Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006
www.thundersmouth.com
344 pages, $15.95
An Unvarnished Look at Aquaculture
This book is split between two seemingly very different areas — the foggy and rocky Maine coast and the parched and sandy Sonoran desert shoreline of northwestern Mexico, but writer Paul Molyneaux draws them together through their shared industrial history of aquaculture. It is a long way from the Passamaquoddy Bay to the Bahia de Santa Maria, but the impacts of this single industry have been surprisingly similar in both places. The coast of Maine and New Brunswick have salmon farming, and the mangrove forests of the Gulf of California have shrimp farms, but both have seen similar booms and busts in the business, and both are currently under the gun for alleged effects on wild fish stocks.
The picture he presents of how salmon pens and shrimp farms impact wild fish and the environment is, to be blunt, not very good. Aquaculture has not proven to be the economic salvation it was billed as, and may have caused lasting reductions in the ability of the ecosystem to support reproduction and recovery of the populations. Uncontrolled viral spread, the release of fecal nutrients, and the impacts genetically selected escaped fish will have on dwindling wild populations are all spelled out in detail. He visits and describes the farms and the farmers, and also citizens from affected coastal communities, scientists fighting the diseases that run in the enclosures, and wild-stock fishermen who have been affected by declines in their targeted populations, declines they blame on the fish farms. He hints at a New England future of cod and halibut farming, and wonders if the trajectory will be the same as that of salmon farming, which started as a growing, thriving and welcomed industry, but has become of late somewhat beleaguered by abandoned sites, fatal diseases, and global overproduction driving down the prices.
Author Paul Molyneaux has focused on commercial fishing topics since switching from fishing and other work on the waterfront to writing only five years ago. He has lobstered, worked on a groundfish boat, gone out swordfishing, was a part of the urchin industry and worked feeding salmon in pens. This firsthand knowledge of his subject strongly informs and directs his research and opinions of the current state of many fisheries. He is currently at work full time on his third book, having won a Guggenheim Fellowship, which will support the year of field interviews and writing time required by the project. This book will focus on definitions and examples of sustainable and healthy commercial fishing, and he plans to travel to India, Mexico, Alaska and other spots in search of these good practices. His first book was A Doryman’s Reflection, recalling his own time fishing on the Irene Alton out of Spruce Head.
This book is not unbiased by any definition. Molyneaux writes as he himself sees things, and this makes for refreshing, straightforward reading. One point he does make clear is that there is, right now, an opportunity for having a directed impact on how our coasts will look in the future. I think he is correct in calling for all of us to recognize the impacts that these coastal industries may be having on both our natural and social communities. As aquaculture spreads, and it seems certain to do so in most places, questions of trade-offs and losses must be evaluated. This book outlines them clearly. What to do about it now is not so clear.