Governor John Baldacci’s Task Force on Aquaculture has circulated its report on how (and whether) to reform an industry that has been at the center of a relentlessly rising tide of criticism for most of the past 5 years. Unlike former Gov. Angus King, who embraced Maine’s aquaculture industry from the first day of his administration, the present governor has not yet made up his mind whether to love aquaculture, hate it or suffer its unpopularity in silence. In politics, when you don’t know what else to do, it’s usually time for a commission or a task force to examine the complexities and bury you with recommendations. Ninety-five recommendations in this case, along with eleven Principles for Marine Aquaculture have appeared.
As diligent as the Aquaculture Task Force was in holding public meetings up and down the coast and taking testimony, its final report is not likely to lower the level of concern among aquaculture industry’s most determined critics. Nor would the recommendations, even if they were to be to be fully implemented by the Legislature, likely alter the seemingly ineluctable decline of what was only a decade ago the coast’s most promising new economic engine. Here we’re really talking about salmon aquaculture, which is by far the largest, and most valuable of all the cultivated marine species Maine produces, although Maine growers also harvest significant quantities of farmed oysters and mussels.
What happened? In short, almost everything that could go wrong for salmon aquaculture has gone wrong. World prices for farmed salmon have continued to decline as Chile, Norway and Scotland produce ever-larger crops they must sell in U.S. markets. Naturally occurring viruses and parasites have filtered in from Canada and devastated salmon farming operations in Cobscook Bay, the heart of the Maine salmon industry. The federal government has placed Atlantic salmon runs in seven Maine rivers Downeast on the Endangered Species list, significantly increasing the regulatory burden and hence costs for salmon growers. National environmental groups have successfully sued Maine salmon growers for failing to have the federally required discharge licenses and in the process won a ruling from U.S. District Judge Gene Carter that outlaws non-native breeding stock in Maine salmon farms.
In trying to cope with these issues, several salmon companies have tried to reduce their risks by expanding to new sites in Blue Hill and Penobscot bays, and have run head-on into a series of train wrecks with local environmentalists, the tourism industry and summer people, creating a public relations firestorm for the industry. Local environmentalists want towns to control aquaculture siting and to impose new standards on the industry for noise, lights and proximity to conserved lands.
Employment in the aquaculture industry, once a mainstay for beleaguered Washington County, has declined from well over 500 to some 330, according to recent estimates. The value of farmed salmon raised in Maine has declined from a high of $68 million in the mid 1990s (second only to lobster), to $30 million in 2002. Two salmon hatcheries have closed down as a result of Judge Carter’s ruling and one of the three remaining major growers, Atlantic Salmon of Maine, is precariously balanced at the edge of a financial cliff. Most salmon processing plants in Maine have closed and relocated across the border in Canada where economies of scale are greater. Meanwhile, the aquaculture degree programs at University of Maine and Unity College continue to produce dozens of graduates who must leave Maine to find work in the field in which they have been trained.
Can salmon aquaculture in Maine recover from these bleak prospects? In the most optimistic scenarios, it will take years for the salmon industry to struggle back to the production levels of a half-decade ago – if all of their problems enumerated above were somehow solved.
In the meantime, however, the coast is changing. Perhaps the most illuminating statement of the Aquaculture Task Force is articulated in its first “Principle,” which reads, “A working waterfront is critical to Maine’s coastal future. Marine aquaculture will be a part of Maine’s working waterfront.” It seems highly significant that fishermen’s groups, once aquaculture’s most relentless opponents, were mostly silent in the public testimony. The exception was Clare Grindall, Executive Director of the Downeast Lobsterman’s Association who described aquaculture as “a viable industry [that] fills an economic void in Downeast Maine.” Instead the aquaculture was targeted for the first time by the head of the Maine Restaurant Association and the Maine Innkeepers Association and criticized for not taking into account the aesthetic impacts on their members’ businesses.
According to the most recent economic figures available, tourism in Maine is a $2.7 billion industry, most of which is located on the coast. As aquaculture struggles to find its place as a newcomer to Maine’s working coast, it is rowing against a frightening tide that believes noise, light, and commercial and industrial activity in Maine’s waters is incompatible with tourism’s values. Other fishermen and working waterfront businesses know they could be next.
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.