Seal Island, which sits 21 miles off Rockland, was once home to the largest Atlantic puffin colony in the Gulf of Maine. It is now managed by the Audubon Seabird Institute, and was the second island that Audubon’s Project Puffin restored puffins to after a century’s absence spurred by hunting in the late 1800s. The first was Eastern Egg Rock, six miles off Pemaquid Point.

Both islands were seeded with puffin chicks brought from Newfoundland. Puffins began breeding anew on Eastern Egg Rock in 1981 and Seal Island in 1992.

The Little River winds through the Wells Reserve marsh, which is part of the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. Unlike many marshes along the Maine coast that have a rocky barrier to the ocean, the Wells Reserve marsh is fronted by a sand beach, which makes it...

“The warming sea temperatures have actually created a real sweet spot for lobster reproduction,” said Brian Skerry, a National Geographic photographer and producer on the recent GBH/PBS series Sea Change, which explores the impact of climate change on the Gulf of Maine.

Skerry, who lives in York, has been diving in the Gulf of Maine since childhood. But when he began diving on the Isles of Shoals for his most recent project, he saw something he’d never seen before: lobsters crawling all over the bottom, digging foxholes in the sand.

“I wasn’t used to seeing that,” said Skerry. “Usually they’re tucked away in rocky crevices and dens.”

The roar of summer traffic on Route 1 as it zooms over the Pleasant River bridge in Columbia drowns out the burbling water below. The slip of river meandering under the road is easy to miss. 

Even less visible is the Pleasant River Fish and Game Conservation Association, tucked among the dense woods a short drive, or paddle, away. But the volunteer club has been around since the 1950s, working to preserve and promote the region’s vast natural resources.

Later this month, the association will hold its annual Puckerbrush Primitive Gathering, where about 200 visitors from near and far will come to camp and learn traditional outdoor skills.

Every year, we waste the equivalent of more than 9,000 fully loaded semi-trailer trucks. Close to half of the solid waste stream in Maine is made up of organics, according to a study released by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection in late May.

The evidence room at the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office in Portland is bursting with firearms that were confiscated, found or otherwise turned over to the law enforcement agency.

“We have a really strict, really specific way that we deal with all firearms, which is probably at this point, the bane of our existence,” Detective Keith Cook told The Maine Monitor. “They’re very difficult to work with. They’re a problem to store.”

He estimated the office has at least 600 guns that have been there at least two years.

“We’re to the point where we’re pretty much out of space to store firearms right now,” he said.