By Essie Martin
As we get into the 2023 season, we are looking forward to getting back in the chilly Maine waters!
Earlier this season we had our second (my first) dive of the season to collect wild scallops in our mooring field. During the summer season the research team spends several days a week SCUBA diving in Penobscot Bay. We do everything from population surveys, to wild scallop collections, to setting up gear on our aquaculture site.
Needless to say, diving is a big part of our jobs, and for me it is a major highlight of working with Hurricane Island. Many people have asked me what we see on the bottom in Penobscot Bay since most underwater media portrays colorful coral scenes with clear crystal blue waters.
While this is not exactly our reality, we are still privy to the kind of beauty only seen underwater. This time of year is especially beautiful – the clear cold waters make all the life we see seem so purposeful. Kelps and irish moss are stunning shades of pink and orange while the shells of tiny hermit crabs are bright white. On almost all our dives we see lobsters that scuttle and hide under whatever they can find: rocks, abandoned traps, pieces of kelp.
We often see big jonah crabs burrowing into the mud to hide with just their eyes poking out. On our shallow dives when we survey for kelp, we see more fish than on our deeper scallop collection dives. Sometimes we’ll see schools of pollock in the distance, but often it's the smaller cunner we get to see up close in the kelp. When we are lucky, we’ve seen small bright lumpfish tucked between blades of kelp on ledges, or along a mooring line.
On my first dive off Hurricane Island, Phoebe and I saw a giant sea robin, lethargic in a hole just off our main pier. On sandy dives we see flounder, some the length of my pinky, some as big as my forearm, rushing off from place to place just above the sea floor.
One of my favorite locations to dive is in Gaston Cove on the south end of the island. The sea floor there is completely covered in sand dollars and pastel colored seaweeds that sway with the water. As you get deeper away from the island there are ledges dotted with scallops on the sea floor around them.
