Colorful buoys dangle like Christmas ornaments from trees along a half-mile stretch of Route 24, close to Gurnet Trading Co. in Brunswick and the Harpswell town line.
The trend began last year when lobsterman Scott Harley hung one of his own painted buoys by the Gurnet seafood market and restaurant he co-owns with his wife, Brae Harley.
“First there was one, then there were two, then there were five, and then 15 buoys,” Brae said as she rang up a customer’s order of fresh Snow Island Oysters in April. By then, the number of buoys had grown to 38.
Why lobster buoys?
The Harleys bought the more than 20-year-old business two years ago. The property includes a strip of marsh and rocks stretching from Coombs Road to Princes Point Road. “We can’t build anything on it,” Brae said, so Scott decided to decorate one of the trees as a marketing tool. Brae said previous owners of the market told them Brunswick restricts the placement of roadside signs indicating the location of a business. Brunswick’s code enforcement office did not respond to a request for comment.
But once the idea of buoys caught on, the floating markers, or dangling in this case, also became a way to honor the local fishing community. “Bring me your buoys!” Scott eagerly told friends and family. And they did.
“Some of the (buoy owners) are dead; some are still fishing,” Brae said. “(Scott) has collected from families of everyone he knows.”
Scott, who lobsters out of Cundy’s Harbor, has yellow buoys with a teal stripe. Other fishermen’s buoys are painted every color of the rainbow and a few hues in between.
Buoys, registered with the state, float on the water’s surface and designate where a fisherman’s lobster traps are located.
“They’re beautiful,” Brae said, emphasizing that the buoys by Gurnet’s are important because they belong to the people who haul lobsters for the market.
A Facebook post on a community page had more than 100 enthusiastic comments agreeing with Brae’s assessment.
“I think they’re beautiful, appropriate and creative. Keep them there,” wrote Buddy Pope. “It’s a bouycott?!” teased Penny Dunlavey Sprague. “I love them. They make me smile,” wrote Sandi Merrill-Bisson.
Not as amused was the Maine Department of Transportation after Scott draped one of the buoys on a state speed limit sign.
“You’re poking the bear,” Brae told her husband. After talking to the DOT, Scott took down the buoy.
Someone complained to the DOT that the wind might blow one of the hanging markers onto a car, breaking its windshield. But the buoys are strung with tuna line. “And if you’ve ever caught a tuna, you know how heavy that line is,” Brae said.
Standing in the bed of his black truck to reach tree limbs, Scott is likely to decorate a few more pines along their Gurnet property. Most of the trees are dead anyway, Brae said, so why not enjoy the colorful buoys?
