Seal Island, a 65-acre wildlife refuge six miles east of Matinicus, is home to nesting seabirds but off limits to visitors.
That’s because this barren, rocky isle 21 miles out to sea from Rockland was a bombing target for training U.S. Navy pilots from the 1940s through the 1960s. Live explosives could still lie buried on Seal Island or submerged in surrounding waters.
Sailors and fishermen are familiar with longstanding ordnance warnings on Penobscot Bay charts. Matinicus residents remember a Seal Island brush fire that included a series of explosions attributed to Navy ordnance.
Generations ago, fishermen built shacks on Seal Island; one area along the rough shoreline is named Squeaker Guzzle.
Four decades after the target practice stopped, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is making plans to retrieve unexploded ordnance from Seal Island. It also plans to pick up debris from another bombing target, Duck Island, which lies near the Isles of Shoals and the New Hampshire border.
A preliminary report on the proposed cleanup has been completed by a private contractor, but the schedule and cost of the project hasn’t been determined, officials said.
One issue is whether to retrieve potentially live bombs from underwater, where depths of more than 100 feet could make the job expensive. Those concerned about the safety of the area contend the cleanup should include underwater ordnance.
Iver McLeod of the Department of Environmental Protection, a project manager for Seal and Duck Island ordnance removal, said he is concerned that the Army Corps does an adequate job. The corps has said it will only scour dry land and intertidal zones.
“They’ve indicated that’s the case, but I’m not letting them off the hook.” McLeod said. He holds a degree in oceanography, and said ordnance left to decay could leach chemicals into the sea.
McLeod said one of the problems with the corps is chronic underfunding of environmental remediation projects. He suggested the U.S. Navy could be held responsible for cleanup costs at Seal and Duck Islands. That could depend on terms of the deeds transferring the islands to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
The Navy turned Seal Island over to the wildlife agency in 1972.
Early harvesting of birds followed by marauding gulls decimated bird populations at Seal, but today it hosts hundreds of birds. The island has 30 acres of rock ledge and boulders, plus 35 acres of grassy area. Along with Atlantic puffins and both Arctic and common terns, the island is home to razorbills and gulls.
Herring and black-backed gulls preyed on nesting terns until none were left in the 1950s. In 1984, the National Audubon Society and the U.S. and Canadian wildlife services brought 950 puffin chicks from Newfoundland to Seal Island.
Raised in burrows, the puffins were tracked when they fledged. Puffins finally returned independently to the island in 1992, and there are now some 230 nesting pairs, researchers report. The Audubon Society maintains a seasonal web cam on the island connected to its Rockland office, which is open to the public.
Several years ago the Corps of Engineers closed Reid State Park in Georgetown, a former bombing range, to collect ordnance there. Another project involves a discontinued range in the Downeast town of Deblois.