The Cost of Aquaculture - More Oversight Needed

A recent article in The Guardian describes how a report shows that "salmon farming is wreaking ruin" on marine ecosystems. This has serious financial costs as well as environmental costs.

The article goes on to explain how salmon farms in Scotland have seen a 4x increase in fish mortality, with sea lice to blame for at least one-fifth of the deaths, and probably more. While producers bear the costs of things like fish mortality and treatments for sea lice, the report also shows that there is a wider impact on the world, particularly environmentally.

Important Lessons

Dear Editor:

Last summer, some 116,000 salmon died mysteriously in the Canadian firm Cooke Aquaculture’s fish pens at Black Island, near Mount Desert Island. The same things that kill salmon kill other marine life, but state regulators don’t really know what killed all those fish. So the people of Maine will never know what collateral damage was done.

State 'bungles' salmon project, sowing doubts about its ability to regulate aquaculture industry

Originally published in The Quietside Journal by Lincoln Millstein

CUTLER, Maine, Dec. 18, 2021 - Mikael Roenes, the Norwegian who wants to build two massive fish farms in Frenchman Bay, must be licking his chops.

The state of Maine showed once again this week its ineptitude at enforcing oversight of the burgeoning aquaculture industry. The Department of Marine Resources announced it was backing out of a wild salmon restoration project intended as a disciplinary action for violations by Cooke Seafood, which has the only in-water fish farm permit in Maine.

World renowned author and anti-salmon farming activist Alexandra Morton to give special presentation for Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory

Frenchman Bay United, an umbrella organization representing five stakeholder groups – Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation, Friends of Eastern Bay, Friends of Frenchman Bay, Friends of Schoodic Peninsula and Save the Bay – is partnering with the MDI Biological Laboratory to bring Morton’s story and lessons learned to Maine.

MANY QUESTIONS UNANSWERED FOLLOWING DEP STATEMENT ON FISH DIE-OFF AT BLACK ISLAND

Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Executive Director Crystal Canney said, “So the obvious question is – what killed the fish? You won’t find answers in the statement issued today, and we are still waiting to hear from the Department of Marine Resources (DMR), the primary regulating agency on net pen salmon. DMR was very quick to say that it was a dissolved oxygen issue, but the DEP has already ruled that out in its statement today.”

Maine DEP looking into salmon die-off at Black Island farm

“Maine has set the table to bring industrial scale and environmentally polluting large scale industrial aquaculture to the state and it’s wrong,” Canney said. “If DMR cannot manage Black Island, how in God’s name are they going to be able to manage a foreign corporation coming in here with big money, with the potential to expand to 1000 acres.”