About Us

  • Small family company run by the Sheehans - Tim, Amy, Dewey, Tucker, Molly & Finn
  • Located in far E.Maine on the border with New Brunsick Canada in Pembroke, Maine
  • Our offices, wet lab, & warehouse are at: 81 US Rte.1, Pembroke, Maine 04666
  • We collect specimens 365 day of the year and 24/7 as requested
  • Fish, use nets, traps, boats, divers, hand collection, bycatch
  • Offer over 300 species of seaweeds, inverts, and fishes
  •  Founded business in 2002
  • Tim was a former high school biology teacher
  • Tim holds a Master Maine Guide and USCG captain license
  • Gulf of Maine Inc. also runs a small wholesale seafood operation
  • We hold licenses from USFWS, USDA, Me. Dept of Marine Resources,
Gulf of Maine is a weird little enterprise perched on the edge of the earth in E. Maine on the border with Atlantic Canada.  In a nutshell, if you want sea life delivered overnight to your door - you call or email Tidepool Tim and he goes out night or day, in wind and in weather and he will get you the specimens you need.  Tim digs in the sand/mud or scavenges the beaches, picks from ledges, weirs, floats, and pilings all the specimens requested.

Gulf of Maine, Inc. is a small family run company led by 'Tidepool Tim' Sheehan that has specialized in the field collecting, packing, and shipping of  marine specimens to customers across North America.  This supply is a cooperative effort between the company and a local group of fishermen, divers, fish farmers, and Tim's wife and 4 kids that make this diversity availble to the customers.


Our success is based on two advantages of our location on Cobscook Bay, a small bay in far Eastern Maine on the US/Canada border. One, we represent a working group of aquaculturists, commercial fisherman, scuba divers who help us obtain our products. Secondly, the nature of intense local tides and currents creates upwellings that boost the biological productivity of the gulf and local bays. Consequently the size, health and vigor of the specimens we collect and offer are unrivaled in the lab and specimen marketplace. We do most of our collecting in Cobscook Bay - a unique and productive marine environment that owes its bounty to the effects of a daily 20' tide! Here millions of gallons of seawater enter and leave the bay creating rich upwellings of nutrients and providing powerful flushing action. The productivity is unparalleled and the biodiversity is phenomenal!


At Gulf of Maine,  we pride ourselves in sharing the economic benefits of this sustainable resource in our local communities. We are also proud to be stewarding and monitoring biodiversity to the benefit of future generations of all organisms that live here.


The organisms we offer come from a variety of sources. They are obtained from scuba divers, hand collection, aquaculture operations, and from commercial fishing by-catch. In all cases, steps are followed to insure that the collections are made in a conscientious manner which will minimize the environmental impact. The focus is on sustainability. We do not collect any rare or endangered species. We are fully licensed by the Maine Dept. of Marine Resources as collectors and dealers of marine organisms.


One of the intrinsic goals of this business operation is to share the gift of the sea with people, students, and scientists everywhere. We always hope that the specimens we ship will be used to their fullest potential. We feel that by educating the children and the public of the world about marine life, we will be fostering values that will lead to stewardship of the world's oceans and the marine life found there for the years to come.