This year more than 100 cruise ships have docked in Bar Harbor, where disembarking passengers explore shop-lined streets and maybe take in a lobster dinner at a local restaurant.
The additional foot traffic is welcome in the popular tourist town, but in neighboring Northeast Harbor, a recent effort to encourage cruise ships was torpedoed by local residents.
This year, more than 150,000 cruise ship passengers stepped foot in Maine’s premier resort town and explored nearby Acadia National Park. Bar Harbor views the cruise ship market as an asset to the community, but 11 miles away in Northeast Harbor, Rick Savage has a completely different view.
“We know what the cruise ship industry has done to Bar Harbor — that’s a major impact,” he says.
Savage, who serves as the chair of the village’s Marine Management Committee, says that when the 200-passenger Pearl Mist decided to make Northeast Harbor a port of call in September, the response from the community was almost instantaneous — and it wasn’t good.
“The majority of shorefront property owners in our town were adamantly opposed to seeing cruise ships landing and using our facilities,” he says. “They came out in force with advertisements and printed brochures and things like that opposing the idea of cruise ships landing in the community.”
Northeast Harbor is one of six villages that make up Mount Desert. And residents who live there are quick to acknowledge that they prefer streets that are less crowded than Bar Harbor’s. They also say the last thing they want is 200 tourists looking for souvenir shops.
In addition, shorefront homeowners didn’t want their view of the harbor obliterated by a 325-foot vessel shoehorned between the lobster boats. And by the time it had crossed some of the major fishing areas on its way to the harbor, the Pearl Mist managed to irritate another significant segment of the population in Northeast Harbor: the fishermen.
Jack Merrill, a longtime lobsterman, got a look at what was left of his fishermen’s gear in the ship’s wake.
“Well, it’s total devastation, there’s nothing left,” he says.
Merrill says, in Northeast Harbor, cruise ships pose significant safety hazards to fishermen and recreational boaters. He and other fishermen organized with town residents to obtain a ruling from the board of selectmen on the whether Northeast Harbor should be off limits for cruise ships.
“I think what the selectmen’s choice came down to was are cruise ships an important part of our economy or potential economy to offset some of the negatives?” says Durlin Lunt, Mount Desert’s town manager. “I think that obviously they came down on the side of the opinion that no, they are not.”
One businessman who was definitely affected by the cruise ship stop is Aaron Gray, co-owner of the Pine Tree Market, where merchandise was flying off the shelves.
“They bought everything. They bought lunch specials, they bought Dramamine, Pepto-Bismol, they bought booze, they bought soda, they bought chips. They bought everything,” Gray says.
Ted Bromage and other residents say Northeast Harbor’s struggling year-round businesses are a good reason to consider allowing a few cruise ships visit the community. Bromage, who is also a member of the Marine Management Committee, says it would be hard to find an economic resource that leaves a smaller footprint than a cruise ship passenger.
“We couldn’t pay to bring those people in and here they’re paying for the opportunity, and my thought and hope was that we could find some way that would be minimally invasive from the lobstermen’s standpoint and be very positive from the merchants’ standpoint,” he says.
Although more than 100 residents have weighed in on the cruise ship question, Bromage and Gray say they haven’t given up on pursuing a possible reconsideration of the issue during a future community meeting.