People check out exhibits beneath a skeleton of a minke whale at the Maine State Aquarium, which reopened on Wednesday after being closed for four years. The aquarium in Boothbay Harbor was closed during the COVID-19 pandemic and then underwent renovations. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

BOOTHBAY HARBOR — As sunny skies and blue ocean waters made for a picturesque Maine day in the village of West Boothbay Harbor, bubbling fish tanks, rare blue lobsters and interactive exhibits brought visitors of all ages to the Maine State Aquarium, which reopened Wednesday for the first time since it closed in 2020.

Maine’s only aquarium reopened during Boothbay Harbor’s Windjammer Days Festival after the four-year closure that began because of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and was extended after officials discovered damage to walls, floors and electrical systems. It has seen just over $1 million in renovations in that time, which included adding new displays, repairing walls and floors and improving pumps and filters in the tanks.

Within 15 minutes of opening its doors, the aquarium – which is small and contained to one room – was at full capacity and stopped letting people inside. A line of eager attendees waited outside, trickling in as others left the building.

Inside the double doors, visitors dipped their hands into a touch tank, gazed at moon jellies and hauled a lobster trap off the ground aboard the mock end of a lobster boat called the “Lawbstah.” An added bonus was free admission for all attendees on opening day.

“It’s been several years coming, and we know how popular the aquarium is to the community,” said Dottie Yunger, education division director for the Maine Department of Marine Resources, which runs the aquarium.

One of the most popular additions was a new 300-gallon touch tank designed like a tide pool on the rocky Maine coast, allowing visitors to view how animals in that habitat interact in real life. With the help of aquarium staff, visitors were able to lightly touch starfish, sea scallops, anemones, horseshoe crabs and other creatures and watch them move around the sand and rocks. A second touch tank featured moon jellies, which don’t sting, that visitors will be able to touch when the aquarium is not as busy.

Aquarium aide Emma McCaffrey talks with Andrea Navas while holding a sea urchin at the touch tank exhibit at the Maine State Aquarium, which reopened Wednesday after being closed since 2020. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

Another popular attraction was the bright blue lobsters, one of them named Elvis. It is estimated that only one in every 2 million lobsters in the wild is blue.

June Nagy Ferguson and Bill Ferguson were visiting from Pennsylvania and especially liked seeing Elvis and the moon jellies.

“We’re big kids, and I was having so much fun,” June Nagy Ferguson said. The couple was also appreciative of the staff, whom they said were knowledgeable and made their experience fun and informative.

Andrea Navas and Maya Tirone-Goehring, from North Carolina and New York, respectively, were similarly impressed by the new exhibits and informational displays. Tirone-Goehring had been coming to Maine since her childhood and was excited to see the aquarium reopened.

“It was fun to come and see what the Maine wildlife and the sea life is like, so I think they do a very good job just capturing what is native to this area, which is very creative,” Navas said.

Cooper Lamb, 7, right and Maura Goulet, 4, both of Lyman, check out a tank that includes a striped bass at the Maine State Aquarium in Boothbay Harbor on Wednesday. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

While the aquarium was being renovated, all of the animals were relocated to other aquariums or released back into the ocean. During the last year, the aquarium has been collecting new animals from the Gulf of Maine and other institutions and acclimating them to their new environment through a wet lab.

The aquarium, which was built in 1993, is one of eight in New England. It became the only aquarium in Maine when a privately run facility in Saco closed in 1997.

While the state aquarium has historically been one of the biggest tourist attractions in the Midcoast – on-par with Fort Knox, the Maine Lighthouse Museum and the nearby Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens – it is much smaller and sees far fewer visitors than the New England Aquarium in Boston. Before it closed, the Maine State Aquarium saw about 55 visitors a day, according to a 2019 report by the state tourism office. The New England Aquarium sees about 1 million visitors a year, or about 2,700 a day.

Yunger noted that the new exhibits and redesign focus on the Gulf of Maine and research conducted by the Department of Marine Resources. When she began working with the aquarium over two years ago, the staff hosted listening sessions to get feedback about what visitors wanted to see when it reopened. The responses centered around increased access to the facilities, the research and the researchers, which led to new exhibits focused on local research and interviews with scientists.

Dottie Yunger, Education Division director of the Maine State Aquarium in Boothbay Harbor, greets people as they enter Wednesday after being closed for four years. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

“Our researchers are very passionate about the work that they do,” Yunger said. “They are always willing to talk to the next generation that are going to be in charge of the planet.”

The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world’s other large water bodies, according to Yunger. With an annual average of 52 degrees, the gulf is about 2 degrees hotter now than it was 30 years ago.

Through interactive touch-screen exhibits, visitors can learn, from data collected locally, how this warming is affecting species that live in the gulf. The aquarium has water temperature data going back to 1905 from samples taken right outside the facility.

“The Gulf of Maine is under a lot of threats and challenges right now with global warming, and so just highlighting the complexity of the Gulf of Maine is really important,” said Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher. “I’m hoping this will inspire a whole group of young kids to be thinking about the health of the Gulf of Maine.”

Yunger is excited to welcome school groups back into the aquarium for field trips starting in the spring. She said the aquarium is currently partnering with three teachers in Boothbay and Edgecomb who are developing their curricula around some of the aquarium’s exhibits.

Visitors can come to West Boothbay Harbor to see the updated aquarium and experience the exhibits for themselves for the rest of the summer. The aquarium, which is located at 194 McKown Point Road, will remain open through Labor Day, on Wednesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $10 for adults 13 to 59; $7.50 for children 3 to 12, adults over 60 and veterans and military personnel; and free for children under age 2.

“People here will say they been coming here for the 30 years that it has been here, and so we’re just really excited to be able to make this available to people again” Yunger said.

This story has been updated to correct that the touch tank is 300 gallons.