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The Gulf of Maine has long been considered to be among the most productive fishing areas on the planet. The historical fishery for Atlantic cod was so profitable and landings so great that it quickly became New England’s most important colonial industry. Though heavily fished, the Gulf continued to produce impressively until cod stocks collapsed along the eastern 400 km of New England’s coastal shelf in the 1990s.Twenty years later, cod stocks have still not recovered and show few signs of recovery.Cod were not the only depleted species along that coast. So many species of groundfish disappeared from the area that the entire eastern coastal shelf has reverted to a crustacean-dominated ecosystem. What factors contributed to this paradigm shift and is it possible that the fish-dominated ecosystem can be restored?Historical fishermen’s knowledge and period scientific data provided sufficient information about cod and other gadids to determine their distribution, population structure and movements. Evaluation of predator-prey dynamics and the processes associated with depletion give clues about what factors had triggered the collapse of cod and discovery of opportunities that could enhance their recovery.

Ted Ames is a founding board member and senior advisor of Penobscot East Resource Center, an external Graduate Faculty Member at University of Maine, Orono, and visiting research scientist at Bowdoin. He fished commercially for 28 years. He was formerly vice-chair of Maine Department of Marine Resources Hatchery Technology Committee, executive director of the Maine Gillnetters Association and director of Alden-Ames Lab, an environmental and analytical laboratory.Ames is the recipient of a 2005 MacArthur Award, 2007 Geddes W. Simpson Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Maine and Bowdoin’s visiting Coastal Studies Scholar in 2010-11. His current research explores the ecological connection between marine and riverine ecosystems.

A painter for more than 50 years, Ed Douglas has traveled throughout his professional life to sources in the landscape that, in his words, resonate as "a natural and symbolic place, a refuge for solitude, work, and play, where nature and nurture combine and incubate slowly into paintings that compress my history yet breathe freely."

These investigations have brought him to Eastern and Western Europe, Scandinavia, Egypt, North Africa and the Near East. The paintings that result from his journeys are evocative of both the place and the reverie of being in its presence. Douglas received a BFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute. His work is represented in the collections of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Portland Museum of Art, San Francisco Art Institute Art Bank, Cincinnati Art Museum, and others. This talk is sponsored by the Humanities Art Lecture Fund.

Professor Allen Lynch from the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia will deliver the 2013 Hunt Lecture. His books and monographs include: Vladimir Putin & Russian Statecraft (Potomac Books, 2011); How Russia is—Not—Ruled: Reflections on Russian Political Development (Cambridge University Press, 2005); Does Russia Have a Democratic Future? (Foreign Policy Association, 1997); Europe from the Balkans to the Urals (Oxford University Press/Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 1996), with Reneo Lukic; The Cold War Is Over—Again (Westview Press, 1992); Political & Military Implications of the “Nuclear Winter” Theory (Institute for East-West Security Studies, 1988); and The Soviet Study of International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 1987), which received the Marshall D. Shulman Award of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.