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As a high school student looking to make some money over the summer of 1971, Anne Shure had limited options in her hometown of Montville. A shoe factory, poultry plant and fish-packing operation — all of them in Belfast — were the only places looking for workers.
The Stinson Seafood sardine cannery was the only one willing to take Shure on as a trainee. The work reeked and was physically exhausting. Its hours were unreliable because they depended on enough inventory coming in. But Shure, who is now 70, hasn’t forgotten that experience, which “significantly impacted” her life.
“I think it brought out the competitive spirit in me. We were all racing each other to pack faster than the people near us,” Shure recalled. “There’s a whole movement to packing sardines that you have to learn.”
Now, the experiences of Shure and other members of Maine’s former sardine industry have been collected and will soon be featured in a yearlong exhibit at the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, alongside photos, old sardine cans and other displays. Titled “Sardineland,” it will open May 23.
The nation’s first sardine cannery opened in Eastport in 1875. The industry grew, and at its peak, there were once as many as 89 canneries operating at one time along Maine’s coast, employing roughly 8,000 people. But the industry declined over the last century, as tastes in U.S. seafood changed and the demand fell out for canned sardines. The last one closed in 2010, when Bumble Bee Foods shuttered another Stinson cannery in Prospect Harbor.
The new Searsport exhibit aims to celebrate the industry and ensure it won’t be forgotten, according to Curator Cipperly Good.
“We want to document it before it’s lost, and we also want to gather stories from the people involved in the canneries and the fisheries,” Good said.
Once collected, the stories will be saved and stored in the archives for future researchers, potentially offering the seeds of knowledge for how to revitalize the industry should it become possible. Good’s hope is that the exhibit’s sometimes whimsical presentation will capture the interest of younger generations who may have no associations of their own with the industry.
One part of the exhibit will depict the fishing side of the industry, with features such as a vacuum hose that ships used to catch herring, and a model of the Jacob Pike, a famous sardine carrier that sank off Harpswell in the storms of January 2024 and had to be hauled up for disposal by the U.S. Coast Guard.
The other part of the exhibit will depict the canning side, including a display wall showing actual cans as they evolved over the decades — they came in many colors, shapes and sizes — and information about where they were packed. Good strived to get at least one can from each packing plant in Maine.
Another part of the exhibit shows the World’s Fastest Sardine Packer Championship trophy that Rita Willey of Rockland won in the 1970s at the Maine Seafoods Festival, after she broke a record by packing 170 cans in seven minutes.
“We wanted to talk to people while they’re still alive and celebrate the story while it’s still fresh in people’s memory,” Good said. “We have a lot of materials related to it. It seemed like a really rich, important story for the people of Maine.”
That’s where Shure and her counterparts have come in. The exhibit features wall-mounted questions and responses from people who worked in the industry.
During an interview, Shure recalled her experience, including work stations that consisted of two workers to a table and an assembly-line setup run by about 40 teenagers in hairnets, plastic aprons and gloves. Employees used sharp, hand-chafing scissors to cut the heads and tails off of the sardines, then packed around five fish to a can.
“It was clear that I was not a local. My first day there, the way I behaved, everyone had a betting pool on how long I’d last,” Shure said with a laugh. “Now I’m convinced that the woman who was at my table must have bet that I would only last a week.”
Once Shure got better at it, she could pack up to 300 cans of sardines an hour and ended up being voted one of the best packers of the summer, she said. But the work did not necessarily build up their appetite for the fish they were packing.
Shure recalled one time “going for a break and washing my hands, one gentleman looking at me and saying, ‘I can’t imagine eating any of these things, can you?’”
Good believes there is a possibility that, because there is still a market for lobster bait, there could be a resurgence in demand for herring if their stocks rebound. But, Good added, “I don’t know that we’ll ever eat canned sardines again.”
