Release date: February 18, 2002. Source: Penobscot Bay Watch 594-5717

Commercial fishing industry, conservationists, tourism industry representatives call for fishpen moratorium.

MAINE COASTAL NEWS *** MAINE COASTAL NEWS***

Contact Ron Huber 594-5717

Maine legislature to consider moratorium on aquaculture on Tuesday. Fishermen, conservationists call for moratorium until industry gets its house in order, term industry's pro-fishpen sprawl poll a joke.

AUGUSTA. On Tuesday, the Maine legislature will consider a moratorium on new or existing aquaculture licenses at a public work session by the Maine Legislature's Marine Resources Committee.

The committee is putting together a bill on aquaculture reform. A key provision that committee will consider Tuesday is whether to include either a partial or statewide moratorium on the granting of aquaculture leases in Maine.

Legislators are unhappy with the evasive answers given it by leaders of the aquaculture industry, particularly by a leader of the Maine Aquaculture Association, who is also an official of Heritage Salmon of Canada and by a top manager of Atlantic Salmon of Maine LLC, which is owned by a giant Norwegian aquaculture firm.

Commercial fishermen, conservationists, and representatives of coastal Maine's enormous tourism industry told the committee that a moratorium is necessary to protect the state's commercial fisheries, the Maine coast's remaining wild salmon, and the rugged beauty of the Maine coast.

Fishermen told the committee that the fishpen industry is taking valuable commercial fishing grounds out of production, and driving the price of wild fish down by dumping cheap subsidized fish meat on the seafood market.

They noted that the area proposed as starting point for the moratorium, off Bass Harbor light, is where the ecology and marine environment change drastically. Fishpens west of that line, he said, would be ecologically incompatible with existing uses.

Fisherman Marsden Brewer of Stonington told the legislators: "The reason that I ask for a moratorium is not to decide if we will utilize our ocean or not- it is inevitable that we will- but rather the reason that I ask for a moratorium is to provide an opportunity for a public process to develop aquaculture in a way that can provide a future for our coastal communities. The state may find out that there is more money and less aggravation in licensing gear than granting exclusive property rights in what truly is our states last great public trust resource."

Seafood dealer Rob Bauer of Blue Hill explained the hydrologic rationale for starting the salmon farm moratorium at Bass Harbor Head Light, and noted that commercial fishermen have worked for years to restore their groundfish fishery, only to find heavily subsidized farmed salmon glutting the fish market.

"The price of fish, the price of haddock, is at a thirty year low. Why? because there's salmon, there's striped bass, tilapia, keeping the price of the groundfish that is now coming back to Portland low." "The wild fishermen have worked hard to get their stocks back" he said, "and what is their reward? Low prices. Why? There's too much fish around."

Conservationists and representatives of Maine's enormous coastal tourism industry told the legislators that a moratorium is necessary until the state and industry sort out the environmental and aesthetic problems surrounding the fishpen industry.

The salmon farm industry has been plagued by disease brought about by poor management practices. Taxpayers have had to shell out tens of millions of dollars in disaster aid to two large mutinational fishpen corporations that were ordered to dispose of their diseased stocks. Yet the industry is calling for a major expansion of salmon farm sites along the Maine coast.

The state's aquaculture agency has little if any guidance on protecting the scenic values of the state's coastal environment from industrial aquaculture operations, from lights and noise to numerous cases of slimy algae blooms coating waterfront resorts' rocks and beaches.

As a protest against the aquaculture industry's refusal to work with them, many of Maine's downeast resorts boycott the salmon farm industry by refusing to serve farmed salmon to their guests.

Several conservationist groups, including the influential Atlantic Salmon Federation and Penobscot Bay Watch, have also suggested an alternative version of the moratorium to the commmittee.

That plan would place a permanent bar on fishfarms in Penobscot Bay. That fishpen free zone would keep New England's last large school of wild salmon free of the threat of fishpen diseases like ISA. They noted that because the nation's top wild Atlantic salmon hatchery uses wild fish from the Penobscot school to replenish fish in wild salmon rivers from Maine to New York, a disease outbreak in Penobscot Bay could infect that hatchery, and drive the fish into extinction.

Observers of the aquaculture bill hearings dismissed a recently-released industry poll claiming support for fishpen expansion.

"What would you expect from an industry poll?" said Ron Huber, executive director of Penobscot Bay Watch. "The industry has very little credibility with the Maine legislature right now. Questionable polls like the one the aquaculture industry just released are not going to impress them"

END

LINKS:

ATLANTIC SALMON FEDERATION: CLICK HERE
The Maine Municipal Association's review of the aquaculture reform bill Click Here
The Eastern Penobscot Bay Environmental Alliance
The Friends of Blue Hill Bay
The Maine Department of Marine Resources Aquaculture webpage