The Final Can

The last can of sardines - a tin of Beech Cliff's Louisiana hot sauce flavor - rolled off the conveyor belt Thursday in Gouldsboro at the last remaining sardine cannery in the U.S. By the end of today, when employees finish boxing up the tins they packed, sealed and cooked on Thursday, there will be no more sardine canneries in the country.
The decline of the sardine business occurred long before today, but the symbolism of the Stinson Seafood cannery closing its doors is huge - and not just because of the already-bad state of the economy in eastern Maine, or the area's relative lack of non-natural resource based jobs. The social role sardine canneries used to play in Maine, by virtually employing entire towns, was tremendous. Canneries have been in Maine since the late 1800's, and thousands of them used to dot the shoreline on both the east and west coasts of the country. Canned sardines were a staple for most Americans in the first half of the 20th century, but now they've almost been discarded entirely by the consuming public.
What other kind of possible vanishing act, 100 years from now, would be comparable to the decline of sardines? The disappearance of pizza home delivery? Drive-through takeout windows? Hamburgers? In Maine, would the disappearance of lobster fishing compare? It's hard to fathom. These changes take place over decades, and by the time a dying industry takes its final breath it's usually largely forgotten.
This doesn't mean canned sardines are completely a thing of the past, but it seems highly doubtful they will ever be as remotely popular as they once were. There will continue to be imports, and perhaps someday some small-scale entrepreneur will restore production somewhere in the U.S. But I don't see any domestic producer cranking out 30 million cans a year, as the Stinson's plant did in 2009.
I did not eat sardines growing up, but I have bought several tins of Beech Cliff sardines since the cannery's closure was announced in February. In my opinion, they are an acquired taste. But I plan to keep trying to acquire it. It won't bring anything back, but it might help keep them from disappearing from American store shelves forever.

NOTES: In the above photo, Robert Hill of Gouldsboro poses beneath the Beech Cliff Sardines sign in the village of Prospect Harbor while Gerald Humphries of Gouldsboro (behind bush) takes his photograph on April 15, 2010. The Stinson Seafood cannery, where Beech Cliff sardines were being made, is on the other side of the hill. Both men worked at the plant and were taking the photos on their final day of work . . . As seagulls swarmed and cried while flying above the cannery, Humphries said "They're crying because they're not going to get any more food." . . . On the last day of canning, Bill Thayer, a Gouldsboro selectmen and local organic farmer, picked up a large tote worth of sardine parts from the plant to use as compost on his fields. The gulls helped themselves to a few morsels from the back of his pickup truck as he slowly drove away. . . On Thursday, the sign in front of the Prospect Harbor United Methodist Church said "God bless the Stinsons employees" . . . State officials say they have helped cannery owner Bumble Bee narrow down the list of potential plant buyers to one - an unnamed company that has signed what Gov. Baldacci's office calls a "non-binding letter of intent." If the sale goes through, the name of the firm is expected to be made public in mid-May, if it doesn't leak out before then. Whichever company it might be, it likely will process mostly lobster, but state officials have said it could employ more than 100 people. The sardine cannery operation employed 128 people at the end.