For ten years between the mid 1980s and the mid 1990s, the emergence of salmon aquaculture in Maine was hailed by many sate leaders as a clean new industry. The industry would, the conventional wisdom was, finally turn the economic tide in towns with long histories of entrenched unemployment in Washington and Hancock County. Because the farms needed clean water to raise their fish, they would become important environmental stewards, supporters claimed.
But now, for the last five years, the salmon aquaculture industry has been beset by failed expectations and demonized by a powerful array of detractors. No question about it; salmon aquaculture is at a crossroads and all of us with a stake in the future of this coast need to ask ourselves which course should we encourage this industry to take — stay or leave?
As a story of in this issue underscores, salmon aquaculture is farming, and not of the family farm variety. The farms are owned by big, multi-national corporations, a fact that makes a lot of people who are used to the traditions of independent owner-operators along the Maine coast uncomfortable. Because salmon companies are increasingly efficient, technology-driven operations, they now employ fewer and fewer people per pound of farmed product. As a result they have not, as was once thought, transformed the employment picture in coastal towns of Washington County.
Many, if not most, environmentalists, recreational boaters and inshore fishermen would as soon see the entire salmon aquaculture industry pack up and leave the state and produce in other regions. Environmentalists have successfully argued that escaped farmed salmon risk diluting the gene pool of the few remaining runs of endangered wild Atlantic salmon along the Maine coast. Reports of disease, parasite outbreaks and fish waste pollution have become almost routine. Recreational interests argue that aquaculture represents an industrial use of waterways that threatens coastal real estate values and the attractive economics of the upscale recreational boating industry. And fishermen of all stripes oppose the exclusive use of waterways that aquaculture leases require.
But if the fishermen and their allies are successful in driving aquaculture off the coast of Maine, it will be a blow to the economic diversification of many working waterfronts. The commercial facilities, roadways, trucking routes, fish processing, marketing and other nearly invisible arrangements that keep waterfronts from the almost inevitable gentrification are weakened when any use is compromised. And fishermen who are anxious to ally themselves with recreational interests in running aquaculture off the coast of Maine, risk finding themselves labeled the next inappropriate and unpopular waterfront user.
But for this still new industry to secure a place for itself on the Maine coast, it has a long way to go to clean up its act and time is running out.
Fish and feedlots
As salmon growers in Maine and elsewhere wrestle with infectious salmon anemia (ISA), it’s well to remember that they’re not the first farmers to face such problems, and that in some cases at least, the science of raising different kinds of animals in confinement has advanced over the years. Many modern animal disease problems, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, have been solved through “science and good practices.”
Brucellosis in cattle, for example, was virtually eliminated through an education program that began in the 1930s. Hog cholera was once widespread in confined-pig operations, but was eliminated in the United States in the 1970s (it still occurs in other countries). Poultry diseases are far better understood today than they were 50 years ago, when large-scale confinement became the rule in the United States. Still, knowledge didn’t prevent Asian bird flu from sweeping through flocks in Hong Kong a couple of years ago. Pounded lobsters are subject to red-tail and shell disease; cattle in Britain got foot-and-mouth disease; animals on game ranches come down with something called chronic wasting disease.
The question in every case is the state of our knowledge: can veterinary science really protect confined animals against disease, and — more important to people — can it protect humans who are exposed to those animals, either by living near them or by consuming them in their food?
The debate in Maine over the siting of salmon pens is a result of a salmon industry effort to prevent further outbreaks of disease, by spreading itself out and avoiding over-concentrations in areas where problems have erupted in the past. While “we’re working on it” isn’t necessarily the most convincing response to legitimate questions about disease and environmental degradation, it’s always important to keep matters in perspective: historically, Maine’s coastal waters have been a place where people have earned their livings.
Salmon aquaculture provides a large number of jobs in hard-pressed eastern Maine. Animal disease problems in other agricultural settings have been addressed successfully. Salmon aquaculture certainly compares favorably with most of the schemes for coastal development that we’ve witnessed over the years (oil refineries, nuclear power plants, smelters, mines, condos, subdivisions, etc.). A sustainable salmon industry has much to contribute to Maine’s working coast, and understanding its animal-disease problems and how they can be addressed will be critical. The future of an industry is at stake.
Waterfront access
Twenty-three years ago the state studied “working waterfronts” and learned that only 175 miles of Maine’s coastline were well suited to the purpose. At that time, half of the 175 miles was occupied by homes and businesses not requiring waterfront access, and virtually all of the 175 miles was under pressure to be converted to non-working uses. Actual working waterfront at the time was something less than 25 miles and shrinking.
Things have only gotten worse. The 1980s and 90s saw explosive growth on the coast, accompanied by run-ups in real estate prices and property taxes that made the ownership of waterfront real estate for any purpose an expensive proposition. The result: few people can afford to own waterfront for working purposes such as fishing, aquaculture or marine-related manufacturing.
As we report in this issue, a committee has been looking into the picture today, and is prepared to propose legislation to address this continual erosion of the working coast. It would have the state review the current local coastal-management laws on the books; it would launch an annual review of public access to the coast, and it would establish a seafood marketing and research fund at the Department of Marine Resources.
The ability to earn a living on the coast has been important to Maine’s character for centuries. Efforts to protect and promote that ability deserve everyone’s support.