[ Soft music plays ] ♪♪ -The Maine coast is a collision of primal forces.

Melting glaciers shaped this place where land meets sea, where ocean spray ascends into the evergreens, and salmon still return to where they were born.

Here, the Abenaki people carry on their ancient relationship with the land and water.

Native plants and fish still anchor the local food system.

And in this estuary of regional flavor, there are origin stories for every local dish.

-Every year is a banner year -- more lobsters than ever been landed before.

-So, this is for you.

-When I got the opportunity to cook with them, I was like, "Yeah, this is a no-brainer.

Like, this product tells the story."

-No one seemed to be making a wine that was just pure, wild blueberries without messing with it.

-The harvest from these salty barrens, hills, and shorelines unites a community dedicated to this work.

-Your next favorite flavor in your kitchen.

Whoo!

-My name is Kevin Chap.

And for me, wild foods aren't just a luxury.

They're a way of life.

As an environmentalist, educator, and professional forager, I know the best ingredients are still waiting to be discovered.

You just need to know where to look.

-"Wild Foods" is made possible by generous support from... And with support from... [ Mid-tempo music plays ] -In these woods, within these waters are the remains of the once great New England Atlantic salmon runs.

Naturally spawning salmon return home to just a handful of rivers along the Maine coast.

One of those is the Ducktrap River in Downeast Maine.

Extractive practices in the forests pushed wild Atlantic salmon to the brink of extinction.

Ending timber harvests and enforcing a strict catch-and-release policy now allow this ecosystem to reclaim its former glory.

Fish that are going out to sea to feed and grow and then come up here to spawn.

It's so rare now in the United States that they've actually preserved this river.

So you can still fish it, but you can't keep any salmon.

Aboveground, on the forest floor, leaves and wood decay, releasing organic matter that supports aquatic insects.

Belowground, root systems stabilize the riverbanks, preventing erosion and sediment that smothers salmon eggs.

Nature is already the perfect example of how to produce abundance.

♪♪ So, here's a much more established oak tree.

This is probably 150-ish years old.

In the fall, it will drop its leaves, which will come down, and they'll start mulching into the soil, creating a humous or humus soil that releases humic acid -- super important in the health and vibrancy of a forested landscape.

When those leaves are mulching and decomposing, they also create fulvic acid.

Now, fulvic acid is really important in the health of ecosystems kind of all over the world, because it bonds with iron.

And what that does is it washes out into our waterways.

And that iron is then washed downstream, and it washes out to sea, and it becomes nutrients, or feed, for algae and microalgaes and phytoplankton.

That will attract the larger species of, like, say, crayfish and small fry.

That's a really important process in a process called Upwelling.

The miraculous thing is it's all starting right here in the forest.

When we are preserving and stewarding our forests, we're actually, also, protecting our oceans.

One of the reasons that Maine has some of the best seafood in the world is actually because it has the densest forested landscape in the Northeast.

So, we're seeing through conservation efforts and collaborations and stewards of the land, we're seeing these forests come back to health.

It, also, then brings in the larger feeder fish -- everything from dolphins to whales to sharks.

Being right here next to the Ducktrap River, probably a likely reason why we still have that run of Atlantic salmon happening here is because there's so many micronutrients that are leeching from this oak tree right into that stream right there.

♪♪ Mother Nature stewards herself.

She doesn't need any inputs to do it.

She's already doing it all by herself.

And I think that that's a really good thing to remember when we're talking about our food, too, right, is, like, we don't need all these chemical inputs, right?

This is exactly what we're doing out here today.

We're exploring some of these examples that might be clear indicators to how we can reinvent our food system and our relationship with the natural world.

While we've lost the wild Atlantic salmon out of our modern food system for now, indigenous peoples of this land still maintain and harvest one of the last wild and bountiful foods left.

These are Maine's wild blueberry barrens.

♪♪ It's a sacred land the Passamaquoddy People fought to protect.

They no longer harvest wild salmon for Maine's rivers.

But with the help of researchers and private industry, Passamaquoddy continue an ancient harvesting tradition.

-You don't eat the bush and pull it back?

-Yeah.

-That's the best way, because you're getting all the berries off the vine.

-Pull back.

Just lift the... -Market pressures make it harder for the Passamaquoddy to maintain their traditional methods.

Shortages in the workforce mean less hand-raking, which separates the traditional stewards one step further from the land.

Well, I would imagine doing that all day is -- -Right.

-Wow.

That's impressive.

-12 or 14 hours a day.

-Holy cow!

Phew!

I'm already beat.

These guys are out here all day.

-I mean, average raker -- probably what, 60, 80 boxes a day, John?

-80 boxes a day?

-When it's really good, you guys can get 150.

-Yeah.

-In one day.

-I've had guys get 200.

-I did a half a box, and I'm exhausted.

[ Laughs ] -This ancient technique is employed on lands that are too steep for the mechanical harvesters and ensures a much higher yield.

Whereby mechanical harvesters lose about 30% of the crop, a well-trained hand raker can harvest nearly all of the berries from a specific location.

[ Soft music plays ] ♪♪ Here, in the low-to-the-ground forest of berry bushes, sunshine and nutrients from the soil become flavor that's unique to each plant.

-So you've got a mouthful of different flavor, which is nice.

-Yeah.

-Lily Calderwood, a professor at the University of Maine, leads the world's only dedicated team of wild blueberry researchers.

She's on a mission to translate the sacred relationship between the Passamaquoddy and this fruit into modern terminology.

That way, it can be explained to future generations through horticultural science.

I noticed today when I was walking through and just picking different blueberries, they had distinct flavors.

-Yeah.

-Which is kind of amazing.

Our food system -- we homogenize so much, right?

But with a wild plant like this, you get all this different variants, and so you get a real taste of place.

-Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And in a pint, you have a little bit of, like, 10 different plants.

The way that blueberry fields form today, you can create a new field today.

But the majority of these fields have been here for hundreds of years.

They're these very interesting, fascinating, ancient fields.

The bushes are so small, but they've been here for a very long time.

-This has been a cultural product, I mean, for the Passamaquoddy, for example, for, I mean, millennia, really, right?

-Yeah.

-They've used it as not only food, but as medicine and even as art and culture.

-Right.

So, the native people, the Passamaquoddy were here.

They were able to foster these spaces, to keep them free of big trees.

They would burn the land to keep it in blueberry.

They would harvest from these fields.

And that knowledge and those practices grew into what the industry has become today.

So, here, we do have two different species.

One is called low sweet, which is Vaccinium angustifolium.

The other one is sour top, which is Vaccinium myrtilloides.

5% to 10% of the fields is this myrtilloides, the sour top, It does taste a little bit different.

It matures a little bit later.

And, then, the low sweet is what the rest of the field is.

-Okay.

-But within the low sweet, you have a lot of genetic variability.

-Oh.

-Within this field, there are about 500 to 1,500 genetically distinct, individual plants.

-Really?

Wow.

-Yeah.

So, they have genetic mixing on their own.

-Yeah.

-They're basically breeding the very natural way, which is mixing of genes during pollination.

A bird comes, picks that berry up, drops it over here.

That plant is gonna grow a little bit differently.

-Yeah.

-Like, slightly different color green leaves, slightly different color berry, slightly different tastes.

-From Passamaquoddy traditions to training a new generation of blueberry scientists... to the hands of a winemaker who draws inspiration from the wild forces at play when making his Bluet Wines.

[ Mid-tempo music plays ] Enter Michael Terrrien, a native-born Mainer whose skill set and passion for the wild blueberry has created a value-added product that may act as a catalyst for ensuring the vitality of this important wild food.

-Rather than controlling the genetics of the fruit, which is what we have done over the course of centuries with Pinot Noir or Cabernet or Chardonnay, that is a field that has genetic diversity that we embrace.

Bring it all in, ferment it.

-Right.

-And, then, the flavors, the results taste like this particular place.

And the idea of pursuing Bluet as an expression of a place, it's all about the diversity, being humble about it and seeing what it tastes like.

-Why does this wild blueberry grow here?

Like, there's no organic matter in the soil.

-Yeah.

-It's just a pile of sand and gravel.

How does it do that?

-Like, they create their own organic matter.

-How?

-By dropping their leaves.

And that creates a layer of organic matter, just like the forest.

And that organic matter is only an inch to two inches thick.

It's the highest organic matter of any agricultural field.

And that's where the mycorrhizae live, integrated with the roots.

[ Soft music plays ] ♪♪ -In the life-giving network of relationships along the Maine coast, human ingenuity and intuition about setting sustainable limits plays a crucial role in keeping this place in balance.

-Nothing makes me prouder than saying I'm a fisherman.

-Self-identified lobsterman and author Linda Greenlaw explores the market value and mythos of the Maine seafood industry in her books "The Hungry Ocean" and "The Lobster Chronicles."

-We have laws that no other state has that catches lobsters.

You can't keep the big lobsters.

The lobster has to fit the slot.

You can't keep the small ones, can't keep the big ones.

I credit the fishermen in the state of Maine for being good stewards, and I credit the state of Maine just in general for doing such a good job.

Every year is a banner year.

And this huge boom cycle -- why is that?

Oh, is it because the ocean's warming?

Maybe.

Where science used to say lobsters were molting once a year, they're doing it more than once a year now because the water temperature.

Any reasonable person has to think what happens when the water gets too warm?

-As nutrients make their way downstream to local estuaries and salt marshes, they combine with ocean tides to create rich deposits that attract and grow a foundational community of filter feeders and seaweed.

I don't really have an issue foraging in most places along the Maine coastline.

88% forested landscape means that we've got clean waterways, we've got clean oceans.

So it's kind of a blessing.

♪♪ Mostly seagulls are picking these over.

So, like, you can tell when these mussels are okay because they're still attached to the stony bottom, so you actually have to tear their beards.

And that's how you can tell they're good.

And, then, of course when they warm up, they'll open up.

You can tell if the mussel inside is good by smell and, also, by sight.

Blue mussels, horse mussels, and little black mussels filter-feed while surrounded by more than two dozen species of seaweed.

Oh, sea lettuce.

Sea lettuce right here.

[ Soft music plays ] The abundance of wild seaweed species has spawned an entire industry, and Seraphina Erhart with Maine Coast Sea Vegetables sits at the center of it.

It's a good thing that seaweed is so nutrient-dense, right?

'Cause you earn it.

-100%.

-[ Laughs ] Seraphina grew up in a family of seaweed harvesters.

She now supplies seaweed products to stores nationwide.

-This is?

-Um, Bladderwrack.

-Yeah.

We know it's Bladderwrack 'cause it has these little air pods at the end, which right now are very forked.

-Yeah.

-And they're fun to pick off the ends and eat.

-I like them 'cause they pop.

-Yeah.

A little gel on the end.

-Yeah.

♪♪ -Mmm.

It's a texture thing for me completely, right?

Like, that pop in your mouth is so good.

And it's subtle.

Like, the flavor is super subtle.

It's, like, a little sweet.

There's definitely a little ocean in there.

-Yep.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] So, there's a really beautiful piece of nori right there, of laver.

-Yeah.

-That's not the sheets of nori that you get, right?

-Nope.

-[ Laughs ] -Whole plant.

So, that's dulse.

-[ Laughs ] Mm.

Oh, yeah.

I love that.

Like other species of seaweed, dulse is an excellent meat substitute because it's packed with protein, amino acids, and rich flavor.

-Your next favorite flavor in your kitchen.

[ Speaks indistinctly ] Whoo!

[ Laughs ] ♪♪ ♪♪ See how it's turning yellow and green?

-With this pan-fried dulse, we're making DLTs -- dulse, lettuce, and tomato.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] -Sandwich cheers?

-Yeah.

Yeah, let's do it.

-[ Laughs ] -Cheers.

♪♪ I mean, seriously, if you told me this was a BLT, I don't think that I would say it wasn't, you know?

That salty, smoky, umami.

-Yeah.

-But there's just a deeper flavor.

I would just say, like, "Wow.

How'd you smoke this bacon?"

-People who are seaweed-skeptical, if they watched you build it, they might not be as keen.

-Yeah.

-But I've never fed it to someone who didn't enjoy it.

-Yeah, yeah.

-So sometimes, it's a psychological thing as much as anything else.

-One of the things that I've been impressed with here in Maine is, like, there's still such a closeness to the land, where in other parts of the country, like, there isn't that seasonality.

Like, we expect to be able to get whatever we want anytime of the year.

-Blows my mind.

Yes.

[ Laughs ] -Yeah, yeah.

Right, right?

But yeah, when you're actually going out and harvesting it, you only have access to it for a certain season, right?

-Our harvest is about four months out of the season.

Those four months shift from species to species roughly, which doesn't really work with the grocery-store model, where if you have a break in your supply chain, they fine you for it, they penalize you.

[ Mid-tempo music plays ] We're sort of falling down in our food systems.

There's a clear movement for people understanding where their food is coming from.

-Whether it's wild blueberries for wine or seaweed for a sandwich, each business finds its own equilibrium between demand and what nature provides.

Maine fisherman Bob Earnest saw an opportunity to meet demand for Maine oysters and do it at the right scale.

-And we, over a couple of beers one night, said, "Hey.

Let's go to oyster school and start raising oysters, just to show people that there's a way you could make some money in Maine in a business other than just lobster.

-Bob Earnest and his partners turned to oysters as a way to diversify the local fishery, and they founded Chebeague Island Oyster Company.

♪♪ There's this symbiotic relationship happening on the island.

That's what I'm learning about Chebeague, right?

It's like it is this, like, small community of folks trying to figure out how to maintain, like, all of the stuff that go into a society, right?

-And still maintain the past.

I bought 50,000 baby oysters, started growing them.

-Yeah.

So, the next year, we planted 250,000 babies.

Year after that, 500,000, then 600,000, then 800,000.

And that's what we've been planting all along.

-After five years in business, Bob is now selling the oyster farm.

-The good news is, the leading contender to buy it is the farm manager, Zoe.

-Yeah?

-Zoe Benisek is an oysterwoman.

She's stepping up and taking over Bob's thriving operation.

-My family's been coming here for seven generations now.

So, I'm the sixth generation, I believe.

My family's been here since the late 1800s.

So yeah, yeah.

No, I love it.

-Why oystering?

Like, how did that happen?

-I love being on the water.

I didn't go back to school this fall and was on the island, so needed some extra work and started working here and really fell in love with it.

♪♪ So, when we tumble them, it chips off all the excess growth, and it allows the oyster to form a deeper cup and a plumper animal inside.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] Our farm is in somewhat of a unique location.

So, it's in the intertidal zone.

About half the time, they're not fully underwater, so they grow a lot slower than even other farms just around here, where they float the trays on top of the water column.

But we think that in the extra two years it takes them to grow, the flavor profile is able to develop a bit more, sort of like a wine.

So, this is for you to eat for dinner.

Yeah.

[ Laughs ] Green crabs.

-These days, European green crabs are a common uninvited guest in Zoe's baskets.

This invasive species is proliferating in Maine's warming ocean waters.

It preys on small oysters and overwhelms eelgrass beds -- crucial habitat for juvenile salmon.

No one has much nice to say about the green crabs.

But now the green crab invasion has reached the kitchen at the Chebeague Island Inn.

Green crabs are a problem.

Executive chef Marsh Elliot wants his cuisine to be part of the solution.

-My dad was a commercial crabber.

He made his living catching blue crabs.

And so we always grew up picking crabs around the table, and we'd always go shrimping.

And so, like, that connection to food has been with me for a long time.

-We've brought Chef Marsh blueberry wine, Chebeague oysters, and the mussels we foraged.

The dish Marsh is preparing with the mussels starts with green crabs.

-This is sort of our green-crab broth that we make with the mussels.

Got scallions, fennel, lemongrass, garlic.

♪♪ Then, we go in with our green crabs.

So there's really no, like, meat on these crabs.

It's more about the flavor of their shell.

The fishermen are catching all of this bycatch, right?

And how do we utilize it?

Like the green crabs.

Like, here's this invasive crab that is causing havoc with the oystermen, with the mussel growers, with the lobstermen.

How do we get rid of it?

What can we do about it?

And so when I got the opportunity to cook with them, I was like, "Yeah.

This is a no-brainer.

Like, this product tells the story.

And not only that, it's delicious.

So, like, why wouldn't we be doing this?"

And so we just treat it simply and let the ingredient, you know, shine.

Ideally, the whole system works for itself -- killing the green crabs, which are helping the lobstermen, which are in turn helping the lobsters grow, which, then, I get to use.

And then the whole cycle sort of repeats itself.

All the flavor of these crabs, they're being infused into the sauce.

And, then, we'll pass it so there's no shells, right, and finish it with coconut milk.

And we use that as our base to essentially cook our mussels.

So, here we've got some of the Chebeague Island oysters grown right here on Chebeague Island.

We sometimes serve these raw at the restaurant.

A lot of the times, we like to bake them.

I like a baked oyster in the summertime as opposed to a raw one.

So, then, we'll top these with a little sungold butter, sungold tomatoes.

We blister them, puree them, cook them down until they sort of thicken.

A little bit of white wine, and, then, mix it with butter.

So it should have, like, that sort of wood-fired, very rich, like, tomato flavor.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] We recognize that, like, all the work that's gone into, like, that single oyster, it's been at the bottom of the ocean for the last three years.

And it's been tumbled, and it's been worked over, and it's been looked after.

And so for us to, like, receive it through our back door and treat it poorly would be to, like, disrespect the people who grew it and took all that time, effort, and energy into, like, sustaining it.

So, the oysters we top with a little bit of house-made, prepared horseradish.

So kind of playing with that, like, classic, like, tomato and horseradish, cocktail sauce basically.

♪♪ [ Indistinct conversations ] ♪♪ -Chef Marsh prepares what we've gathered and marries them onto the plate, serving those we've met along the way.

[ Dramatic music plays ] I did want to take a moment to just thank everybody that's been involved with this episode.

I knew nothing about oysters when I showed up.

I knew nothing.

I loved eating them.

I had no idea how much work goes into that.

Okay.

Here's some food.

Let's eat.

-And to you for doing this.

-Salute!

Salute!

-Salute.

[ Glasses clink ] ♪♪ -Maine faces a myriad of unique challenges as the people here nurture wild, food-producing habitats.

The cottage wild food businesses here create deeper ties to the land and sea.

So many tastes from a single place, and so many people dedicated to keeping it that way.

♪♪ [ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -"Wild Foods" is made possible by generous support from... And with support from...