Maine’s Mysterious Foot-Staining Beaches Were Not What We Thought

DOWN EAST magazine • June 2022

Last June, barefoot beachgoers in southern Maine found their soles disconcertingly stained black. Outlets from the New York Times to the BBC to Smithsonian Magazine covered the strange phenomenon, reporting on speculation that the carcasses of billions of tiny kelp flies were to blame. But the news cycle had moved on before the true culprit was quietly revealed, in a Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation & Forestry newsletter. The U.S. Forest Service ran DNA tests conclusively identifying not the kelp fly but the hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive species from east Asia.