Great Duck Island

The college shares the island with The Nature Conservancy, the State of Maine, and a private summer resident. COA owns approximately 12 acres, consisting of the original light-station property, which includes the old head keeper’s house, two boathouses, and the lighthouse itself, which was constructed at the end of the 19th century.

Alice Eno Station

In the summer of 2000 the station was renamed the Alice Eno Field Research Station in honor of a longstanding COA trustee, who dedicated enormous amounts of her time facilitating research on Maine’s coast. Cooperative agreements with The Nature Conservancy and the State of Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife give COA students access to the bulk of Great Duck for sponsored research projects. Electricity at the station is generated by a solar array. Download a detailed synopsis of Eno Station and student projects on Great Duck Island . 

Waterbird activity

Great Duck supports some of the largest known breeding populations of Leach’s storm petrels and black guillemots in the Lower 48. These, along with resident herring and black-backed gulls, are subjects of ongoing research by teams of students from the COA Island Research Center under the supervision of faculty member John Anderson. A major concern is the island’s large population of snowshoe hare, a species that was introduced in the mid-20th century and has had an enormous impact on the island’s flora.

Click here for a more detailed history of Great Duck Island. More detailed information on the seabirds of Great Duck can be found by clicking here .

View a podcast about Great Duck and our work out there!