MOUNT DESERT, Maine — May 20. 2013 — The Maine shoreline, which stretches for thousands of miles up and down tidal rivers, around islands and along peninsulas, beaches and bays, is known for the relatively pristine habitat it provides to countless millions of sea creatures and plants.
But that hasn’t stopped one businessman from trying to make it a little bit better.
The hundreds of harbors that stretch along the Maine coast may be where people have the most immediate effect on the ocean bottom. Harbors are dredged every so often to help keep them navigable. Heavy boat moorings, usually large granite blocks with a metal bar loop protruding from the top, dot the bottom and periodically are raised and lowered as they are repaired or moved to make room for others.
The main purpose of most moorings is to provide mariners with a secure place to tie their boats when they go ashore, but Stewart Hardison thinks they should have a dual purpose. Hardison, the primary owner of Habitat Mooring Systems in Hampden, believes moorings also should double as microcosms of Maine’s coastal marine habitat.
The firm makes moorings from large blocks of molded concrete with holes of varying sizes that run from one side of the mooring to the other. Granite moorings tend to be solid blocks without any holes, Hardison said, but the holes in his moorings provide shelter to a wide array of marine animals, including lobster and cod.
“It’s not enhancing what it is doing,” Hardison said of traditional granite block moorings. “Ours does.”
Habitat Mooring Systems has sold “dozens” of concrete moorings that are in the water between Connecticut and Maine, Hardison said Tuesday. But only two of the moorings are being studied by University of Maine researchers to verify what kind of effect they have on the marine habitat. UMaine and HMS have a close relationship. HMS donates part of its proceeds to the university’s Lobster Institute, and UMaine marine biology professor Ian Bricknell serves as chief scientific officer for the Hampden company.
One mooring being researched is in Sand Cove in South Bristol and the other is submerged in Seal Harbor off Mount Desert Island. On Tuesday, UMaine graduate student Chris Roy and Mount Desert harbor master Shawn Murphy went out to the mooring in Seal Harbor, which anchors the harbor’s “no-wake” buoy, so Murphy could don a scuba tank and dive to the bottom and inspect it. Murphy has been helping out with dives at the buoy site in exchange for the town getting a mooring from HMS at no charge.
Photo credit: Leanna Thayer
Read the full story at The Bangor Daily News