Episode 71 – Maine’s Great Duck Island is more than 200 acres in size and about nine miles south of the much larger Mount Desert Island. The island’s lighthouse was established in 1890. In 1998 Great Duck Island Light Station, along with Mount Desert Rock Light Station, became the property of Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic under the Maine Lights Program. John Anderson has been a professor at College of the Atlantic for more than 30 years. His field research centers around Great Duck Island. He says that he’s interested in the intersection between natural history and human history in relation to long-term ecological processes.
Episode 72 – Maine’s Mount Desert Rock is more than 20 miles from the nearest port at Mount Desert Island. The Rock’s lighthouse was established in 1830 and rebuilt in 1847. Under the Maine Lights Program, Mount Desert Rock Light Station became the property of the College of the Atlantic in 1998. Sean Todd is the Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Sciences at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, and he also directs Allied Whale, the college’s marine mammal research program.
Episode 73 –Today, Cape Beale is one of 27 lightstations that remain staffed on the coast of British Columbia, Canada. A resident keeper maintains the navigation equipment and buildings, monitors weather and sea conditions, and watches for emergency situations. For more than a dozen years, the keeper has been Karen Zacharuk, who is interviewed in this episode.
Episode 74 – Eldred Rock Lighthouse was first lighted on June 1, 1906, as one of four lighthouses in Alaska’s Lynn Canal. The light station was automated and destaffed in 1973. The Eldred Rock Lighthouse Preservation Association was organized to restore, maintain, and preserve the light station. Sue York, interviewed in this episode, is the organization’s executive director.
Special edition – National Lighthouse Day 2020
On August 7, 1789, the first Congress approved an act for the establishment of lighthouses, beacons, buoys, and public piers. Two hundred years later, Congress passed an act that designated August 7, 1989, as National Lighthouse Day. For this special edition of the podcast, host Jeremy D’Entremont plays some clips from the interviews in past episodes. Topics include, “What do you love about your lighthouse work?” and “What makes lighthouses so special?
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Jeremy D’Entremont is the author of more than 20 books and hundreds of articles on lighthouses and maritime history. He is the president and historian for the American Lighthouse Foundation and founder of Friends of Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouses, and he has lectured and narrated cruises throughout the Northeast and in other regions. He is also the producer and host of the U.S. Lighthouse Society podcast, “Light Hearted.” He can be emailed at Jeremy@uslhs.org