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Good morning from the shores of Gouldsboro, where the biggest conversation starter these days is: When is the quiet time coming again?

Businesses look forward to, and depend upon, the tourist season that now starts in the spring. But by mid-August, people are checking their calendars and saying the slow days can’t come soon enough. 

Most visitors arrive with a checklist of things they like to do while visiting the Schoodic Peninsula, and that usually includes a trip to Bar Harbor by car or ferry. It’s two worlds, really. What we think of as busy here barely constitutes traffic over in Bar Harbor, where guests are reporting back that they can’t find places to park.

Another big topic: zucchini, tomatoes, zucchini, corn, zucchini, all in abundance in gardens right now. As the old zucchini joke goes, keep your car locked in August, otherwise you might come back and find the back seat filled with giant green vegetables. 

Seal Island sees record number of breeding puffins

Earlier this month, researchers at the Gulf of Maine Seabird Working Group gathered at a conference hosted by the Seabird Institute in Bremen. 

One topic was the damage caused by last winter’s violent storms, particularly on Petit Manan Island, which sits off a stretch of Downeast coastline that got hammered in January. Island supervisor Amanda McFarland and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Linda Welch said the vast majority of natural sod burrows under relatively small rocks and artificial nesting structures were destroyed.

“There was a nest of a 30-year-old nesting pair that was shot down the shoreline 30 feet. We found burrow markers tossed all over the island,” said McFarland. “It was so ironic and sad because the food for the puffins was so good.”

Read this Maine Monitor story by Derrick Z. Jackson.

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