PROVINCETOWN — The poet Mary Oliver described Provincetown Harbor as “no more than a blue comma on the map of the world but, to me, the emblem of everything.”

The town’s 139-page harbor plan, meanwhile, calls the 2,000-acre body of water “as much a component of the town as any terrain, permitting travel, recreation, and livelihood for more than four centuries.”

The dual role of the harbor as a treasured sanctuary and a place where mariners earn their living spilled into view at a series of meetings last month, as the harbor committee, MacMillan Pier Commission, and select board each fielded complaints from the public about two new commercial offerings in town: history-themed day cruises and live-music sunset cruises aboard the Dolphin VIII, one of four vessels in the Dolphin Fleet of whale watch boats.

The harbor cruises are offered only on weekdays and are both shorter and cheaper than the Dolphin Fleet’s whale watch trips to Stellwagen Bank. The 90-minute history cruises cost $35, while the 6 p.m. sunset cruise, which includes live music and a cash bar, costs $40.

Several people who complained to the harbor committee on July 23 said that the amplified sound from the boats disturbed other people in the harbor, especially just inside Long Point.

“The harbor within Long Point is a peaceful refuge for swimmers, kayakers, paddle boarders, small and large sailboats, as well as a few houseboats,” summer resident Benjamin Riskin wrote to the harbor committee. “I understand the economic opportunity created by the harbor, but surely some small limits on where large boats can operate” would not undermine the Dolphin Fleet’s business, he wrote.

“I have absolutely nothing against the Dolphin Fleet wanting to grow their business and have a booze cruise or amplified music,” Provincetown resident Kiki Herold told the harbor committee in public comments. “I just don’t think it belongs within the harbor.”

Two other business owners who operate from MacMillan Pier — Josh Rowan, whose nonprofit Sail As You Are owns the Schooner Hindu, and Noah Santos, whose family owns the Long Point Shuttle and the Seal Tours — told the harbor committee that the Dolphin Fleet’s harbor cruises could drive them out of business.

“If you guys want to see sailboats, especially wooden sailboats,” offering trips in the harbor, said Rowan, “then something needs to be done to make sure the playing field is fair.”

The Dolphin VIII can hold 292 passengers, according to records on file at MacMillan Pier, and Rowan said the boat’s high capacity means the Dolphin Fleet can charge a low price that will prove impossible for other boats to compete with.

Santos said that his family’s seal tours had been “undercut by $10 a ride. It’s a small operation, but judging by the numbers this year, we’re probably not going to do it again because of what’s happened,” he said.

Paul Milliken, vice president of the Dolphin Fleet, told the harbor committee that the Dolphin VIII has been in drydock since the pandemic in 2020.

The boat was “basically wasting away in the shipyard in Fairhaven,” Milliken said, “so we tried to come up with unique ways to use it” because there are no longer enough whale watch customers to fill four boats per day.

The Dolphin Fleet worked with local historians Lisa King and Dennis Minsky to write the script for the harbor tour, Milliken said, because “that’s something that’s not otherwise offered here on the water.

“I understand that there are people who don’t like that we’re adding these trips,” Milliken added. But there are no laws or regulations blocking them, he said, and the company “is doing what we feel like we have to in order to keep our business running.”

 

Whose Jurisdiction?

After those comments, harbor committee chair Michela Murphy said her group could not write regulations and would not discuss the harbor cruises further.

“The size of vessels is not something for us to regulate,” Murphy said, and it’s “not the purview of this board to regulate the prices that people charge.

“If there’s noise issues, that’s something people can bring up with licensing,” she said, adding that the select board would be the correct body to make any other changes.

After listening to Herold on July 28, the select board agreed to discuss the matter further.

“I’m sympathetic to a local business trying to operate and offer something to the town,” said board member Erik Borg, but “it might be something that is visually discordant and problematic.”

The select board will discuss harbor licensing rules — and which committees have jurisdiction — at its Aug. 25 meeting, according to chair Dave Abramson.

Provincetown Licensing Agent Linda Fiorella told the Independent that the town has never been asked for an entertainment license for live music on a boat.

“We’ve asked town counsel to weigh in because we don’t know whether an entertainment license would be needed out there,” Fiorella said. “We haven’t found any license requests going pretty far back in time — not even for one-off events.”

The town’s noise bylaws clearly do apply on the harbor, Harbormaster Pete Whinn told the Independent, and specifically prohibit noise that can be heard more than 50 feet from a vessel.

“Citizen complaints about violations of that bylaw can be enforced by the harbormaster through the citation process,” which involves citations of $50, Whinn said.

In response to a complaint during a sunset cruise on July 30, Whinn said he issued the Dolphin Fleet a written warning and also made a plan with the company to address future complaints.

“We worked out an arrangement with the Dolphin Fleet — when I receive a complaint, I instantly call their general manager, he makes contact with the boat itself, and they instantly try to mitigate the complaint by turning the music down, turning the boat, and relocating the operation,” Whinn said.

When a second complaint was called in on the evening of Aug. 7, Whinn called the company and resolved the noise issue without writing a citation, he told the Independent this week.

At the MacMillan Pier Commission meeting on July 24, Rowan had also raised the issue of the Dolphin Fleet being allowed to own four of the nine commercial float spaces on the west side of the pier.

“The idea of the Pier Corp. when it was founded was to have one business per float, so that there was never so much horsepower in one company that they could push out the rest of the competition,” Rowan said.

The Provincetown Public Pier Corp., which was dissolved in 2024, had put conditions on the Dolphin Fleet when it approved the company’s request to purchase a second and third commercial float space on March 27, 2008, according to records provided by Pier Manager Jamie Demetriou.

Those conditions, which are written into the Dolphin Fleet’s license with the town, include prohibiting it from acquiring a fourth commercial float space.

By 2019, however, a different group of Pier Corp. directors approved the Dolphin Fleet’s request to purchase a fourth float from Louigi’s Lobsters, which had operated a bait shop on float 7W. At their March 28, 2019 meeting, the directors discussed how to maximize the town’s revenue from the floats and whether the town might want to buy one — but they did not discuss the 2008 provision that barred the company from acquiring a fourth float.

Milliken told the Independent that “as far as I can tell, there’s no regulatory legal rule or issue” that would prevent the Dolphin VIII from cruising the harbor.

“It’s some people’s preference we don’t do it — which is fine, they’re entitled to that,” Milliken said.