Great Duck Island
I’ve been traveling back and forth from Illinois to Maine once or twice a year since 2006. Mostly, I’m there to photograph Acadia National Park, but I also lead workshops there in the Fall, and I’ve made several contacts over the years that have lead to jobs shooting for some of the hotels in the area for their websites and marketing purposes. And every June, I drive 1300 miles with a carload of my Acadia coffee table books and about 200 prints that I sell at the annual art fair. And that’s where I met Darron in 2021. Darron, who happens to be the president of the local college on Mount Desert Island, liked my photography and we got talking, and when I returned in October last year, I did some photography for his school. Then we started talking about having me photograph one of the crown jewels of the college on my next visit out in June of this year– an island 25 miles out in the Gulf of Maine used by his students for researching the local bird population. One of the best parts of my job is getting to see places and things that most people never get to experience, so hopping on a boat to photograph a tiny, remote island in the Atlantic Ocean sounded fantastic to me.
Of course, for photography like this, weather is all important, so when I arrived, we had to carefully watch the forecast and the tide charts– landing on an island, I learned, is a skill in any weather and the tides had to be right to do it safely. In the end, it didn’t work out to do the first intended island, but the college also maintains a research station on another island, only about ten miles out, called Great Duck Island. So when the weather looked to be good, we were on.
At 5:45am, my wife and I arrived at the college’s dock ready to go, with cameras, lenses and a drone. The college’s usual boat was out of commission so we took a much smaller one, and with the little tender thrown up on the back of the boat, there was little room to move around for the journey out. But we managed and an hour later, we disembarked on Great Duck, along with several five gallon containers of water for the students as well as mail and other supplies. The island is about 200 acres all together, with most of it controlled by The Nature Conservancy, with the college managing most of the rest. There’s also a private home owned by a local couple who rent it out to visitors, though I was told they’d been living there for the last couple years to ride out Covid. There is also buried treasure on the island, though that’s another story for another day…
The island features an old (1893) lighthouse at the southern end, with a turn of the last century lightkeeper’s house nearby where the students live and conduct some of their research. When you see it, you can’t help but be transported back 100 years to another time. Seven students and a teacher live on the island during the summer months, and we accompanied them as they banded seagulls and examined the birds’ nests for eggs. We pretty much had the run of the island, though we were told to stick to the pathways, as thousands of Leach’s Storm Petrels nest underground in the woods and under the trees’ roots. We examined the old lighthouse and got to climb its spiral stairs and stand out on the walkway at the top, where the students observe and count the birds every morning.
While they’re examining the nests, the gulls swoop down in an attempt to scare the researchers off; it’s usually harmless but I was hit four or five times by irate gulls… it’s a little unnerving. The trick is to walk with your arm above your head so they can’t hit you in the head.
We spent about three hours on the island on that beautiful morning, under blue skies and warm temperatures. We could easily have stayed for several days and never gotten tired of it. When we left, the teacher came with us, leaving seven students alone on the island, where they’ll stay for another few weeks before leaving some time in July.
