Cashes Ledge – The Yellowstone of the North Atlantic
by Zach Klyver

After diving on Cashes Ledge at Ammen Rock, a peak that sits just 27 feet below the surface at low tide, globally famous marine researcher Sylvia Earle, said it was the “The Yellowstone of the North Atlantic.” University of Maine marine scientistDr. Robert Steneck, who spent years studying the ledge’s benthic habitat describes it as, “The Lost World”. Ocean researchers have long considered this 32-mile-long underwater mountain range, in the central Gulf of Maine, a biological hotspot and an oceanic gem.

In July 2024, Conservation Law Foundation submitted nomination papers to NOAA to create a Cashes Ledge National Marine Sanctuary. The proposed sanctuary is 766 square miles in size with 194 miles being completed protected. It would encompass the underwater mountain range, ledges, ridges, and surrounding deep water basins. This massive range of ledges creates upwellings of cold nutrient-rich water that fuel an explosion of plankton, that feed herring, squid, and mackerel, who in turn are prey for tuna, sharks, seabirds, and a high diversity of marine mammals. Cashes holds the deepest and densest kelp forest on the Eastern Seaboard and an environment abounding in fish including a red-colored cod and exceptional benthic life.

Join whale watch naturalist and marine conservationist Zack Klyver, who has visited Cashes numerous times and led several day trips to Cashes Ledge through his company FLUKES. In 2011, he saw a dozen North Atlantic Right Whales there. On his 2023 tour over 100 guests saw eight species of marine mammals, 51 species of birds, along with Basking sharks and ocean sunfish. At the ledge they found two finback whales feeding, an exuberant pod of nearly 100 Common Bottlenose dolphins, and a great diversity of oceanic seabirds. In August 2025, they spotted a large Leatherback Sea Turtle.

Zack Klyver Bio:  Zash has participated in marine mammal eco-tourism and conservation from the Arctic to Antarctica, including guiding over 3,000 whale watching tours on the Gulf of Maine. In 2011, he founded FLUKES: International Whale Tours, to take the public to see whales in the best places in the world. Zack co-founded and served as Science Director for a Maine based business in 2019, that worked on the conservation of the North Atlantic Right Whale for four years by testing ropeless lobster fishing gear and pioneered the use of ropeless fishing in gillnet fisheries. In 2020, he co-founded and currently co-chairs the North Atlantic Whale Watch Naturalist Association. Today, Zack is a marine mammal advisor to the Blue Green Future, developing natural capital markets including the economic value of whales based on their ecosystem services. His parents went to Africa to teach school, and he was born in Nairobi, Kenya. He grew up in a commercial fishing family in Eastport, Maine and is a graduate of the College of the Atlantic with a B.A. in Human Ecology.

Photo Credits:
Julie Taylor            Bottlenose dolphins surface Cashes Ledge
Morus Bassanus    Northern gannet
Brian Skerry          Kelp growth on Cashes Ledge

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Meeting begins at 7:00.  6:30 – 7:00 socialize with other MOACers.

Location: the Allen Avenue Unitarian Universalist Church, 524 Allen Avenue, Portland (near Northgate Shopping Plaza). Here’s a Google Map link.