And then there were none: After 135 years, last US sardine cannery shutting down in Maine

Last US sardine cans being packed in Maine

PROSPECT HARBOR, Maine — The intensely fishy smell of herring has been the smell of money for generations of workers in Maine who’ve packed the small, silvery fish into billions of cans of sardines on their way to Americans’ lunch buckets and kitchen cabinets.

For the past 135 years, sardine canneries have been as much a part of Maine’s small coastal villages as the thick Down East fog. It’s been estimated that more than 400 canneries have come and gone along the state’s long, jagged coast.

The lone survivor, the Stinson Seafood plant here in eastern Maine’s Prospect Harbor, shuts down this week after a century in operation. It is the last sardine cannery not just in Maine, but in the U.S.

When the last sardine can is packed on Thursday, plant workers say it’ll be like a family being split up.