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Abstract

We must seek through a welding together of science, art, literature, engineering, medicine, law, public administration, and politics to develop a public which will homestead our new spaces in the sea…through an integrated interdisciplinary education in the sea-grant universities. —Athelstan Spilhaus The Maine Sea Grant College Program, a state-fed-eral partnership program based at the University of Maine, is a science-based organization with an interdis-ciplinary approach to its mission of research, education, and outreach. Sea Grant works at the boundary of science and society, with a research portfolio dedicated to applied science. Sea Grant investigators address questions that are relevant to Maine communities. Communicating this relevance has demanded that outreach staff in particular incorporate the humanities into their work with Maine’s coastal communities. This philosophy can be traced to the origin of the Sea Grant concept. In the middle of the twentieth century, oceanographers and marine biologists, including Dana Wallace of Maine, saw a need for universities to do for fisheries and other marine resources what the land-grant concept had done for agriculture. In October 1966