“They were also making cosmetic glitter from the colorful slime off the back of the scales, it’s called pearl essence. There were three pearl essence factories here,” said Chris Bartlett, a commercial fishing specialist with the University of Maine who moved to the area in the late 1980s.
Bartlett said, eventually, sardines, and other fishing businesses dried up. And the town did, too….
A few years back, the Eastport Port Authority got an unusual phone call. A Texas company was looking for a place from which to ship cows to Turkey. Pregnant cows….
And so, for three years, the city was kind of booming again. Then in 2014, the cow exports collapsed when southern Turkey became too unstable.
“It’s funny, in an international situation when you’re a port like this, what happens anywhere in the world affects you,” said Peacock. “And you figure that out pretty quick when your income comes from piloting ships, and all of a sudden there are no ships because of a war in Syria.”