Gulf of Maine in Peril: PBS Documentary Explores the Ocean’s Threats and Resilience

Brian Skerry has been a National Geographic photographer for more than 25 years, focusing on life under the surface of waters around the world. He’s photographed whales, sharks, scallop farms and kelp forests, and through it all, he’s been inspired by what visual storytelling can accomplish.

“Good science and good visual storytelling, and people just sharing what they know, is an important way to move that needle in favor of a healthy future,” Skerry said in a recent interview. “I started diving 47 years ago exploring these waters, and it’s staggering to see just how much it’s changed.”

But Skerry has been alarmed of late by what he’s seen through his camera lens: nothing. 

“It’s very hard to tell a story about loss by going out and photographing nothing,” Skerry said, referring to some dramatically different marine habitats. “Going out to some of these places that I describe, they don’t look anything like they used to.”

One way that Skerry is bringing the ocean – and specifically, the Gulf of Maine – to people around the world is through a new three-part PBS series Sea Change, for which he is the co-producer and a photographer. Sea Change examines the history and condition of this 7500-mile-long stretch of water.

One of the Gulf’s historical features is that it is fed by cold water from the Arctic, the warm Gulf stream from the South, and inland rivers that flowed out in the ocean, creating a near-perfect oceanic mix.

“It was formed after the last ice age, after the Laurentian ice sheets retreated,” Skerry said. “It left this perfect recipe of ingredients to create the proliferation of life.”

This life includes not only the lobster and seafood that the East Coast is now famous for, but 3,000 other marine species, not to mention marshes, estuaries and kelp forests. But the other famous fish, cod, from this region, was fished almost to extinction. 

“As we’ve overfished this body of water, I think we’ve created a lack of resiliency. It is weaker because of that,” said Skerry. 

The overfishing of cod has been well-documented, but in more recent times, climate change has become the more immediate threat to the Gulf. The temperature of the Gulf of Maine water has been heating up faster than 99% of the world’s oceans, a result of glacier melt. This data is expounded on in a recent article Skerry wrote for National Geographic.  

“It’s like making a perfect cake. If you change the recipe a little bit, or don’t mix it just right, it changes dramatically,” Skerry said. 

Sea Change is a way to visually localize climate change.

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“I wanted the audience to understand that climate change is not something that’s far away,” Skerry said. “It’s not happening just in the poles. It’s happening in your own backyard.”

One example covered in the series concerns Eastport, a place where he used to go on dives when he was younger. “You would see big schools of juvenile fish, pollock, codfish on the shipwrecks in Cape Cod Bay,” he said. “We would see invertebrates, sea anemones. There was just that abundance.”

And his experience when he returned to photograph for the documentary? 

“I went into that same place, and it was just mud and bad visibility, and hardly any of those animals that I used to see,” Skerry said. “It was very dispiriting. You come out of the water at night or during the day, and you just kind of shake your head at how quickly this all changed.”

Another example of the change in the gulf is the explosion of the green crab population. Green crabs, an invasive and destructive species that feeds on seagrasses, thrive in the milder water. But the documentary puts a more positive spin on the species by showing some of the people who are adapting to climate change. 

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Mike Masi is a fourth-generation lobsterman who has made the shift to green crab fishing. Once the molting pattern of the green crabs was discovered, they could be fished and sold as soft-shell crabs. These soft-shell green crabs are now turning up on menus in the region. 

Sea Change also explores the indigenous population of the region and how clam farming is being affected by climate change. 

“Gaining the wisdom from those types of voices and the scientists and other people who have a deep connection to this region helps us understand the natural history,” Skerry said. 

Skerry and the crew also took some cameras out to Cashes Ledge, which is 80 miles off the coast of Maine and is known for its healthy kelp forest. The forest there has maintained its health mainly because it’s far enough off the coast.

“The scientists said it was as good as it was in the late 1980s,” Skerry said. “But there were troubling signs. There were these invasive red algae that we were seeing in the coastal forest that helps accelerate the decline of these kelp forests. So, this is a place that remains largely unprotected, and is a place that really cries out for protection.”

And as deep-sea mining begins to become more accepted, it’s places like the Cashes Ledge, and perhaps the 36,000 square miles of the Gulf of Maine at large, that need to be protected against not only climate change dangers, but the forthcoming devastation that will inevitably come from the mineral extraction of ocean floors. 

“We’re living at this pivotal moment in history where maybe for the first time, humans understand both the problems and the solutions, and we just need that collective will to move toward the solutions,” Skerry said.

“At the end of the day, I think there is great hope. You know, I think what was exciting and encouraging for me were these people’s stories that, with every one of these characters, you see a resilience, you see a recognition of what’s happening, but also a desire to try to solve the problem.”