September 10, 2025 — On a sunny, 85-degree day in August of 2025, some 9,300 oysters were loaded into ice-filled containers on southern Maine’s Casco Bay. The boat shuttling them from the warm, shallow waters of Recompense Cove to the marina two miles away hummed quietly. Notably missing: the roar of an engine and the smell of diesel.
Heron, the boat in question, is a 28-foot aluminum vessel that runs on two 100% electric outboards, the motors that hang off of small and medium-sized boats. It’s one of the first commercial workboats in the United States to use electric outboards. The vessel officially splashed into the waters of South Freeport, Maine on July 17, 2025. The moment, though, had been years in the making. It required a coalition of industry-wide partners, a $500,000 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant, and at least that much in matching funds from the operating businesses’ cost share agreement and philanthropic investments through the Rockland, Maine-based Island Institute, the Maine Technology Institute, and others. Altogether, the $1 million private-public investment covers Heron’s $425,000 sticker price and the costs to install two high-capacity shoreside chargers. A portion of these funds also supports data collection and research to assess the viability of electric technology in the greater aquaculture industry.
Willy Leathers is the director of farm operations and owner of Maine Ocean Farms, the mid-size aquaculture business that operates this particular boat. The 10-acre plot he and farm co-founder Eric Oransky tend to on Recompense Cove holds about 3 million oysters. The two farmers are among a growing group of small business owners on the cutting edge of marine innovation along rural and remote parts of Maine’s coast. They’ve been in operation together just shy of a decade, and have seen the aquaculture industry spring up around them in the coves and small islands that make up Casco Bay. Beyond the bay is the wide-open Gulf of Maine, which has been documented as one of the world’s fastest-warming bodies of water. Between 2004-2016, it warmed more quickly than 99% of the global ocean, a trend scientists attribute to climate change caused by humans burning fossil fuels.