February 28, 2025 — I first visited Stonington, Maine, in the summer of 2003 to write a story for Yankee about the community’s proudly held identity as a fishing town. Even then, Stonington was an anomaly. While other main streets and harbors along the Maine coast had become the shiny domain of tourist shops and pleasure boats, here, on the rocky outermost tip of remote Deer Isle, lived just over 1,000 people whose lives were still largely built around what they hauled from the sea.
The challenges Stonington faced back then—tighter regulations, increasing costs, wild swings in the price of lobster—still confront the town more than two decades later. But now it’s increasingly feeling the threat of climate change, too. Early last year, two powerful storms slammed into the island, cutting off Stonington from the mainland, devastating businesses, and swamping the public pier. The Gulf of Maine’s warming waters, meanwhile, are putting the very survival of the state’s signature lobster industry at risk. Even for a community long accustomed to dealing with headwinds, these latest developments beg the question: What will it take for New England’s largest lobster port to endure?
Last June, I returned to Stonington to find out.
Robbie Eaton is ready to get on the water.
It’s pushing 5:30 on a Thursday morning in early June, and for the past half hour the 24-year-old has been prepping his boat, the Legacy, a mint-green 35-footer docked at the Stonington Fish Pier. It’s not quite summer but it’s starting to feel like it, warming up even at this hour, and the surrounding harbor is quiet, a testament to just how early the workday starts around here. In Maine’s largest lobster port, many of its 350 boats motored off nearly two hours ago.
Read the full article at NewEngland.com