The Gulf of Maine is an international watershed in the North Atlantic stretching north from Provincetown at the tip of Massachusetts Bay in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to Cape Sable on the Bay of Fundy in the province of Nova Scotia in Canada. For over 13,000 years, the Gulf has been developed around access to the coast for fishing, trading, and recreation. Today, these coastal development patterns put the cultural landscapes, economies, communities, and aging infrastructure systems along the Gulf at risk.
Climate Futures on the Gulf of Maine uses place-based scenario planning to illustrate the risks, vulnerabilities, and plausible futures for ten infrastructure systems along the rim of the Gulf. Place-based scenario planning is a method of long-term strategic planning that creates representations of multiple, plausible futures that are used to inform decision-making in the present. While complementary to probabilistic models used to forecast future vulnerabilities, scenario-based planning shifts emphasis from statistical probability to ways of thinking about the future. The goal of place-based scenario planning is not to predict the most likely outcome, but to reveal biases and blind spots in complex and non-linear situations.
Climate Futures uses the medium of landscape representation to surface the cultural value systems embedded in existing infrastructural systems, and position landscape as a driver when evaluating design from individual infrastructures to the Gulf of Maine watershed.
Infrastructure > Green Space
SEARS ISLAND
Sears Island Causeway
Searsport, ME 04974
Sears Island, traditionally known as Waggsumkeag, meaning “bright sandbeach,” is a 936-acre island that lies in Penobscot Bay on land unceded by the Penobscot Nation. 1 2 The island, which is part of the Town of Searsport and owned by the State of Maine, has been the site of contested development plans since the 1970s.
The island was first called Brigadier Island when it was inhabited and farmed by settler-colonists in the 1750s. In 1813 David Sears purchased the island and changed its name. During this time, the resort was used as a private farm for the Sears Family. Later, the island was sold to the Bangor Investment Company, who proposed to turn Sears Island into a resort in the first of several failed development schemes that seek to take advantage of the natural, protected deep-water anchorage off the west side of the island. 3
In 1971, an oil desulphurization refinery was proposed, followed by the Sears Island Nuclear Power Plant proposed by Central Maine Power in 194, followed by a coal-fired powerplant, followed by the Sears Island Dry Cargo Terminal in the 1980s. In 1988, a paved causeway was laid across the tombolo leading to the island, blocking tidal flow across the harbor as part of a development plan for a liquefied natural gas terminal. The development proposals were halted by a series of lawsuits filed by the Sierra Club in the 1980s and 1990s. 4
The island was purchased by the State of Maine in 1997. In 2009, 601 acres of the island were conserved in perpetuity in a conservation easement held by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, which designated the Friends of Sears Island as stewards of the area. Today, there are no structures on the island, and the paved asphalt Sears Island Road, including the causeway, show signs of cracking and deterioration. On the island’s interior, the landscape is composed of successional forest in areas that were formerly cleared to be farmland, wet forest, streams, and, along its rim, tidal shore communities. The island is used for hiking, bicycling, horseback riding, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, hunting, clamming, kayaking, dog walking, ocean swimming, sunbathing, and wildlife observation. 5
Despite the island’s ecological and recreational value, questions about the island’s role in Maine’s industrial development persist. In 2024, Maine Governor Janet Mills announced Sears Island as the preferred site for a port facility to support the floating offshore wind industry. 6 The proposal reignited local opposition from communities around Penobscot Bay, who point to the existing deepwater seaport across from Sears Island at Mack Point in Searsport, which already hosts an oil terminal, as the preferred location for any new industrial development on Maine’s Midcoast.
For decades, Sears Island has been the focal point of larger conversations around protections for undeveloped green spaces along the Gulf of Maine, and the role that conservation land should play in a transition toward renewable energy and climate adaptive industries. 7 Today, the uncertainty around future development provides an opportunity to conserve the island in perpetuity, or develop a port to aid in a just transition.
Scenario 0: Storm of the Century 2030
The causeway to Sears Island calves and falls into the surrounding Long Cove. Vehicular access is not restored, and the island is only accessible to pedestrians at low tide, or by boat.
Scenario 1: Fortified Systems
The causeway to Sears Island is reinforced with stone revetment to ensure that the turbine staging area and wind farm developed on the west side of Sears Island are accessible at all times and tides.
Scenario 2: Catchment Commons
The causeway is depaved and its fill gradually washes away, revealing a tombolo that provides access to the island at low tide. A pier allows access to Sears Island, which is declared as protected conservation land in perpetuity.
International Watershed | Gulf of Maine | Hydrologic Unit Code |
Region (HUC-2) | New England | HUC 01 |
Subregion (HUC-4) | Maine Coastal | HUC 0105 |
Basin (HUC-6) | Maine Coastal | HUC 010500 |
Subbasin (HUC-8) | Maine Coastal | HUC 01050002 |
Watershed (HUC-10) | Penobscot Bay-Frontal Atlantic Ocean | HUC 0105000219 |
Subwatershed (HUC-12) | Goose Pond-Frontal Penobscot Bay | HUC 010500021907 |
“Penobscot Nation,” Wabanaki Alliance, accessed June 4, 2025, www.wabanakialliance.com/penobscot-nation.
Charles B. McLane, Islands of the Mid-Maine Coast: Blue Hill and Penobscot Bays (Falmouth, ME: Kennebec River Press, 1982), 317.
Charles B. McLane, Islands of the Mid-Maine Coast: Blue Hill and Penobscot Bays (Falmouth, ME: Kennebec River Press, 1982), 321-322.
Philip W. Conkling, Islands in Time: A Natural and Cultural History of the Islands of Maine, 3rd ed. (Rockland, ME: Island Institute, 2011), 40-42.
The natural communities identified on Sears Island are coastal dune grassland, hardwood seepage forest, maritime spruce-fir forest, alder shrub thicket, red oak-northern hardwood-white pine forest, and spruce-northern hardwoods. Alison C. Dibble and Jake Maier, “Natural Resource Inventory: Conservation Lands, Sears Island” (Searsport, ME: Friends of Sears Island, 2011).
The State considered nearby locations in the Port of Searsport, Port of Eastport, and the Port of Portland, but ultimately chose Sears Island for its “location, logistics, cost, and environmental impact.” “Governor Mills Announces Sears Island as Preferred Site for Port to Support Floating Offshore Wind.” Office of Governor Janet T. Mills, February 20, 2024, www.maine.gov/governor/mills/news/governor-mills-announces-sears-island-preferred-site-port-support-floating-offshore-wind-2024.
As Philip W. Conkling, the founder of the Island institute, a non-profit organization based in Rockland, Maine, writes, “Although using two hundred of Sears Island’s nine hundred acres for a new cargo port won’t be an ecological catastrophe in and of itself, this is an old-style development model: Take a chunk of virgin territory for a new facility and turn a blind eye to the decaying infrastructure staring you in the face.” Philip Conkling, Islands in Time: A Natural and Cultural History of the Islands of the Gulf of Maine, 2nd ed. (Portland, ME: Down East Books, 1999), 42.
