Gulf of Maine
On July 20, 2013, scientists at sea with NASA's SABOR experiment witnessed a spectacular sunset over the Gulf of Maine. Photo: NASA's Ship-Aircraft Bio-Optical Research (SABOR).
The Gulf of Maine has been of enormous ecological and economic importance to Maine's peoples since the first humans settled in what is now Maine about 12,000 years ago. Embracing the waters around Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and the eastern maritime provinces of Canada, the Gulf is a 36,000 sq. mile, nearly self-contained sea in the North Atlantic Ocean that has historically been one of the most productive fisheries in the world. In Maine and elsewhere in New England the aboriginal inhabitants and later colonists helped sustain themselves through abundant Gulf catches of cod, haddock, herring, lobster and shellfish; the codfish became such an important symbol of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that a wooden codfish has hung in the Massachusetts House of Representatives since the late 18th century.
The Gulf is home to 32 species of marine mammals, including humpback whales, North Atlantic right whales, seals, and porpoises; the American whaling industry of the 19th century was long dependent on whales in the Atlantic, especially right whales, so called because their slowness and tendency to float when killed made them the 'right' whale to hunt. Maine sent out a few whaling ships in the 1840s and '50s but mainly benefitted from whaling through shipbuilding and through providing sailors; it was common for whaleships leaving the Massachusetts whaling capitals of Nantucket or New Bedford to ship out a few young Mainers eager to see the world from the top of a swaying mast.
The Maine State Museum exhibits two humpback whales from the Gulf, one a 47-foot long (in life) female, named Vector by scientists who have studied whale populations and their impressive migrations. Before the advent of intensive, mechanized commercial whaling in the 1880s, there were perhaps 45,000 humpbacks in various parts of the North Atlantic Ocean, including the Gulf; that number had dropped to perhaps 2,000 when the International Whaling Commission banned all commercial whaling, effective in 1986. By then the Gulf itself had only a few hundred. In an important success story of species resurgence, there are now nearly 18,000 humpback whales on both sides of the Atlantic, and about 1,700 of those spend much of their lives in the Gulf of Maine.
Much less encouraging has been the fate of the right whales. Already greatly reduced in numbers during the age of sail-driven whaling, the late 19th century world population of right whales numbered perhaps 20,000. There are now fewer than 400 of them, and fewer than a hundred frequent the Gulf of Maine. The species is on the verge of extinction, with no rapid recovery in sight. The Maine State Museum displays some portions of a right whale known as Egno, which died near Boothbay in 2016 after becoming entangled in fishing lines.
Overfishing has damaged codfish and scallop harvests in the Gulf, and climate change is bringing new hazards. Gulf waters are heating fast, and the remaining codfish and lobsters are already migrating to cooler northern seas. Salinity and acidification are increasing and such invasive species as green crabs are further depleting traditional Gulf maritime resources. Thankfully, institutions like the Gulf of Maine Research Institute are working across the globe to solve some of the most pressing ocean challenges of our time: climate change, ecosystem health, seafood sustainability, and marine economy growth.
