The western side of Mount Desert Island is closer to becoming a cruise-ship-free zone after more than a hundred Southwest Harbor residents unanimously voted Tuesday night to impose a 180-day moratorium against the use of any town facilities by cruise ships.
Last year, when the 310-foot-long Pearl Mist arrived in Northeast Harbor, she sparked a local controversy that ended when the Mount Desert Board of Selectmen voted to bar future cruise ship visits. When American Cruise Lines sent out feelers this year about the possibility of anchoring off in nearby Southwest Harbor and shuttling passengers back and forth from a private dock, the location was different — but the reception was the same.
“And for good reason — the amount of damage that this kind of activity does to our local fishing gear — and they’re the people who are in town and who are here year-round, buying things from the shops, going out to supper,” says Harbor master Adam Thurston. “Those are the townspeople that we need to maintain.”
Thurston says pleasure boat operators and working fishermen who share the harbor have been able to achieve a balance that would be upended if cruise ships were allowed to anchor off the community and launch 36-foot-long, tourist-filled tenders. Thurston says the cruise ship traffic creates congestion on the water and on the streets when the ship’s passengers come ashore to explore the area or board buses for other parts of Mount Desert Island. Andy Mays, a lobster fisherman and chair of the harbor committee in Southwest Harbor, says its difficult to estimate the extent of gear loss caused by cruise ship visits to the region. But he says a recent call for help from one yacht owner gives him some idea.
“A big motor yacht that was in here a few weeks ago, that was 200 feet, I took 27 lobster traps out of,” Mays said. “They were really good about it, but they got hung up with them and that’s how many of them that they made it in with that had to be removed, so there would have been at least that amount that got torn off and not returned.”
Mays said all 119 of Southwest Harbor residents attending the special town meeting supported the temporary ban after expressing concerns over town infrastructure limits and the potential for the cruise ship industry to change the character of the community. Residents of the neighboring town of Tremont may also take action to ban cruise ships from docking there.
This story was originally published Aug. 16, 2017 at 4:24 p.m. ET.