What do an engine block and styrofoam bits have in common?

(We don’t know either – but neither one belongs in the river!)

“Whoa – is that an entire engine block?”

What might pass for a strange pick-up line in another setting is par for the course during the annual Damariscotta River Clean-up. Earlier this month, staff and volunteers from over a dozen local businesses and organizations spent the afternoon picking up trash along the shoreline of the Damariscotta River.

Coastal Rivers staff and volunteers, along with folks from University of Maine Darling Marine Center, First National Bank, First National Wealth Management, Blackstone Point Oysters, Dodge Cove Marine Farm, Glidden Point Oyster Farms, Heron Island Oysters, Johns River Oyster, Mook Sea Farm, Norumbega Oyster, and Pemaquid Oyster Company, split up in boats operated by local shellfish farms to cover different areas of the river.

Including the rusty engine block that one dedicated team managed to wrestle on to their boat, we collected over 850 pounds of trash. We also retrieved a hefty pile of oyster farming gear, much of which growers are able to reuse.

The clean-up is an opportunity both to collect lost aquaculture gear at the end of the growing season and a measure to preserve water quality for aquaculture, recreation, and wildlife.