Gulf of Maine

The waters off New England logged the second-warmest year in their recorded history last year. The Gulf of Maine, a body of water about the size of Indiana that touches Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Canada, is warming faster than the vast majority of the world’s oceans. Scientists with Gulf of Maine Research Institute, a science center in Portland say...

In 2021, a number of Maine’s beloved puffins did not grow to normal size and starved because of a lack of certain food. Last summer, the Gulf of Maine, which surrounds many of the remote rocks and islands off of Maine’s coast where puffins nest, broke yet another average temperature record and experienced a marine heat wave. The typical...

In Maine, researchers are seeing puffins begin to arrive at islands after what they call an “unsettling” year in 2021. According to Dr. Donald Lyons, director of conservation science for the National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute, only a quarter of puffin parents studied by Project Puffin last summer were able to raise chicks that could leave the islands they hatched…

Rising sea temperatures are to blame.

Local researchers are studying why more North Atlantic right whales are migrating from the New England area to Canada’s waters.

Local researchers are studying why North Atlantic right whales are migrating out of our area into more northern waters in Canada. Some believe rapidly warming waters in the Gulf of Maine could be playing a role, but they’re just not sure how. The North Atlantic right whale is one of the most critically endangered animals on the planet. Researchers...

A stark record was set last year in the Gulf of Maine, which is already one of the fastest warming ocean bodies in the world. According to new data released this week by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, 2021 was its warmest year observed to date, with an average temperature of 54.14 degrees Fahrenheit. “My first reaction was well…

The Gulf of Maine, one of the world’s fastest-warming ocean waters, set a new record for surface temperatures last year, researchers said Monday. The surface temperature in 2021 topped the previous record in 2012 and was more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average, according to scientists at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland. The 2021 average…

Members of the Maine lobster fishing industry are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block new fishing restrictions designed to protect a rare species of whale. The rules, designed to protect North Atlantic right whales, have been the subject of court action in recent weeks. New rules make an approximately 950-square-mile area of the Gulf of Maine essentially off...

Lobster fishermen off the Maine coast must begin to remove gear from a new protected area intended to help whales, the federal government said. New rules make an approximately 950-square-mile area of the Gulf of Maine essentially off limits to lobster fishing from October to January. A federal appeals court ruled this week that the ban is enforceable, despite legal…

A piece of history in Portland, Maine will soon change hands, but unlike a number of recent real estate transactions in the Pine Tree State, is not being sold to highest bidder. For roughly 200 years, the Poole family and its ancestors have owned Union Wharf off of Portland’s Commercial Street. But according to Charlie Poole, one of its co-owners,…