As a multimedia company, we have a real affection for using the right medium to fit the message. And while our videos say a million words, there is nothing like a well-written article or photo reportage to hit the sweet spot!

Below is a selection of our work for Edible Cape Cod, for which we were honored with national Eddy Awards in 2014 and 2015. For the full list, please click here.

Sustaining Sea Scallops

Edible Cape Cod, Winter 2015Critics_BestStory

By Elise Hugus

Plate o scallopsThey call them pearls of the Atlantic. Glistening with pan-seared succulence on fine dining tables worldwide, the sea scallop’s value is found not just in its flavor, but also its promise for a new era of sustainable seafood.

Over the past two decades, the unassuming sea scallop has brought on a quiet revolution in East Coast fisheries, one based on cooperation among fishermen, scientists, and government managers. Could cooperative research become a new model for New England fisheries?Readers_BestFeature

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The Cape Cod Ark: A Study in Sustainability

Edible Cape Cod, Winter 2014

Story by Elise Hugus. Photos by Daniel Cojanu.

Winner of the 2015 EDDY award for Best Story in the Sustainability category

Eddy AwardIf paradise is a place where the impossible becomes tangible, Hilde Maingay and Earle Barnhart’s Cape Cod Ark is heaven on Earth. But it’s not just a pleasure for winter-deprived senses. True to its name, the Ark is a study in self-sufficiency, an ecosystem unto itself.

“I call it my Club Med,” Maingay is fond of saying. But “vacation” isn’t part of the spry, smiling Dutchwoman’s vocabulary. As we talk, she neatly cuts fronds of kale and trims parsley for dinner. She climbs onto a rock embankment to pluck two ripe lemons from a tree heavy with fruit. “We’ll have lemon mousse for dessert, I think.”

Unlike Noah’s Ark, the Cape Cod Ark isn’t a myth based on catastrophe. It’s the product of years of research by scientists like Maingay and Barnhart at the New Alchemy Institute, a research and education non-profit that operated in the Falmouth village of Hatchville from 1971 to 1991. For the past four decades, the Ark has served as an example of how people living in cold climates can sustain themselves—without relying on fossil fuels—year round.

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First Light Oysters: First Responders to the Nitrogen Crisis

Edible Cape Cod, Summer 2014

First Light webStory by Elise Hugus. Photos by Daniel Cojanu.

As the sun rises in soft shades of pink and yellow over Popponesset Bay, the shoreline glistens fluorescent green. Unlike the new foliage unfurling in the tree canopy, the seaweed lining the eroded banks is an unwelcome sign of spring. It’s a sign of ecological imbalance created by excess nitrogen, on its last stop on a journey through the groundwater from thousands of septic systems.

Some of the biggest casualties of this imbalance are the shellfish that make Cape Cod famous. The lush eel grass beds that once sheltered bay scallops are distant memories. It’s rare to find water clear enough to spot littleneck airholes in the sand—or sandy bottom at all.

Though it’s still possible to fill up a basket of steamers in the Cape’s coastal ponds, odds are they were seeded by the local shellfish warden. Overfishing, development and disease have also put a dent in shellfish populations, but declining water quality has made it hard for the creatures to bounce back.

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