IFyou plan to camp in an area other than a designated campground, it is imperative that you have permission to do so, either directly from the owner of the property or by joining an organization such as the Maine Island Trail Association (MITA), which promotes careful stewardship, low-impact camping, and public access to both publicly and privately owned islands. Join by calling Rockland 207-596-6456 or Portland 207-761-8225. You should also familiarize yourself with "Leave No Trace" camping guidelines.. Your equipment should include tents with fine mesh screening and all support stakes and poles (don’t cut these from tree limbs), warm sleeping bags, ample food and water, and a cookstove and utensils. Make camp on grassy sites where the earth is stabilized by the grass roots rather than on the more easily eroded soils under pine needle ground cover. Arrange your camp in such a way that repeated walking on vegetation can be avoided, trying instead to walk on rocks.
Campsites. Good campsites are found, not made. Please do not alter any location by cutting or clearing or digging. If there are designated campsites at your location, use them. COPYRIGHT 2002 DIAMOND PASS PUBLISHING Fires.Click here for campfire and fire information. IF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU HAVE VIOLATED Soils.Tread lightly. Coastal soils are thin and easily eroded. Stay on marked paths, beaches, or rock ledges and avoid wet areas and steep embankments. Travel and camp on durable surfaces. Find—do not make—campsites, or, if there is a designated campsite, use it. Along the southern beaches, stay off dunes and dune grasses. INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT LAW. One plant that seems perfectly adapted to these thin soils is poison ivy, and some islands seem as if they grow little else. Know how to identify poison ivy by its three shiny leaves, because in Maine it can grow in forms ranging from ground cover to shoulder-high bushes. PLEASE RESPECT AND SUPPORT THE WORK THAT HAS Bugs.Mosquitoes and “no-see-um” midges, on the other hand, are anything but endangered. They are ubiquitous along the entire coast but tend to be concentrated in areas of low-lying wet or marshy areas. They swarm at dusk, but nightfall usually brings temperatures cool enough to moderate this menace. Carry effective repellents at all times. If you are camping, choose sites where a breeze might keep insects at bay, and consider packing an inexpensive head net as insurance. Spring outbreaks of black flies are, fortunately, much less prevalent along the coast than inland. BROUGHT YOU THIS INFORMATION. BUY THE GUIDE! Many of Maine’s islands support high populations of deer, which often have become quite tame through their forced proximity with humans. Please do not feed these deer or any other wildlife. The deer carry with them a new cause for concern, the deer tick, which in rare instances can transmit Lyme disease to humans. The deer tick is much smaller than the common dog tick, ranging in size from 1/32 inch to 1/8 inch. General precautions for avoiding them should include leaving as little skin exposed as possible and spraying clothes with insect repellent before exploring on land. You should examine yourself for ticks regularly. If you find what you suspect to be a deer tick, remove it by gently pulling it upwards with tweezers, without squeezing it too hard, until it lets go, and save it in alcohol or tape for identification. Contact the Maine Lyme Disease Project at 207-761-9777 if you have questions or concerns. COPYRIGHT 2002 DIAMOND PASS PUBLISHING Brown-tailed moth caterpillars have recently become an irritating pest on some islands and coastal locations in Casco Bay and along the southern coast. The fine hairs of these caterpillars contain a toxin that can produce an itchy rash upon contact with skin. Unfortunately, their hairs are easily airborne, so you can get the rash without actually touching the caterpillars. The caterpillar larvae winter in web nests in the branches of deciduous trees, favoring oaks and sumacs, until they hatch in the spring. They are brown with two parallel lines of white dots down their backs, and two orange dots in the center, near the tail. By August, they metamorphose into white moths with fuzzy brown tails. Lotions like Calamine and Benadryl can alleviate the irritation of the rash.. COPYRIGHT 2002 DIAMOND PASS PUBLISHING Trash.All trash should be packed out and disposed of properly on the mainland, not on islands. (Even inhabited islands have trash problems. Don’t add to them.) Do not throw anything overboard that didn’t originate in the sea—not even biodegradable items like banana peels or apple cores. Fish parts or shellfish shells can be returned from whence they came, but they should be disposed of well below the low-tide line so that rank remains aren’t washed back ashore. Maine has a bottle deposit. Please recycle. Along the wrack line, you will, doubtless, see trash that has floated ashore. If you have the space, you can leave the coast a better place by picking some of it up and packing it with you. IF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU HAVE VIOLATED Human waste.This has become an increasingly odious (and odorous) problem as more and more people take to the coast in small boats. The best policy for day trips is to go before you go. But plan for the inevitable. Bring toilet paper and Ziploc bags to pack it out along with the rest of your trash. And bring a small container with a bomb-proof, water-tight lid and lime or kitty litter to pack the rest of the mess for proper disposal. If you are in a boat larger than a kayak and you have the room, bring a portable head on your boat. Federal law prohibits discharging untreated waste into waters within three miles of the coast, so if your boat is large enough to be equipped with a permanent head, it is mandatory that some form of holding tank be installed. Please use it. Overboard discharge increases the bacteria and lowers the dissolved oxygen content in the water. Holding tank pump-out stations are listed in our service tables.