BY HANK GARFIELD

Mayzie Corman may not have realized it at the time, but growing up on an apple farm and then moving to a Maine island provided the perfect foundation for a career in aquaculture.

Corman, 27, is a freelance farm hand and nursery technician for the Spartan Sea Farm Cooperative, a collection of small oyster farms in the Freeport area. When she was 10, her family moved from Cornish, Maine to Cliff Island in Casco Bay, where her parents ran the island’s general store for three years. The island’s year-round population is around 40.

“I went to fifth grade at the one-room school,” she said. “There were six students total.”

It was on the island that her love of the sea was born, and she eventually enrolled at the University of Maine to study marine biology. After spending som

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