmouth for an evening of storytelling. Hear from scientists, an activist, and a Wabanaki educator, as they each share a story to help us relate and reconnect to the amazing phenomenon of fish migration.
Register here for this free program (There is also an online option to watch over Zoom).
Meet our Fish Migration Tales storytellers!
Mihku Paul (she/her) is a Maliseet, also known as Wolastoqiyik, poet, writer, visual artist, and activist. She is a member of Kingsclear First Nation, N.B., Canada and grew up in Old Town, Maine, along the Penobscot River. Mihku has worked as an educator for several decades on curriculum enrichment that focuses on Waponahki cultural life ways, promoting two-eyed seeing and support teacher education utilizing Indigenous pedagogies. Mihku uses arts as a path into the sharing of Wabanaki teaching methodology, engaging students from pre-school to high school on her world view as a Wolastoqey woman. Her background is in Human Development and Communication. She is also a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program. Her poetry is used in varied classrooms, with middle school, high school and college students, to help them understand her lived experience as a contemporary Wabponahki woman. Mihku leads interactive storytelling sessions surrounding Waponahki legends, and assists students with art projects by intertwining conceptual principles along with practical design. Outside the classroom Paul’s poetry and art support diversity projects and events. Her one woman show, Look Twice: The Waponahki in Image & Verse debuted at the Abbe Museum and was also shown at USM’s Glickman Library. Recent work includes the collaborative experimental film “Putep Qotatokot-te Elewestaq (The j a Climate Change project that includes whale synology, spoken word, images from Greenland and an original score which premiered at the Belfast Poetry Festival and was consequently shown at WORD: Blue Hill Lit Festival and is now moving to the World Ocean Observatory platform. “My hope is that my creative work can enter the world and do some good, creating better understanding of Waponahki Peoples and inspire others to take action and protect the waters.” Mihku lives and works in Portland.
Lars Hammer (he/him) is a Marine Resource Management Coordinator with the Maine Department of Marine Resources in the Bureau of Sea-Run Fisheries and Habitat. The majority of his work with the department is spent on fish passage issues involving dams and road-stream crossings throughout the state. Lars holds a Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology from the University of New England, and a Master of Science in Integrative and Organismal Biology from the University of New Hampshire. In his free time, Lars enjoys getting out in nature with his partner through various outdoor activities including skiing, hiking, kayaking, and fly fishing.
Michael Shaughnessy (he/him) is originally from Kansas City, Missouri, and moved to Maine in 1987, living in multiple communities along the Presumpscot River. Michael teaches art at the University of Southern Maine and is known for art installations and sculptures primarily made of hay. Michael is also a small food entrepreneur, serves as an at-large City Councilor of Westbrook, and is a founding member of the Friends of the Presumpscot River, currently serving as the President of the Board. He and his wife Malory reside in the historic Conant Homestead that sits along the banks of the Presumpscot River just up from Saccarappa Falls and downtown Westbrook. They support a small farm and host many concerts and gatherings. Michael is a founding board member and current president of Friends of the Presumpscot River.
Christian Fox (he/him) leads The Nature Conservancy in Maine’s Watershed-scale Approach to Restoring Stream Systems (WATRSS) project. Working in partnership with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and in collaboration with Federal, Tribal, State, municipal, nonprofit, and private landowners, the project reconnects fragmented habitat for Maine’s native upland and sea-run fish species. This work is a win-win for people and nature, supporting global biodiversity, infrastructure resilience, and sustainable forestry. Additionally, Christian helped lead a Crossing Replacement Optimization Study and is carrying those findings forward to identify priority projects and enhance engineering and construction capacity for fish-passage barrier removal. Previously, Christian led outreach for TNC in Connecticut to develop the Long Island Sound Blue Plan—the nation’s first Marine Spatial Plan for a shared-management waterbody. In his free time, Christian enjoys skiing and hiking, gardening, and all aspects of fly fishing, including fly tying, rod building, and getting in the occasional cast.
