(soft piano music) - I'm Ed Friedman, and I Chair Friends of Merrrymeeting Bay.

And we are right now on the Southwest corner of Abagadasset Point in Bowdoinham, looking across what I call the middle part of the bay.

I consider the bay more in three parts, Thorne Head in North Bath up to the Chops, the lower part being lower bay from the Chops up to Abagadasset Point, which is down to the east here from us.

And then from from Abby Point up to the north end of Swan Island, as being upper part of the bay.

It's a fantastic spot, unique in the whole world.

It's a place where six rivers come together, closest to us, the Abagadasset River in Bowdoinham.

Also, the Cathance River, in Topsham, the Muddy River, at the bottom of Swan Island is the Eastern River coming out of Pittston and Dresden.

And then the two big rivers, the Androscoggin River and that's Kennebec River behind us coming down out of Moosehead Lake in Northern Maine, and flowing through the Chops that's called, that gap over there about 200 meter bedrock slot.

Those six rivers, the bay is draining almost 40% of Maine, all the water in Maine, through that little slot behind me.

- The Gulf of Maine is a very important body of water for the world, not just for all the fish that are here but the fact that the Gulf Stream goes up through here, it helps regulate the temperature of the earth, and everything that is an input into the Gulf of Maine is deeply important.

And the Gulf of Maine is one of the biggest fisheries in the world that people have been coming to for thousands of years.

This is the Abagadasset River, one of the six rivers that flows into the bay.

These smaller rivers are really really important smaller feeders, because it helps to keep the circulation going in this kind of bathtub-like bay, which is also nursery habitat for all the agenosomus fish species.

- Agenosomus fish spends most of their life in the saltwater, come up in the freshwater to spawn, and that would be most of our species.

Striped bass, Atlantic salmon, short-nose sturgeon, Atlantic sturgeon, tomcod, alewives, blueback herring, American shad, rainbow smelt, sea lamprey, those are probably most of them.

And then we have one catagonus species that is born at sea and spends most of its life in the river, and that's the American eel.

And so, they all utilize the bay and the rivers, and work their way up some of these rivers to the extent that they can.

- And because of that, it's just a part of the network of just all of the biodiversity and all of the species that surround the bay and then beyond that too.

So, we have a lot of eagles here, a lot of osprey, herons.

A lot of different birds that are deeply important to the ecosystem but also just absolutely beautiful to watch.

And that is a huge part of being here, is just being able to live within this incredible space and I think probably all the animals feel that way too.

- A couple things that make this really unique.

This is freshwater but tidal.

Biologically, it's considered tidal riverine, and what happens at low tide, all that river water from Maine is going through that slot behind me, 17 miles to the ocean down at Popham Beach.

At high tide, 17 miles for that saltwater to come up, but the freshwater is still trying to get out, so it's really the freshwater backing up against the incoming salt that makes the tides in here.

So, very very little salt gets into the bay, technically we're an estuary 'cause there's a little bit of salt, but geologically, this is really cool.

With all these rivers coming and they have their flow, typical river flow down, they get into this essentially big pond and that flow slows down and the sentiment drops out.

So, we are also an inland delta, and while there are a couple of other spots in the world where rivers, major rivers, come to a confluence like here, the estuaries are a little more linear in nature so they kinda come together and go right out.

The Chops really constrains all of these rivers here.

It's really hard to get out of the bay if you're water and even if you get out through the Chops, the odds are in the next tide cycle, you'll be back.

And that has real important implications for what goes into the water.

- As a contributor to what happens on the bay, we all have to be very mindful about what we put into it just as if we were putting it into our bodies.

And so, we want to be careful to keep things like mercury and pesticides and other toxics from going into this water, which then comes up the food chain and throughout the entirety of our environmental health.

And to be thoughtful every time we think about what we're doing in our lives that will go down the drain and end up here, and this here impacts everywhere else.

- I'm Steve Cohen, I work at the Maine Maritime Museum, I'm a crew member on the Merrymeeting vessel.

I think the bay is wonderful.

It's nice and clean, it's a good place to go, it's a good place to fish, place to hang out.

There's a lot of protection in there now where the government has put acts in place, clean water act, protection for the wildlife.

And nature is putting it back to where it was.

- There are some places that are maybe better and not so heavily troddened, and this is a sensitive area, and we don't want to go back to he pollution that we had before.

So, when people come to visit, I hope they see this beautiful place and I hope their also very sensitive to that.

(easygoing music)