Kent Island (New Brunswick)
Kent Island is a small island in the Bay of Fundy, about 9.7 kilometers from Grand Manan, and the outermost island of the Grand Manan archipelago off New Brunswick, Canada. It covers about 247 acres (100 hectares) and is roughly 1.8 miles (2.9 kilometers) long. The island is owned by Bowdoin College and hosts the Bowdoin Scientific Station, a long-running field biology site.
More than 200 bird species have been observed on Kent Island, with at least 50 nesting there. The work done at the station has produced more than 220 scientific papers by 2023, focusing on species like Leach's storm petrel, the herring gull, and the Savannah sparrow, as well as long-term fog research.
Before permanent settlement, Abenaki people hunted seals around the island. The first known permanent resident arrived in 1799: John Kent, a British settler, with his wife Susanna. He cleared the island center for farming, and his son Jonathan later became the keeper of Gannet Rock Lighthouse. John Kent died in 1828; his widow lived there until 1853, and local legends spoke of a witch and a “Kent Island Curse.”
Kent Island stayed mostly empty until 1920, when the McLaughlin family bought it. It was a major breeding ground for common eider ducks, but hunting lowered their numbers. In the 1920s there were only a few breeding pairs left along the Atlantic coast, and most nested on Kent Island. Conservationist Allan Moses began protecting the birds, inspired by the decline in eiders.
American efforts helped turn Kent Island into a protected site. In the late 1920s and 1930s, Rockefeller bought Kent Island and nearby islands to create a bird sanctuary and hired wardens. In 1936 Rockefeller donated the island to Bowdoin College for use as a biological research station, with the stipulation that it remain a bird sanctuary. The first warden, Ernest Joy, lived there and built facilities. In the following decades, the station expanded with meteorological tools, radios, and bird studies, including work on Leach's storm petrel and fog chemistry. The station has continued to operate in the summers, with researchers from Bowdoin and elsewhere, and today it remains a site for long-term scientific studies. In 1991 the station’s director faced legal trouble for transporting bird specimens to the United States, an incident that caused some controversy. Today about two dozen researchers participate each summer, and Kent Island has yielded more than 220 published papers.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 01:02 (CET).