Maine’s coast offers many opportunities to get up close and personal with a variety of sea life. To keep it simple, a walk on the beach and an exploration of tide pools will turn up crabs, sea snails and anemones.
A visit to the Maine State Aquarium offers more options. Located on the water in West Boothbay Harbor, Maine, the aquarium is operated by the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The main gallery resembles the rocky coast of Maine. A collection of regional fish and invertebrates can be seen hidden within the granite-like cliffs. The aquarium features extraordinary lobsters of all sizes and colors and colorful marine life. A special attraction is the 20 foot long elevated touch tank that houses a multitude of invertebrates. Feel the spiny skin of a sea star or sea urchin and get squirted by a sea cucumber or scallop. Watch the moon snail pull in its enormous “gooey” foot and be fascinated by the sea star retracting its stomach.
Photo Courtesy of Maine State Aquarium
Photo Courtesy of Maine State Aquarium
Photo Courtesy of Maine State Aquarium
Photo Courtesy of Diver Ed
Photo Courtesy of Diver Ed
Photo Courtesy of Diver Ed
To get an even more “real ocean” experience, take a “dive-in” theater cruise. Diver Ed’s Dive-In Theater is a two- or two-and-a-half-hour scenic boat ride out into Frenchman Bay in Acadia National Park, where Diver Ed and his sidekick “Mini Ed” dive down to the ocean floor with specially equipped video and sound equipment, allowing you to see and hear the ocean floor in real time from the comfort of the deck.
At the end of the dive, Ed & Mini Ed return to the boat – and so do the creatures! Touch tanks allow you to observe, handle – and sometimes even kiss – these strange and mysterious beings before they are returned safely to the sea. You will be amazed at the colors, the textures and the variety of animal life beneath the waves.
In Stonington, you can bring your children to the Penobscot East Resource Center. In the permanent public education and exhibit space, children can learn about the Gulf of Maine ecosystem and check the Touch Tank that brings marine life to the Center for all to see. The Downeast Fisheries Center is staffed Sunday through Friday from 10am – 4pm.
What is it about puffins that is so intriguing? Is it because they are both cute and strange looking (think a penguin with a clown mask on) at the same time and have a funny way (think Charlie Chaplin) of walking? Is it the clever way they line up a row fish on their beaks, ready to offer their young a smorgasbord?
Or perhaps it is that the only puffin habitat in the U.S. is exclusively in Maine (puffins are much more common in Iceland and Norway, Greenland), and we’re proud that, in just over 100 years, we have helped the population here surge significantly.
In 1900 there were only two Atlantic puffins known to nest in the United States, right on Maine’s barren Matinicus Rock. The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 put a stop to puffins being hunted both for their prized feathers and eggs, and other more recent endeavors such as the Project Puffin Audubon Society, have helped with the great progress made on behalf of increasing the puffin population. Today, Maine provides a summer habitat for approximately 4,000 puffins each year. A long way from just 2!
Whatever the reason we find ourselves charmed by these small, odd birds, puffins are certainly rock stars here in Maine, and people have many ways to flock—pun intended—and catch the show:
Tune in to a puffin cam to watch the progress of fledglings!
Head out to Eastern Egg Rock, Matinicus Rock, Seal Island, Petit Manan and Machias Seal Island (not to be confused with the aforementioned Seal Island) on a puffin-watching cruise, where keen eyes commonly locate groups of puffins sitting in the water, nesting on the rocks, or flying by.
Follow the Maine Birding Trail and make plans to get to one of four primary islands where there is a concentrated puffin habitat.
Check out the Project Puffin Visitor Center and learn more about the efforts of Audubon and other conservation partners to restore and protect the puffins on Maine islands and beaches.
Everyone knows that lobster is the quintessential Maine food, however we also have another “secret weapon” in our larder. The same marine ecosystem that produces Maine’s succulent lobster also works for producing some amazingly noteworthy oysters. The region’s cold, pristine waters and sheltered, tidal rivers are optimal for Crassostrea virginica (East coast oysters), and Maine is increasingly being recognized as one of the country’s premier oyster regions, evidenced by the high product demand.
To get an idea of just how prevalent oysters are in Maine, if you travel for example along the riverbanks Damariscotta and Newcastle—where many Maine oysters are grown—you will see piles and piles of middens, an indication of the thousands of years that people have been eating oysters in the area.
Maine boasts over 3,000 islands, some accessible by bridge, some by ferry, some by private boat and some just not at all. Mount Desert, home of Acadia National Park, is so easily reached by car it seems not an island at all. But for a more nautical experience try an island by ferry.
Off Portland in Casco Bay are six islands served by Casco Bay Lines. While many residents use the ferries to commute to work, leisure cruises are offered as well. Choose from a family trip with the kids to explore tidal pools or wade at one of the small beach areas. Escape for a romantic lunch or dinner, a day at the beach, or bring your bike and explore island life.
Photo: Summit of Mt. Penobscot in Acadia by Richard Moore
One of the best perspectives of Maine is from the water—this vantage point offers visitors views of coves, islands and harbors, all while taking in Maine’s timeless beauty and getting a sense of its seagoing history. From the on-the-water perspective, you’ll see many of Maine’s charming ports, observe animals such as seals, porpoises, and osprey, learn about the history of the region, and have unique access to seaport villages.
In late spring, summer and early fall, there are a number companies offering many ways to enjoy a bay or harbor cruise with departure options up and down the coast, from Boothbay to Bar Harbor, Camden to Castine. There are also a variety of vessels to choose from, including windjammers to lobster boats to a 1934 motor yacht similar to Hemingway’s beloved “Pilar”.
If you’re a hopeless romantic misplaced in this century, now’s your chance to experience the salty life of the 1800s. More than a dozen 19th-century-style tall ships in mid-coast Maine are ready to whisk you back to a simpler time before televisions, refrigerators, phones and faxes. You’ll sail aboard majestic two- and three-masted coasting ships that once freighted granite, timber and hay or aboard fishing schooners that supplied mainstream America with cod, swordfish and oysters.
(Top banner photograph: Schooner Heritage by Fred LeBlanc)
Departing from Camden or Rockland, you’ll sail for up to a week amid glorious islands, across sparkling bays and around lighthouse-crested fingers of the rocky coast. Like the mariners of yesteryear, your captain relies on the wind and tide for propulsion, and itineraries are cast to the wind.
I love mud between my toes on a hot summer day, at the edge of the sea, pants rolled up above the knees. I love being a child again, up to the elbows and ankles in mud. I’m digging for clams to steam for tonight’s supper on the beach—although you don’t have to dig in the mud with your bare hands, like I do!
Most people wear rubber gloves and boots and dig clams with a 4-tined rake called a hoe. My father used one of these, and a wooden slatted basket called a roller. Digging clams was his main income during good weather, along with raking blueberries.
Have you always longed to travel along the rocky coast of Maine and spend the night surrounded only by the beguiling sounds of crashing waves, the laughing call of seagulls, and a deep sense of peace?
When people think of Maine, they tend to think of lobsters. The lobstering industry has always been a key component of Maine’s economy, dating back to the 1800s. Today, the fishery employs over 5,900 licensed lobster harvesters and is a multimillion dollar industry that supports a number of coastal villages throughout the state. Lobster is a featured component of many recipes enjoyed by locals and visitors alike, but have you ever wondered where those lobsters come from or what it takes to get them from the seafloor to your table? Now you have an opportunity to find out as you take part in one of the many lobster hauling excursions available in the Boothbay Harbor Region.
Hauling traps, mending nets, digging clams, raking worms, wrinkling, dip netting, seining… you can see all these activities in Downeast, Maine, where men and women make their living from the sea. Folks in Downeast Maine rely on the sea, and are fierce protectors of its bounty. Not only do they fish here, but people also seed clams to restore the flats, grow salmon for release in native brooks, and truck alewives around dams to help them get them to their spawning habitat.
Downeast, you can witness resource harvest and resource conservation hand in hand, and that’s pretty unique!
The Bold Coast Scenic Byway is a 125-mile scenic driving route connecting a network of communities whose entire way of life is historically bound to its wild and scenic coastal environment. The people who make their living by harvesting the bounty of the land invite visitors to come experience their stories and explore first hand the places and events that shaped them.
