Maine
Record number of breeding puffins recorded on island in Gulf of Maine
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This summer, despite the long-term warming of the Gulf of Maine and a long-term increase in the severity of weather events, conditions were so uneventful that Seal Island set a record for breeding puffins. Derrick Z. Jackson/Maine Monitor
From a bird blind on Seal Island, I watched as puffins zoomed in from the sea with a rainbow of fish drooping from their beaks.
They carried copper and golden juvenile haddock, redfish and white hake. Others had pink krill from massive upwellings that created magenta blotches just offshore.
![](https://w2pcms.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/MaineMonitor_Puffin-Haddock-Portrait.jpg?w=300)
![](https://w2pcms.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/MaineMonitor_Puffin-Haddock-Portrait.jpg?w=300)
A puffin returns to Seal Island with a fresh catch. Derrick Z. Jackson/The Maine Monitor
Some even carried bright silver herring: juicy fish that were once key prey for puffins in Maine. Atlantic herring are also a prime commodity for humans, who have overfished the species so badly that the fishery in New England has routinely been shut down early in recent years.
To see a number of puffins bringing herring to chicks was a stirring reminder of what the ocean can still offer.
Seal Island, which sits 21 miles off Rockland, was once home to the largest Atlantic puffin colony in the Gulf of Maine. It is now managed by the Audubon Seabird Institute, and was the second island that Audubon’s Project Puffin restored puffins to after a century’s absence spurred by hunting in the late 1800s. The first was Eastern Egg Rock, 6 miles off Pemaquid Point.
Both islands were seeded with puffin chicks brought from Newfoundland. Puffins began breeding anew on Eastern Egg Rock in 1981 and Seal Island in 1992.
This summer, despite the long-term warming of the Gulf of Maine and a long-term increase in the severity of weather events, conditions were so uneventful that Seal Island set a record for breeding puffins.
The crew of Coco Faber, Amiel Hopkins, Liv Ridley, Reed Robinson and Nacho Gutierrez counted 672 active puffin burrows, about 100 more than the last census five years ago. The total number of known burrows surpassed 1,000 for the first time.
Other birds also did well. Razorbills, a larger cousin of the puffin, established a record of 101 active burrows.
“The weights for the puffin chicks were just so good,” said Faber, 30, the crew supervisor. “Unlike many recent years when there were big shifts or drops in what puffin parents could find, this was a summer where they steadily found fish.”
That buoyant mood was shared on Matinicus Rock, another island 23 miles from Rockland, also managed by the Seabird Institute. Crew supervisor Tracey Faber, Coco’s sister, said that not only were the puffin chicks doing well, but Arctic tern and common tern nest numbers were up.
Common murres, another bird re-established in Maine after being gone for more than 100 years, fledged a record 16 chicks.
“We saw some great growth in some birds,” Tracey Faber said.
But elsewhere there were reminders that seabird islands in the Gulf of Maine are highly vulnerable.
Earlier this month, researchers at the Gulf of Maine Seabird Working Group gathered at a conference hosted by the Seabird Institute in Bremen.
One topic was the damage caused by last winter’s violent storms, particularly on Petit Manan Island, which sits off a stretch of Downeast coastline that got hammered in January.
Island supervisor Amanda McFarland and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Linda Welch said the vast majority of natural sod burrows under relatively small rocks and artificial nesting structures were destroyed.
The artificial structures had been built by Welch over the years to entice puffins to breed higher up on the island.
This winter’s obliteration left puffin parents competing for available space, with multiple eggs in the same burrow complex and parents trying to roll unwanted eggs out of the way – puffins hatch and raise only one chick at a time.
“There was a nest of a 30-year-old nesting pair that was shot down the shoreline 30 feet. We found burrow markers tossed all over the island,” said McFarland. “It was so ironic and sad because the food for the puffins was so good.”
The island’s puffins saw one of their lowest birth rates in recent years.
“When I saw the damage, I almost started to cry,” Welch said. “We really need to think more than ever about taking a hard look at climate resilience for seabirds.”
This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from the Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.
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Maine
Dirigo Union Aims to Show Maine's True Colors
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From the moment that it was announced that Portland, Maine was receiving a USL club, Dirigo Union co-chair Donald Thibodeau knew he wanted to play a part in a supporters’ group.
Thibodeau’s passion for soccer has gone through its ebbs and flows. After playing in high school, his love for the game dissipated but after a trip that saw him attend a Portland Timbers match, he fell in love with the atmosphere and the game.
Co-Chair Mitchell Ketchen has a more unique and dare I say American story. A fan of the Patriots, he owes his passion for soccer to the FIFA video games.
The group was actually started by Mario Moretto, John Morgan, and Colin Durrant. With Moretto and Durrant moving down to Washington D.C., Dirigo Union needed some helping hands and Thibodeau and Kitchen were more than glad to be involved.
From the early days of Portland Hearts of Pine and Dirigo Union, the supporters’ group has had its voice heard by the club; including founder Gabe Hoffman-Johnson.
“It’s a beautiful thing, really,” Ketchen said of the communication with the club higher-ups. “They’re our family.”
Family will be felt throughout Portland and Dirigo Union. Thibodeau wants to create a second family for fans of the club by way of the supporters’ group.
“First and foremost, we want this to feel like a family, right? Like I said, during our town hall, if this is done, right, it’s gonna feel like a second family,” the co-chair said. “I’ve already met a ton of awesome people. You know, I didn’t know Mitchell before this. Now, he’s one of my favorite people. I like listening to him talk about soccer. He’s so passionate about Liverpool. Gameday wise, we want it to be a party. We want to be loud. We want to be excited. We want to bring the energy. You know, I love what LAFC does, I just want to do our own way though. I want it to be crazy loud. I want opposing teams when they come in, they don’t want to be there.”
Ketchen also believes that the supporters’ group will show what Maine is all about.
“I think it’s important that we highlight what Maine really is all about,” he said. “We’re hard working, we’re gritty, we’re tough, we’re passionate. We have an extremely diverse community that that come from all walks of life like the groups of kids playing pickup soccer down at Kennedy Park, singing songs, bringing Portuguese flair. We have a really great Somali population in Lewiston, who made national news playing soccer together just a few years ago. So it’s really important for us to bring together this beautiful melting pot of soccer fans bring that energy and highlight what is beautiful about Maine in our own way.”
The group has already been involved in creating committees to give members of the Dirigo Union a voice.
“If you want to make a flag, you have every right to come in and share your idea. If you want to write a song, a chant and spread it with the masses come right in. If you want to give back to your community, we’re a nonprofit, a 501C7, finishing the application process there. So we’re totally community-driven, community run. Everything that we make goes back into our organization and it allows us to go out into the community and do a lot of work whether it’s picking up around the stadium on game days, supporting members with their own endeavors and things like that. We’re just really excited about all the possibility we’ve started and look forward to see what it becomes.”
But one day, possibility will turn into reality. Kits will be donned, a stadium will be filled and a whistle will be blown.
Ketchen can’t wait for that day to finally arrive.
“I’m anticipating the night before our first match, I have a feeling it’s going to be all the giddy feeling before the first day of a season, but it’s a little bit sweeter where we have put this work in. We’re around 450 members strong right now. The side that we’re going to be sitting on has a capacity of 2,500, So, there’s plenty of work to do but once we see the Dirigo Union scarves, the Portland Hearts of Pine scarves, flags waving, smoke, drums marching into Fitzpatrick day one is something I’ve been thinking about for well over a year now.”
Maine
Clients’ families say Maine funeral home director stole their money – and peace of mind
![Clients’ families say Maine funeral home director stole their money – and peace of mind Clients’ families say Maine funeral home director stole their money – and peace of mind](https://www.centralmaine.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/39296213_20240816_lamson_0001-1723924045.jpg?w=1024)
![](https://w2pcms.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/08/39296213_20240816_lamson_0001.jpg)
William Jipson Jr. with a portrait of himself, left, his father, William Jipson Sr., and his sister Lynette Krapf. Jipson is one of several people who allege that Harold Lee Lamson Jr., a funeral director based out of Lincoln, stole money from a loved one’s mortuary trust. Jipson’s father died in 2022. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
Long before he died nearly two years ago, William Jipson Sr. set aside thousands of dollars in a mortuary trust to soften the financial burden that his cremation and burial would put on his children.
The value of the fund had grown to roughly $14,000 by the time he died in December 2022 – more than enough to cover funeral expenses. But after the Lincoln funeral director he hired appeared to keep all of the cash, Jipson’s son and daughter found themselves paying nearly $5,000 out of pocket for a gravestone “after we already paid for it once,” William Jipson Jr. said.
After months of delays and excuses, Jipson’s family hasn’t seen a dime of their money.
“It’s all gone. He’s taken it and spent it, and that’s it,” Jipson said. “(It’s) an awful feeling, knowing that someone wronged you, and your father at the end of life.”
The Jipson family is among a number of Mainers at the center of a criminal case against Harold Lee Lamson Jr., who operates four funeral homes in Penobscot and Washington counties. He is accused of misappropriating thousands of dollars from their loved ones’ mortuary trusts between December 2022 and February of this year – adding undue cost and emotional turmoil to the painful process of grieving and organizing a funeral.
“It’s a big kick in the teeth. Everyone wants to move on with their lives and deal with their losses,” Jipson said. “We went through 12 years of hell trying to care for my father. … And then when he passes, you’ve got to continue dealing with more years of hell.”
At one point, Lamson told Jipson’s sister that he was waiting on the gravestone to be cut and would send the money when he received the final bill. But when she called the memorial company, they told her Lamson had never placed the order, and that “this has happened a few times,” Jipson said.
Lamson is charged with four counts of theft by unauthorized transfer, a felony-level Class C charge. Each count is punishable by up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine, and Lamson may be ordered to pay thousands of dollars in restitution.
He first appeared in Penobscot County Superior Court this month but was not required to enter a plea. He will appear before the court again in November.
He also faces losing his state license as a funeral director and is currently under suspension after years of complaints.
Lamson declined to answer questions about the charges when reached by phone Thursday.
PROMISES AFTER PROMISES
Deborah Elms had hoped to bury her mother in Maine, where she spent much of her life before moving to North Carolina in her final years to be closer to Elms.
Joyce Nicholson died there in January. Years earlier, she had set up a mortuary trust. But that company went out of business and transferred responsibility over the trust to Lamson, Elms said.
“Although our family didn’t originally select (Harold) Lamson’s company, we appear to be stuck with him,” Elms wrote in a February letter to police, less than a month after Nicholson’s death.
She said Lamson was completely uninvolved in the funeral. But Elms still lost the nearly $4,000 her mother left behind after he failed to transfer the money to the out-of-state funeral home that handled her mother’s services.
After at least eight calls over more than two weeks, Elms said she spoke to Lamson on Feb. 12, at which time he promised to pay the North Carolina funeral home bill and send her whatever was left in the trust.
The funeral director in North Carolina also reached out to Lamson requesting the money. Lamson replied with an error-ridden email one month after Nicholson’s death, apologizing for the delay and citing “a volume in excess of 200 calls per year” as a factor in the slow response.
“While it was not my intention to wait this long, let alone 30 days, to pay this bill, time has a way of passing much quickly,” he wrote in an email to the North Carolina funeral director that Elms shared with the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. Lamson promised to send a check later that day, “tomorrow at the latest.”
But he never did, Elms said.
Ultimately, she footed the roughly $3,100 bill using money she had set aside for a trip to Maine to bury her mother and son, who died a few months earlier, Elms said. Although she made it to Maine in June, the trip put an unplanned dent in her budget.
Elms said she suffered two stress-induced heart attacks and began having nightmares. She declined to be interviewed over the phone, citing fears that recounting the story could overwhelm her.
“I get all worked up when I think of him and the disrespect he pulled on me and the funeral home here in NC,” Elms wrote in an email.
HOPING FOR RESTITUTION
Both Jipson and Elms said they want restitution and to see Lamson imprisoned. But neither was confident any penalties could make up for the pain they say he caused.
Under Maine law, funeral homes are required to return any money left in certain types of mortuary trusts after funeral expenses have been paid. If a funeral home is unable to render any services, as was the case for Elms, it must return all proceeds from the trust.
There are three categories of mortuary trusts available in Maine: guaranteed service agreements, credit for service agreements and existing life insurance agreements. Only the latter two contain provisions requiring leftover money to be returned.
Though it’s not clear how many Mainers have set up mortuary trusts, as the state Board of Funeral Services does not keep count, they are commonly offered by funeral homes across the state.
Rebekkah Martin, a former funeral home director who spent about 15 years working in the industry, said it’s relatively rare that there are any funds left over after funeral expenses, but federal and state laws provide clear timelines for when those funds must be deposited and returned.
Jipson’s family should have been entitled to the nearly $9,000 left in the trust after the funeral, William Jipson Jr. said. But he’s not optimistic about getting restitution, citing worries that Lamson could file for bankruptcy to avoid paying.
Lamson did attempt to file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in March, around the same time legal troubles began to mount, but the case was dismissed in April after Lamson failed to provide all the required documents or follow up on his request, according to federal court records.
According to his bankruptcy application, Lamson owns several vehicles, worth more than $27,000, including a 2008 Cadillac and a 2018 Chrysler, plus an $80,000 investment property in Sedgwick.
YEARS OF POTENTIAL ABUSE
Jipson said he could not understand why Lamson was given direct access to his father’s money without there being another layer of oversight, especially because Lamson had faced earlier disciplinary issues.
“Shouldn’t there have been a little bit of a safeguard in case someone’s going to abuse the money?” Jipson said. “It just seems a little odd to me, but I guess I don’t know the system.”
Complaints against Lamson stretch back decades.
In 2005, the state Board of Funeral Services placed his license on probation for six months after he pleaded guilty to attempted theft by insurance deception, according to state records.
The board suspended Lamson’s license in June after he violated a consent agreement. But until then, he operated funeral homes in Lincoln, Millinocket, East Millinocket and Danforth, according to his company’s website.
Mainers can report possible misconduct by funeral homes to the Board of Funeral Services, said Joan Cohen, deputy commissioner for the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, which oversees the board. But she said the board is not notified when transfers are requested or executed unless someone makes an official complaint.
Cohen said discipline can depend on the specific mortuary trust agreements made, “but in general they include civil penalties, probation with terms, suspension or revocation.”
She added that Lamson’s suspension was the only one the board has issued so far this year. Suspensions and revocations are relatively rare in Maine: the board did not issue any in 2023, and it only issued one revocation in 2022, and one suspension and revocation in 2021, Cohen said.
Martin, the former funeral home director, said she dealt with Lamson a few times and faced excessive delays when she tried to transfer trusts for her clients.
“I was not the least bit shocked to hear this happened,” Martin said during a phone call Wednesday.
Martin said mortuary trusts are a valuable tool for consumers, but only as long as the funeral home is above board. Prices can be locked in at the formation of the trust, and the money may be easier to access than life insurance payouts, which she said can ease the planning process.
“If you can’t own up to your mistakes, then you shouldn’t be in the business,” she said.
Maine
Former Maine Black Bear Zavier Scott scores in preseason matchup against Cardinals
![Former Maine Black Bear Zavier Scott scores in preseason matchup against Cardinals Former Maine Black Bear Zavier Scott scores in preseason matchup against Cardinals](https://gray-wabi-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/4QLD55NG7FCBDMGKYWWLIHSSPM.jpg?auth=bb9782d79a5d27c4a8f95efd24d00a4c29b6685e29bc0b623954d8fdbe92a98e&width=1200&height=600&smart=false&focal=1613%2C737)
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana (WABI) – After taking the field for the Maine Black Bears Zavier Scott is fighting for a spot on the Indianapolis Colts roster.
In Saturday’s preseason matchup against the Cardinals Scott got 11 carries for 55 yards and a touchdown.
Scott’s touchdown came in the third quarter off a 6-yard rush after getting tripped up at the 3-yard line.
Scott kept himself off the ground and leaped into the endzone giving the Colts the 14-10 lead.
Indianapolis would go on to win the matchup 21-13.
Scott’s 11 carries were the most by a Colts running back in the entire game.
Copyright 2024 WABI. All rights reserved.
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