Day #3

Somes Sound as seen from the air, photo from Google Images

On my third day at Acadia, I decided to head out to sea, and kayaked around Somes Sound. (Note that in real life I’ve never actually kayaked before, it just seemed like something that would be fun to do). Like many other features of Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island, Somes Sound was created by repeated periods of glacial activity over the past two million years. Around 14,000 years ago massive glaciers left behind depositions of mud, rock, and sand (moraines) that enclosed the area where Somes Sound is today. When the ice sheets melted, this area filled with water and became a freshwater lake. The ocean eventually rose above the moraines and eroded them away, turning the lake into the saltwater body of water it is today. Somes Sound is sometimes called the only fjord on the North American Atlantic coast; however, from a technical standpoint this labeling is incorrect. According to the Maine Geological Survey, a fjord is a “long, narrow, glacially-eroded arm of the sea usually hundreds of meters deep, with steep rock cliffs and a shallow sill at its entrance to the ocean”. However, Somes Sound is much smaller than a typical fjord (like the fjords of Norway), and so it’s more accurate to call it a fjard rather than a fjord.

It was a really nice day out, so my trip around the Sound took only about four hours (on windy days it’s much more difficult to kayak in the ocean surrounding Mount Desert Island since the winds cause stronger currents and choppier waters). I got to see a variety of different wildlife, including some bald eagles and harbor seals. From the water, Acadia looked pristine and unaffected by pollution or any negative environmental factors. However, one of the most major environmental issues currently facing Acadia National Park is one that can’t be seen with the naked eye: mercury contamination. Studies

Harbor seals at Acadia National Park, photo from flickr.com

conducted by the National Park Service at Acadia show that some species of fish, amphibians, and tree swallows contain enough mercury to put them at risk of lowering their chances of survival; the levels of mercury in the organisms is also much higher than is healthy for human consumption. Most of the mercury in the park comes from atmospheric deposition from mercury emissions in industrialized areas to the south and west of the park. The higher the affected organism is on the food chain, the more mercury is likely to be present in its body; this is due to biomagnification of the mercury up the food chain. Currently the National Park Service is trying to develop ways to minimize the impacts of mercury currently present in the park’s wildlife while also trying to prevent even more mercury from being deposited into the park.