The only way to access the island of Vinalhaven is by boat or plane. Maine DOT runs a ferry several times a day between Rockland and the island (1 hour 15 minutes/15 miles), where a village with a large lobster fishing fleet resides.

On our way to the ferry terminal, we stopped at the Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse. The weather was worsening, so we didn’t walk all the way out.

We found these isopods running in between the breakwater rocks, probably sea slaters.

Cormorants

When we arrived on Vinalhaven, a generous stranger gave us a short ride to the hotel we were staying at, which sits on a bridge where the tide (which varies by around 10 feet) flows in and out underneath. There was a thick fog that evening where we couldn’t see the yellow house across the harbor from the hotel.

Near low tide the next day, we got a ride from the hotel to the Basin. A small network of trails winds through the forest to access points to the protected cove. The northernmost access point was the most interesting. Some small fish were caught in the uppermost pool of water.

This crab, though missing several legs, was still alive in one of the tide pools

In the last three decades of the 19th century, the island’s primary industry was granite quarrying. Two of the larger quarries on the island are now swimming holes. This spot is just a nursery for mosquitoes, which were numerous enough in the forest to curtail photography.

In the afternoon I walked to Lane’s Island Preserve

One of the ferries returning to Rockland, with lobster pot floats in the foreground

This juvenile herring gull was pestering what I presume was one of its parents. The gulls in Maine are larger than the ones in Florida.

White admiral