Federal Repair Will Disrupt Fishing Area

Carrie Jones

Mar 10, 2026

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The Witham Family Hotels Charitable Fund.

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BAR HARBOR—Construction on the town’s 100-year-old breakwater will likely begin in May, Army Corps of Engineer representatives, said Monday, if the contractor can get all the stone it needs on time.

The breakwater is an underwater structure meant to protect the Bar Harbor harbor that hosts whale watches, kayakers, recreational boaters, lobster fishers, nature cruises, and cruise ships from southerly storms, large wakes, and gales.

It is located near downtown Bar Harbor, running from Bald Porcupine Island toward the Shore Path, a major tourist attraction and local walkway that runs parallel to the coast in front of mansions and inns. Bald Porcupine Island is National Park Service land and part of Acadia National Park.

The Army Corps of Engineers and Bar Harbor Harbormaster Chris Wharff told the Bar Harbor Harbor Committee, March 9, that they expected some concern from Shore Path residents as well as lobstermen during the federal project. The area is a well-used fishing ground.

“The biggest interaction is going to be with fisherman; they’re not going to be happy about the summertime work,“ Wharff said.

Likely beginning in April, lobster gear will have to be pulled from the area for the duration of the project.

According to a recent state press release, “Maine lobster harvesters landed 78.8 million pounds in 2025 and again topped all other fisheries with an overall landed value of $461,384,405 on the strength of a $5.85 per pound boat price, which is the third highest boat price on record.”

Inflation, however, has impacted the industry negatively.

“When adjusting for inflation, the overall value of lobster in 2025 was more in line with the value earned in 2008,” Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Carl Wilson said.

The Corps will also have no-wake zones in the area because wakes can be dangerous to construction workers in marine environments.

The Corps will be establishing a transport route, likely coming through the shipping channel.

The construction, representatives said, can be loud. There will be diesel engines, tugboats, a hum from those machines. The contractors will work daylight hours for the most part. There will be no blasting. Tugs will have spotlights.

There are residences and inns on the shore near where the work will be done. Strollers on the Shore Path will be able to see the barges as work occurs.

Harbor Committee Chair Kaitlyn Mullen asked about underwater acoustics and potential impact to marine mammals.

They did not think the equipment would bother the animals. The primary focus of the work will be northeast of the Porcupine dry ledge and an area to the right of that ledge.

The breakwater project has an end of March 2028, but engineers hope to finish well before then since the work is happening during the summer months, Corps representatives said.

“I’m just a little tentative,” one of the Corps’ representatives said about the May start. “I think it will be a little after that.”

The contractor hasn’t acquired the stone yet. If that stone hasn’t been tested yet for the project, it must undergo a testing project that can take 6 weeks.

The federally authorized project’s primary goal is to return the breakwater to its authorized dimensions and functions, which was as a high-tide-level structure. They are trying to get it back to a crest elevation of 11.4 mean lower level water (mllw). The Corps hopes to install six to ten ton armourstones based on the coastal analysis that had previously been performed. The contract is for approximately 12,000 tons. The breakwater’s base is approximately 100 feet wide and it rises approximately 65 feet.

Army Corps of Engineers hopes to start working on the town’s breakwater this May since there are no environmental windows for the project work.

If work was done in the winter there would be probably only five days a month that work could be done, which would prolong the project, Corps’ representatives said.

Discussion of the breakwater began back in 1888 with significant work finished in 1900, then in 1907 funds were expended for its improvement. Work continued until 1917.

Back in 1987, the Army Corps examined a portion of the breakwater where a yacht ran aground.

The original top ten feet of the structure was not built, which is why it is often under the surface when the sea level is high. The structure currently weighs approximately 382,000 tons.

The breakwater is meant to help protect the harbor from ground swell and at the time also from the “undertow for battleships and other large boats lying in the outer harbor.”

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OTHER BREAKWATER ONCE PROPOSED

Back in 1935, the Portland Press Herald’s headline read, “Proposed Bar Harbor Breakwater Would Make Save Haven.”

At the time, the Army Corps of Engineers hoped to create an inner breakwater between Bar Island and Sheep Porcupine Island.

That didn’t happen.

At the time of the second breakwater proposal, the existing breakwater between Bald Porcupine Island toward the Bar Harbor shore (specifically the area around the Shore Path, Vanderbilt Point) was not considered good enough. Supporters had hoped to create three distinct harbors in the town.

However, the existing breakwater, the one that is being repaired, they said at the time, doesn’t offer protection from easterly storms.

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