page_title: Gulf of Maine
section_title: History and political significance
hierarchical_section_title: Gulf of Maine / History and political significance
caption_attribution_description: English: Hampton Beach, beach on the Gulf of Maine (taken Sept. 20, 2004) © 2004 Matthew Trump
context_page_description: The Gulf of Maine is a large gulf of the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of North America. It is bounded by Cape Cod at the eastern tip of Massachusetts in the southwest and by Cape Sable Island at the southern tip of Nova Scotia in the northeast. The gulf includes the entire coastlines of the U.S. states of New Hampshire and Maine, as well as Massachusetts north of Cape Cod, and the southern and western coastlines of the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, respectively.
  The gulf was named for the adjoining English colonial Province of Maine, which was in turn likely named by early explorers after the province of Maine in France. Massachusetts Bay, Penobscot Bay, Passamaquoddy Bay, and the Bay of Fundy are included within the Gulf of Maine system; as such, the Gulf of Maine is also home to the highest tidal variations on the planet.
context_section_description: The gulf's relative proximity to Europe among locations on the opposite side of the Atlantic made it an early destination for European colonization. French settlers founded a settlement on St. Croix Island in 1604. English settlers founded the Popham Colony on an island in the Kennebec River in 1607, the same year as the Jamestown settlement, followed by the Plymouth Colony on the shores of Massachusetts Bay in 1620.
  In the 1960s and 1970s there was a dispute between Canada and the United States over fishing and other resource rights in the Gulf of Maine, specifically the Georges Bank region. This dispute was taken to the International Court of Justice, which delineated a maritime boundary through the gulf in 1984. The two nations continue to disagree on the sovereignty of Machias Seal Island and the waters surrounding it in the northeastern part of the gulf. In recognition of the gulf's importance to marine habitat, both nations currently maintain complementary embargoes against offshore oil and gas exploration activities on Georges Bank in the southern part of the gulf.
caption: Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, in mid-September 2004
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