Coastal New England Facts

New England Coast | credit: NOAA

This article includes a collection of facts and other information about coastal New England.

New England's coastal states include Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

The region is bordered the Canadian Maritimes to the North and the Mid Atlantic states to the south.

Coastal New England is famous for its fishing ports, coastal villages, rocky shorelines, and nautical art.

Coastal New England is popular among vacationers, tourists, and newlyweds. The region has an excellent selection of hotels, vacation rentals, bed and breakfasts, inns, shops, taverns, and restaurants.

Coastal New England is also famous for its boating culture. Several boat configurations that originated in the region have become popular around the nation. Sailboats are also very popular and are often found in ports throughout New England.

Coastal New England holds potential as a major producer of offshore wind power. Near Connecticut, the Block Island Wind Farm was the first of its kind in the U.S. Off the coast of Massachusetts, the Vineyard Wind 1 project will include 62 wind turbines with potential to generate 800 megawatts of power annually.

New England Seafood

Maine Lobsters

New England is world famous for its lobsters, mussels, fish, and other seafood. Much of New England's seafood is available locally (in season).

Other fish and shellfish are processed and shipped to American markets or exported to other nations.

Types of saltwater fish that are commonly landed in New England's coastal ports include Atlantic cod, Atlantic haddock, Atlantic pollock, hake, whiting, yellowtail flounder, winter flounder, fluke, monkfish, Acadian redfish, spiny dogfish, scup, weakfish, black sea bass, bluefish, and others.

New England is also famous for wild caught shellfish. New England fishermen produce catches of American lobsters, coldwater shrimp, sea scallops, quahog clams, surf clams, soft-shelled clams, oysters, blue mussels, and other shellfish.

Aquaculture is another important maritime industry in New England. Aquaculturists produce oysters, clams, scallops, seaweed, and other products.

New England seafood cuisine is characterized by clam chowder, baked cod or haddock, fried soft shelled clams, lobster rolls, clam bakes, traditional oyster recipes, and other seafood dishes.

Related Information

New England USA

An Overview of North America

Great Lakes - St. Lawrence River Water Quality

Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River beach water quality met government standards 76.5% of the time in 2015, according to a recent report from Swim Guide (www.theswimguide.org). By comparison, water quality standards were met 72.5% of the 2014 season.

Swim Guide compared monitoring results for 1,496 beaches around the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River and calculated the number of days beaches in each watershed passed water quality tests, failed water quality tests, or had no data. The findings published in the second annual Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River Beach Report.

Swim Guide is a beach information service created by Lake Ontario Waterkeeper in Toronto. The resource offers water quality alerts, beach descriptions, photos, and directions for over 7,000 beaches in Canada, the U.S.A., as well as Baja Mexico, and New Zealand.

For more information, visit www.theswimguide.org.

Maine Coastal Cleanup 2015

Hundreds of volunteers along the Maine coastline will join people around world for the 30th annual International Coastal Cleanup, September 19th to 26th.

Volunteers will be participating in Coastweek, which is part of the 30th annual International Coastal Cleanup, the world's largest single day volunteer effort to clean up beaches, lakes and rivers.

Last year, more than 500,000 people globally picked up 16 million pounds of trash along 13,000 miles of coastline. In Maine, volunteers found 10,484 pounds of trash in 2014.

For more information, visit mainecoastalprogram.org.