A tidal surge at Greenhead Lobsters in Stonington, Maine, in January. Click here for a video of the tide’s quick rise. Boston Globe image, provided by Greenhead Lobsters
The storms—all three of them— drifted along what was at first a novel route, then a frighteningly familiar one. An unusual wave in the jet stream helped spin them up and toss them off like meteorological cannon fire. One by one they passed over Quebec and moved off the coast. Their slow drift, coupled with the air plunging toward their cores, generated winds more long-lasting and powerful than any seen along the Maine coast for decades: southeasterlies of up to 70 miles an hour, with a few gusts to 90.
The damage was among the worst ever suffered on the Maine coast. Immediately afterwards, some people swore they’d rebuild the wharves and docks and seafood packing houses they’d lost. But it’s becoming clear that this winter’s trio of tempests may have forever changed fishing communities here.
When the first storm arrived on December 18th, Mainers everywhere felt its power. Ferocious winds left hundreds of thousands of households without electricity. Heavy rains pushed inland as far as Farmington (near Sugarloaf Mountain), where massive flooding shut down the entire city.
All that water swiftly ran for the sea. In the town of Hallowell, on the Kennebec River, waterfront businesses were left with two feet of tide in their basements. In downtown Brunswick, the Androscoggin River rose with such force that highway officials feared it would swamp the bridge crossing it. Flood water poured over the dam there and roiled its way downstream, roaring so loudly I could barely hear the words of a woman standing next to me. The dam stands about 18 feet. On that day, the overburdened river lapped nearly halfway up its height.
The second storm blew in three-and-a-half weeks later, its power centered over the coast. The third system followed three days later, in the same track. December 18th, January 10th, and January 13th: “To get one of these storms would have been more than enough,” Maine state climatologist Sean Birkel said in an online presentation. Three in a row, in less than a month, was beyond belief. It didn’t help that the fiercest portion of the January 13th storm arrived with an astronomically high tide—up to 14.7 feet, a state record.
Every sea town or headland with any eastern exposure suffered significant damage. The beaches of Wells. The waterfronts in Portland. Harpswell, Phippsburg , Bristol, Port Clyde, Rockland, Rockport, Camden, Stonington, and on up the coast. Massive ocean waves even topped Pemaquid Point, with its famous lighthouse set high on a rocky point. The front wall of the brick building that holds the sea bell there was beaten to pieces by surf.
Maine’s fishing communities were home to countless docks and wharves that jutted into ocean coves, many with seafood packing houses atop them. Waves conjured by the two January storms damaged or destroyed many of them. The direction of the winds didn’t help. “Normally we have northeasters,” said Ben Martens, executive director of the nonprofit Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association. “We’ve built our infrastructure to handle northeasters, and we got waves coming from a direction that was completely unexpected. And then three days later, it happened again—but worse. Nobody was prepared for the scale of it.”
Lobster traps, neatly stacked on docks for the winter, were rolled and thrown by waves. Those that could be recovered were filled with leaves and seaweed. “The tides were two feet higher than the NOAA forecast,” Martens said. “In the middle of the (January 13th) storm, guys were wading through tide to unplug cords from electrical boxes that they had thought were okay”—high enough to be safe from flooding.
Estimates are that between 50 and 60 percent of the state’s working waterfronts were damaged or completely destroyed.
From my years of living on Hurricane Alley on the North Carolina Outer Banks, I know what the residents of those battered communities must now face. Photographs and videos of flooding never completely capture the damage: the filth, the smell, the mold, the scale of the ruin.
How can these communities possibly recover from such a blow in the three short months before peak season begins?
When I asked Martens that question, he became somber. “Honestly, we’re making it up as we go along,” he said. The state’s fishing fleet doesn’t have the knowledge or response team to swing right into rebuilding the damaged structures, in part because of the permits needed. “What’s legal? What’s not legal? What are the steps we need to go through?”
The question now, he said, is whether many of the wooden wharves and fish houses so iconic along the Maine coast will be built back at all.
There are so many factors that comprise the landscapes we love. For me one of those is the mess of boats and docks along the coast, as well as the people who work the waters. Fishing towns have grit and vibrance; they’re a stellar example of communities that exist in spite of, not because of modern culture. They’re also among the places most threatened by climate change.
The islands of the North Carolina Outer Banks, my home for three decades, don’t have nearly Maine’s tidal amplitude: 8-plus feet on the coast near the New Hampshire state line, building to 18 feet at Eastport, near the Canadian border. The ocean rising and falling 18 feet, twice a day: It’s a sight to behold, and not easy to work around.
Nor do the fish packing houses in Wanchese and Avon and Hatteras Village have wharves that extend into open waters like they do in Maine. Unloading and packing seafood on the Outer Banks is done on the more sheltered coastal sounds. In the aftermath of tropical storms and damaging northeasters, there’s plenty of money lost and nasty mucking out to do. Comparatively speaking, though, the logistics of putting things back in order are much simpler.
Wharves in Maine typically reach far out into ocean coves and are set high enough to be out of the reach of tides. On the dropping-and-swelling ocean here, it’s tricky to unload crates and boxes of lobsters and the bait fish menhaden (called pogies here). Mechanical lifts are often used to bring filled crates up to the level of wharves.
Think about the difficulty and expense of replacing all that, especially in these times: A lobsterman I spoke with said that last summer, six months before the storms, a family member had made some inquiries about replacing a single, simple wharf. He was told that because of labor shortages, the marine construction company was taking orders three years out.
Working waterfronts in Maine were already under tremendous pressure because of gentrification. During the pandemic, sales of second homes in Maine skyrocketed. The Island Institute, the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, and other nonprofit groups are nervously tracking the disappearance of commercial mooring fields and landing sites.
As I read the accounts of damage and the struggles to work out how to get a few facilities operable for peak lobster season, I think about how much the lives of fishermen and women differ from mine. Fishing is an identity, not just a job. In an online video, a retired lobsterman from Camden describes how he considers the ocean to be the same as his home. “People don’t understand the connection to us of that flat, broad expanse of water. . . . To us it’s just like this town, where we have this street, and that house . . . It’s the extension of our lives. We have a vision and image and perception of all that’s going on underwater.”
Each time a boat goes out, there’s no guarantee it will return, though they almost always do. There’s generally no hourly wage, so earnings can fluctuate wildly. There’s only the community and the culture you belong to, and the joy of being on the water.
That culture includes the infrastructure that waits on shore. It’s been deeply upsetting to residents in these communities to lose wharves and packing houses with long family histories—many of them built by relatives and friends now gone.
There’s talk of the state and federal governments providing financial assistance, though it’s not clear how much or when it might arrive. It’s difficult to imagine that it will be sufficient to rebuild all that was lost. For now, says Sam Belknap of the Island Institute, the affected families aren’t counting on financial help. They don’t have time. Their focus is on doing everything they can to get back on the water for the season. That includes repairing structures that received minor damage and working out arrangements to share space with those whose docks and wharves and packing houses were spared.
“Fishermen are fixers,” Martens said. “They move move move. I’m always awed by the resilience of these guys and their families and communities.” Even so, he acknowledged, everyone’s feeling pretty beat up. “I think we just experienced a watershed moment in Maine.”
The three storms made it clear, Belknap says, that “climate change isn’t a ‘then’ problem. It’s a ‘now’ problem.”
Whichever wharves and docks and fish houses are replaced, recommendations are that they be built back higher—two or even four feet higher—than the original structures. Raising them, of course, carries additional expense. And should they again be made of wood, or of aluminum—or steel?
Martens noted that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds can be made available to communities but not to individuals. So some towns may opt to build central docks and seafood packing facilities that can be shared. “I think it’s going to be a community by community decision,” he said.
Time will tell how many of the old iconic structures will be rebuilt. Suppose, Martens mused, you had a small dock behind your house where you could store some lobster traps and sometimes tie up your boat. It was old, maybe built by your grandfather. Those kinds of docks were everywhere. They were part of the coast’s well-worn but vibrant feel.
Many, if not most, are gone.