Shey Conover
Voices from the Working Waterfront Oral History Project
Working waterfronts are inherently entwined with the social and cultural aspects of their host communities; they are integral to how community members define themselves and set themselves apart from others. This project captures and preserves oral histories highlighting the importance of working waterfronts to the nation’s fisheries, economy, and coastal communities.
Shelley Chance
Biographical Note:
Shey Conover is the Chief Operating Officer at the Island Institute in Rockland, Maine. She was born on March 5, 1980.
Scope and Content Note:
Shey Conover describes the Maine Working Waterfront Mapping Inventory that her organization, with many partners, conducted in the mid 2000's. Ms. Conover describes how the Maine Working Waterfront Coalition was striving to provide communities with tools to protect their waterfront access, but that a comprehensive inventory of existing access points and type of access was lacking. Ms. Conover describes the attributes that were collected, the importance of community engagement in this process, and how it revealed some alarming data about the small amount of prime working waterfront access in the state. She explains how this and other initiatives of the Maine Working Waterfront Coalition have informed both community efforts and the National Working Waterfront Network.
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The NOAA mission is to understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts, to share that knowledge and information with others, and to conserve and manage coastal and marine ecosystems and resources. The Voices Oral History Archives offers public access to a wide range of accounts, including historical materials that are products of their particular times, and may contain offensive language or negative stereotypes.
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