Do Mainers wish to industrialize our coastal communities and waters? Are there other visions that will sustain and strengthen our iconic local fishing economies, cultures and marine ecosystems?

We have to remember, when an inch of any fishing grounds goes to aquaculture, it is taken from wild harvest.

In the wake of 2021 - a year of historically high value for Maine’s commercially harvested marine resources - harvesters last year earned $574,049,682, an amount that is more in line with recent history, according to preliminary data released from the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR).

Local frustration around a proposed 17-acre aquaculture lease in Middle Bay exemplifies the frequent communication breakdowns between the Department of Marine Resources and the public.

Aquaculture is man thinking he knows what’s best. He is taking natural fishing grounds that generations of fishermen (and women) have fished all their lives because he (or she) is smarter than the ocean. This is reckless, irresponsible and destructive at best.

Waldoboro Shellfish Conservation Committee Vice Chair Glen Melvin asked the town select board to support a moratorium at its Tuesday, Feb. 14 meeting. The board voted unanimously to do so, and Town Manager Julie Keizer said a draft moratorium will be prepared with the town attorney by the next select board meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 28.

So far, at least eight eastern Maine towns have voted to put a hold on new “industrial scale” aquaculture projects: Addison, Beals, Cutler, Machiasport, and Roque Bluffs, all in Washington County; and Gouldsboro, Winter Harbor, and Penobscot, all in Hancock County.

The warming of the waters off the East Coast has come at an invisible, but very steep cost — the loss of microscopic organisms that make up the base of the ocean’s food chain.

We have now crossed the threshold into 2023, and as we move forward there is much work to be done around industrial scale aquaculture.

The State of Maine is shopping its coastal towns to industrial fish farms, without the knowledge of local officials.