Maine puffin-watching cruises sell out as restored colonies draw thousands

Maine puffin restoration technique among those used in roughly 850 seabird projects worldwide

The puffin-watching cruises run along Maine’s coast from late April through most of August, peaking as the birds nest on offshore islands during breeding season. About a dozen operators serve Maine’s Midcoast and Downeast regions, charging between roughly $71 and $325 per passenger depending on the trip.

On a recent Acadia Puffin Cruise, 23 riders completed a 20-minute voyage through wind-whipped chop in Pigeon Hill Bay, where guides passed out high-power binoculars. The colorful seabirds — black backs, white bellies, multi-colored beaks and orange feet — bobbed on the waves in view. Sean and Jenny Taggart, 40-something Philadelphia residents camping in nearby Acadia National Park, had spent the week before their trip listening to puffin podcasts to prepare. Standing at the stern with binoculars fixed on swimming puffins, Sean Taggart called the experience “way beyond expectations.”

Cap’n Fish’s Cruises out of Boothbay Harbor ferries visitors to Eastern Egg Rock, a 7-acre rocky island hosting about 80 breeding puffin pairs. The narrated tours, delivered with National Audubon Society scripting, attract about 10,000 paying visitors a year at $71 per adult. Acadia Puffin Cruise runs daily two-hour tours during the season at $75 per adult.

For visitors willing to pay more, Bold Coast Charter in Cutler, Maine, runs island landings on Machias Seal Island. Owner Renee Patterson limits each trip to 15 passengers and charges $275 to $325 per person, depending on the date. The cruises use blinds so passengers can photograph puffins gathered above their nesting burrows at close quarters. Patterson said puffin-watchers come mainly for the bird’s distinctive appearance. “Puffins are cute and colorful, no doubt that is part of the lure,” she said. “They also have personality.”

Bold Coast’s 2026 season sold out within 15 to 20 minutes of being posted online, Patterson said, and foul weather sometimes forces cancellations with no refunds. Operators are preparing to open bookings for the 2027 season this fall or in early December; those wanting a space on the Machias Seal Island landing tour will have to wait until a date in March still to be determined.

What underpins the tourism is a half-century of restoration work. Maine once hosted puffins in the tens of thousands. By the early 1970s, overhunting for meat, eggs, and feathers — combined with habitat disruption from rats that arrived as stowaways on ships — had reduced the population to about 70 breeding pairs on two islands.

In 1973, Stephen Kress, a 28-year-old graduate student working with the Audubon Society, proposed moving puffin chicks from Newfoundland, where the birds remained plentiful, to Eastern Egg Rock in Maine. The plan relied on the species’ tendency to return to its original nesting site year after year. Resistance at first was fierce, the article reports, since the technique had never been tried and the Audubon Society considered putting chicks at risk antithetical to its creed. Kress eventually prevailed upon Newfoundland wildlife authorities to allow him to proceed.

To address predator threats, seabird conservation organizations including Friends of Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge joined with state and federal wildlife agencies in rigorous rat-eradication programs on nesting islands.

Today, an estimated 1,500 breeding pairs nest on five Maine islands. Machias Seal Island, which lies in waters claimed by both the United States and Canada, may host as many as 8,000 breeding pairs by some estimates.

Don Lyons, director of conservation science for the Audubon Society’s Maine-based Seabird Institute, said the population has reached a robust state. But Lyons and other researchers continue to flag ocean heat waves — hotter-than-normal currents linked to climate change that can shift the mix of fish available to puffins — as a key threat. “We do have a robust population,” Lyons said.

The technique developed for Maine puffins has spread far beyond the state’s coast. About 850 seabird-restoration projects are in operation worldwide today, according to the National Audubon Society’s Seabird Restoration Database, and a good number of them have adopted methods pioneered in Maine. Elizabeth Gray, chief executive of the National Audubon Society, said the payoff from Project Puffin has echoed far from the shores of Maine.

Gray said the tourism interest itself is part of the conservation payoff. Once people get to know the puffin and the puffin story, she said, it almost certainly increases their interest in bird conservation generally. “People go out and fall in love with the Atlantic puffin because they are so charismatic, colorful and fun to watch,” Gray said. “And I do think people protect what they love.” That linkage matters more than ever: the National Audubon Society estimates a 70% decline in seabirds worldwide since the 1950s.