This was originally published in The Bangor Daily News. Written by Elizabeth Walton.
Business grew quickly after Dan Devereaux and Doug Niven started their oyster farm in Brunswick a decade ago. They sold 10,000 oysters in their first season. Three years later, they were growing 25,000 a year to sell at the local farmers market, with so much demand they aimed to grow them by the millions in the coming years.
Today, Mere Point Oyster Co. employs 10 people year-round and 10 more in the summer, shipping its products to high-end, award-winning restaurants.
The farm has become a shining example of what Maine’s aquaculture industry says it can do for the state. With approval from state regulators, the family-run business has expanded and provided new economic opportunities, demonstrating what it says is a responsible alternative way to sustainably raise food on Maine’s coast.
But the operation has been controversial almost from the start, taking fire from neighboring landowners and wild seafood harvesters who have expressed concern about its impact on the environment and the ability of vessels to navigate through its growing areas, as well as what they characterize as the industrialization of the ocean.
In the years since, a group called Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage has formed out of that opposition and broadened its fight against what it calls industrial aquaculture, working with towns all along Maine’s coast to restrict it. It has also ramped up its push back against Mere Point, going to court late last year to challenge a temporary dock that the company hopes to build.
While numerous other high-profile fish farm proposals have failed to get off the ground in Maine over the last few years, the ongoing success of Mere Point has highlighted both the promise of the state’s aquaculture industry and the bitter debates that farmed seafood has spurred about the responsible use of Maine’s waters.
“It’s hard not to not take it personally, especially as someone born and raised here,” said Derek Devereaux, the son of Dan Devereaux, who now also works for the company. “But you know deep down it isn’t, because you’re trying to do the right thing … Emotionally, you’ve just got to keep kind of believing in the process.”
While there had been earlier disputes over aquaculture in Maine — which can include the organized growing of oysters, mussels, scallops, seaweed and fish — the expansion of Mere Point in Brunswick helped to push the debate to another level.
When Dan Devereaux and Niven applied for a 10-year, 40-acre lease in 2018 to expand their operation in Maquoit Bay, off of the eponymous Mere Point, they wanted to meet increasing demand, they told the Bangor Daily News at the time.
They also saw aquaculture as a reliable alternative to Maine’s traditional fisheries under changing conditions.
Neighbors of the project saw things differently, hiring an attorney to oppose the application and eventually organizing as a group called Save Maquoit Bay. They were worried about the size and environmental impacts of the project, as well as its effects on coastal navigation and fishing conditions for wild harvesters. They also questioned the idea of the water being privatized and transferred to another owner.
n the state granted Mere Point a reduced 34.52-acre lease in 2019 after 16 hours of public testimony over two-plus months, homeowners appealed to Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court, which ultimately sided with the Maine Department of Marine Resources.
A petition signed by lobstermen and landowners that year asked the state to put a moratorium on aquaculture leases above 10 acres. The Mere Point application served as something of a tipping point for the opponents, the BDN reported at the time, and petitioners asked for it to be retroactively halted.
Since then, several unsuccessful bills attempting to limit aquaculture have since made it to the Legislature.
Now, some of the people in the fight against Mere Point’s early growth are involved with Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage. The group is active at the local level, providing towns with model ordinances for limiting state-issued aquaculture leases and promising to pay legal fees associated with them — despite the state insisting that only it has the authority to regulate aquaculture in coastal waters.