The Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic is the province's flagship marine museum and occupies several connected buildings along the Lunenburg waterfront, including the former fish plant. The exhibits cover the Grand Banks fishing industry that sustained Nova Scotia for centuries — the schooners, the dories, the crew life, and the dangerous work of hand-line fishing on the open Atlantic. Actual vessels, including a working Banks schooner and a retired steel trawler, are moored alongside and open for boarding.
The museum is particularly good on the Bluenose era, when racing schooners from Lunenburg and Gloucester, Massachusetts competed annually for supremacy of the North Atlantic fishing fleet. The shipbuilding tradition is well-documented, and you can watch the aquarium tanks and the working boat shed where traditional craft are maintained and sometimes built. The museum closes in winter but opens from mid-May through mid-October, which covers the main visiting season.