Diana Davis

30 November 2005

Aquaculture off of Deer Isle / Stonington, ME

Introduction.

            Deer Isle has been a lobstering island for as long as most island residents can remember, and only recently have other industries, such as tourism and exports of other types of seafood, impacted the local economy. Over the past decade, aquaculture has had an increasing presence on the island, which concerns some residents and is a welcome addition for others. The question that we will consider is whether aquaculture should exist in the waters around Deer Isle, and if so, what types of aquaculture should be there, and why. This question is important to marine policy because Deer Isle is a traditional fishing community, which is an iconic part of Maine cultural heritage. The impact of new technologies on such communities, and the actions of the towns to embrace or keep out new industries, such as finfish and shellfish aquaculture, will significantly affect the future of these communities, economically, ecologically, and culturally.

            Deer Isle is an island near Blue Hill and Ellsworth, ME, geographically about halfway between Maine’s borders with New Hampshire and Canada. It is composed of two islands, Little Deer Isle to the north, next to the mainland, and Deer Isle to the south, farther from the mainland, in a part of the Gulf of Maine known as Penobscot Bay. The town of Deer Isle is on the north part of Deer Isle, and the town of Stonington is on the southern part. A bridge connects Little Deer Isle to the mainland, and a causeway connects Little Deer Isle to Deer Isle, so that vehicles pass easily from the mainland to both islands. The year-round population is just under 3,000 residents,[1] and in the summer, the population grows significantly with seasonal residents, renters, and tourists. The year-round population is largely composed of islanders whose families have lived on Deer Isle or nearby islands for many generations. The island’s primary industry is lobster fishing, and has been for many decades, though granite quarrying was historically another major industry on the island; hence the name Stonington.[2]

            The major players in this issue are as follows. The local government must weigh lease applications with the aquaculture regulations, and it is working to promote shellfish aquaculture on the island, to diversify the economy within the capacity of the island infrastructure. There are national and international finfish aquaculture firms such as Fjord Seafoods and Atlantic Salmon of Maine that wish to run large commercial finfish productions on the Maine coast and on Deer Isle, by raising fish in pens throughout the region. There are individual locals that wish to make a living with small shellfish operations, who believe their practices to have no negative ecological impact. Lastly, many citizens of the island oppose aquaculture in one or more forms, believing that it ruins the bay’s ecology without positively impacting the island economy.

The position that appears to be the most lawful, as well as economically and ecologically viable, is the encouragement of shellfish aquaculture by locals, and the exclusion of finfish aquaculture on the island. This is the best solution, because shellfish aquaculture does not pollute the water, since shellfish are filter feeders and thereby only remove substances from the water. Finfish aquaculture is probably not commercially viable on Deer Isle because the water is too cold in the winter, and furthermore it does not benefit Deer Isle economically, yet it pollutes the water significantly, so it benefits neither the island residents nor the companies that engage in it.

Background

            Deer Isle’s main industry is lobster fishing; this is evident to anyone who visits the island, from the colorful buoys that dot the ocean in the summer, to the lobster boats up on blocks and stacks of lobster traps in front yards all around the island in the winter. The first rudimentary aquaculture on the island began in the early 1990s, with lease sites for blue mussel “bottom culture.”[3] In bottom culture, mussels that are too small for selling to the market are dragged to the lease site to let them grow. When they are large enough to harvest, the person leasing the site has the sole right to the mussels. This industry had little impact on the ecology or other fishing.[4]

In late 2000 and early 2001, Jorn Vad,[5] a Maine resident, applied for a permit to raise salmon in pens off Little Deer Isle.[6] He claimed to be applying for the permit as an individual, but many believed that he was not actually trying to start his own business, but that he represented a Norwegian salmon firm, Fjord Seafoods.[7] This caused widespread public concern, including the development of citizen groups opposing the aquaculture.[8] Vad ultimately withdrew the permit in 2003 not because of public opposition, but for economic and ecological reasons. First, it is cheaper for a large firm to produce salmon off the coast of Chile, where labor costs are lower and there are fewer ecological restrictions.[9] Second, the site was not good for raising salmon; the temperature got too low in the winter. In fact, a recent study suggests that the island has no sites that would be suitable for finfish aquaculture, precisely because of the low winter water temperatures.[10] Third, a professor from the University of Maine’s aquaculture program found that the current in the proposed aquaculture site was only two centimeters per second, which was insufficient to flush the area of the large amounts of waste products from the pens. Since aquaculture law requires that there be an adequate current so that aquaculture pollutants will not interfere with fishing, this finding made the site unsuitable for salmon farming.[11]

Local citizens, concerned about the potential effects of a finfish farm on their island, organized to oppose the application and educate the public about the negative effects of finfish aquaculture.[12] This campaign was so successful that aquaculture became generally understood on the island to be detrimental to the island ecology, as it produces waste that leads to algae production and nutrient imbalances, and detrimental to the island economy, since outside firms would not employ local workers and their productions would be largely automated.[13]

The negative publicity surrounding aquaculture resulting from this application was not restricted to finfish aquaculture; since people did not know to differentiate between finfish and shellfish aquaculture, they had a negative view of both, and this effect was long-lasting.[14] The fact is that while finfish aquaculture adds materials to the water through food and waste products, shellfish feed by filtering the water, so they remove materials from the water, and add nothing. When Danny Weed, who was born on the island, submitted a permit application for shellfish aquaculture in 2002, people opposed it because they did not understand the difference between finfish and shellfish aquaculture, and although his application was eventually successful, it required a significant amount of education to teach the community about the difference. [15]

There is currently no finfish aquaculture off the coast of Deer Isle, but there is shellfish aquaculture practiced by island residents.[16] The general sentiment on the island is that aquaculture practiced by international firms like Atlantic Salmon of Maine is exploitative, especially when it produces large amounts of waste that damages the ecology of the water that is so crucial to the lobster industry.[17] However, the sentiment is that aquaculture practiced by island residents is acceptable because any profits go to the island people with the leases, rather than to off-island companies. Additionally, island residents tend to do shellfish aquaculture, which does not harm the environment but rather filters the water. [18] The only aquaculture currently on the island is shellfish aquaculture done by Weed and Ed Hutchinson, a resident of Stonington.[19]

            In 2003, a lawsuit dealt a major blow to the salmon farming industry in Maine. The United States Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) sued Atlantic Salmon of Maine (ASM) under the Clean Water Act (CWA), charging that ASM had added material to the water without a permit.[20] Salmon farms discharge nutrients, in the form of feed, waste, and medicines, into federal waters, but for years, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection had allowed this to occur without requiring a permit. [21] The case was decided in favor of U.S. PIRG, and ASM was required to pay substantial fines. This led to a reduction in the number of salmon farming businesses in Maine.[22]

Rules and Laws

            There are three major laws pertaining to this case. The first is a State of Maine law concerning research and aquaculture leases. The basic purpose of the law reads:

The commissioner may lease areas in, on, and under the coastal waters, including the public lands beneath those waters and portions of the intertidal zone, for scientific research or for aquaculture of marine organisms. The commissioner may grant a lease to any person.[23]

The form of this law is important to this issue because it is entirely under the discretion of the state Commissioner of Marine Resources whether to accept the lease application.[24] Importantly, in order to approve an application, the commissioner must determine that the proposed aquaculture satisfies eight conditions, including not interfering with riparian owners, navigation, marine habitat, public use, and importantly for this issue, the law requires that the aquaculture:

Will not unreasonably interfere with fishing or other uses of the area taking into consideration the number and density of aquaculture leases in an area.  For the purposes of this paragraph, “fishing” includes public access to a redeemable shellfish resource, as defined by the department, for the purpose of harvesting, provided that the resource is commercially significant and subject to a pollution abatement plan that predates the lease application…[25]

As discussed above, research showed that the current was not swift enough in the proposed finfish aquaculture site to adequately flush waste from the area, and thus the pens would adversely affect the ecosystem in the area, most importantly the lobster industry upon which the island community and economy depends.[26] Thus, the law’s clause about not interfering with fishing led to the withdrawal of Jorn Vad’s finfish aquaculture application.[27] Since shellfish aquaculture does not require adding nutrients to the water, it is less likely to interfere with fishing, and thus under this law applications for shellfish permits are easier to approve.[28] The law also requires that “The lease does not result in a person being a tenant of any kind in leases covering an aggregate of more than 250 acres, and…No single lease may exceed 100 acres in size.”[29] This forces large firms to work through multiple individuals, or “proxies,” who each apply for a lease site in their own name, which the large firm then uses for their aquaculture.

            The second major law pertaining to this issue is the Clean Water Act of 1973. The CWA stipulates that a permit is required in order to discharge materials from a point source into federal waters.[30] This requires salmon farmers, who must add food and medicines to the pens to raise the fish, and from whose fish comes large amounts of waste, to pay for a permit, and to “provide a State certification that the proposed activity will not violate applicable water quality standards.”[31] This requires extra work for potential applicants, and decreases their number.

            The third applicable law is the Endangered Species Act of 1973.[32] Because wild Atlantic salmon is an endangered species, it is illegal to release farmed salmon from pens, since cross-breeding between wild and farmed salmon would dilute the wild salmon gene pool.[33] Such a release leads to a substantial fine. However, it is nearly impossible to prevent the occasional accidental release of salmon from aquaculture pens. Thus, when a salmon farmer’s pens malfunction and farmed salmon are released into the wild – sometimes as many as 200,000 salmon in one event – the farmer must bear not only the financial loss of the fish, but the federal fine. This discourages potential salmon farmers from entering the business.[34]

Analysis

Government

            The first position is that of the government. On the state level, the Commissioner of Marine Resources must decide whether to approve aquaculture petitions. On the local level, the Stonington town manager is working to promote shellfish aquaculture, to make it easier for local people to begin a shellfish aquaculture business.[35] Local officials believe this is an important step towards diversifying the economy away from lobster. Aquaculture is a more stable business than lobster, since the organisms are captive rather than wild, so it is a good choice of an industry to add to the island economy. Additionally, shellfish aquaculture is similar enough to lobster fishing that the current infrastructure of skilled workers, buyers, and trucks can support it.[36]

The commissioner making the decision to accept or reject an aquaculture lease application acts as an impartial judge, deciding entirely based upon whether the application falls within the law.[37] The process is relatively open, with a public hearing early in the consideration process and informational meetings for the public. The commissioner’s main priority is to decide whether the application meets the six conditions listed in §6072 of the Maine laws on aquaculture leases, and takes into consideration the hearing record, while refraining from talking to individual citizens. The most important of the conditions is to ensure that the proposed aquaculture would not interfere with fishing and navigation, because they are crucial to the region’s primary industries.[38] In addition, the terms of an aquaculture lease specify that “fishing and navigation is permitted on the open areas of the lease,” underscoring the importance of both of these pursuits.[39]

The local government, especially Stonington’s town manager, Rich Avery, has applied for a grant from the Maine Aquaculture Innovations Center to survey the waters surrounding Deer Isle to find suitable lease sites for shellfish aquaculture farms.[40] These sites must be biologically stable, protected from the weather, and sufficiently deep. With the money from the grant, they will find these sites and test their nutrient levels and currents, with the end result of a map of good lease sites around the island. This way, an island resident wishing to begin a shellfish aquaculture production will have much more information, which will help applicants to avoid applying for lease sites that would either be rejected by the commissioner, or that would lead to an unsuccessful farming operation.[41]

            While proponents of finfish aquaculture could legitimately argue that the local government in Deer Isle is unfairly biased towards island residents and shellfish aquaculture, it is unlikely that finfish aquaculture would be successful on Deer Isle since, as explained above, the waters are too cold in the winter for salmon to survive. Environmental groups may argue against shellfish aquaculture since it adds organisms to the water in higher concentrations than is natural, but through carefully surveying the island, the government will only recommend and approve sites where the impact on the ecology of the area is minimal, so as not to impede fishing. Since the government is in favor of small shellfish aquaculture farmers, they have no issue to rebut.

Proponents of finfish aquaculture

            The first group to consider is those who support large-scale “factory” aquaculture: people and organizations that support aquaculture, and large aquaculture firms.[42] Proponents of aquaculture argue that it is a sustainable and ecologically sound way of obtaining a high-quality source of protein. Worldwide, there is a high demand for protein, and in the United States the trade deficit for seafood is second only to that of petroleum. Thus, while the demand is high, the supply within this country is insufficient, and thus imports must make up the difference. It would be impossible to make up the huge deficit with open-sea fishing, so aquaculture is a viable way to produce the necessary seafood for this country. It is important to note that most of imported seafood is farmed as well, so that of the large amount of seafood consumed in the United States, a large part of it is produced through aquaculture, whether domestically or abroad.[43]

Although proponents of aquaculture acknowledge that aquaculture often encounters opposition from environmental groups, this resistance is not significantly different from the resistance to other agricultural productions on the land, and most people agree that agriculture on land is necessary, even if it sometimes produces undesirable environmental consequences.[44] After all, because of the scarcity of resources, there is always an issue between farmers and others who are trying to use the same resources. However, according to its proponents, aquaculture is a sustainable way of producing the protein that is necessary for the food chain. It is important as the industry grows to ensure that it is growing in an environmentally sound manner, but it is also essential that it be economically viable, because of the nation’s and the world’s dependence on seafood as a source of protein.

One argument in favor of aquaculture is that those who benefit most from aquaculture are not the farmers who make the profits, but consumers who want to consume seafood in their diet.[45] These consumers benefit because aquaculture provides a relatively inexpensive, reliable form of seafood. Consumers cannot rely on commercial fishing for this type of product, because the supply, price, and quality vary with the season. If seafood is ever to become a staple of people’s diets the way that chicken is, the seafood industry must be able to provide a consistent and affordable product, and this is what the aquaculture industry can do best.[46]

One might argue that this goal can be accomplished by any aquaculture farmers, but it is easy to see that it is easiest to produce a consistent product with a large-scale production, and it is easier to make a product affordable if the producer has the economy of scale.[47] Thus, individual farmers cannot feasibly achieve these goals for aquaculture, but large aquaculture companies operating internationally to produce their product cheaply can. For instance, much of the aquaculture done by international firms has moved out of the United States to Chile, because the environmental regulations are less strict there, and thus the companies can cut costs in ways that they cannot if they use American waters.[48]

            Environmentalists argue that the release of food and waste products from finfish aquaculture pens adds nitrates to the water, which damages the ecosystem.[49] However, another significant source of nitrates in the water is development: fertilizers and sewage.[50] Many of the people who oppose finfish aquaculture on Deer Isle for environmental reasons are “summer people,” or “off-islanders,” who are often wealthy. “If they are truly concerned about the quality of water in Penobscot Bay,” says Doug Johnson, “they’ll stop building houses.” He points out that someone with a half-million dollar home cannot argue this point very convincingly.[51]

            Although the local government in Deer Isle is working to encourage local people to do shellfish aquaculture, there is nothing in the law barring large firms from doing aquaculture there, so long as their proposed lease area satisfies the conditions put forth in the aquaculture lease law. The only part of the law to discourage large companies is that the law limits each lease site to 100 acres, and limits an individual to 250 acres total.[52] Thus, companies that wish to farm fish over a large area must lease many different plots in the names of a number of individuals. This is not impossible, but it makes the process more difficult, since each lease site requires a separate application and review by the commissioner.

            To the individual shellfish aquaculture farmers on the island who believe that their practices are better for Deer Isle than a finfish operation would be, proponents of finfish aquaculture can make this same argument. Specifically, while people may have opinions about which is best, in the end, the law decides, and the law does not discriminate between finfish and shellfish aquaculture, so both have an equal right to do aquaculture off of Deer Isle.

Environmentalists and the island public

            A third group to consider is the community of the island, the public that either supports or opposes aquaculture. On Deer Isle, the public tends to be strongly opposed to outside firms coming in and using the island’s natural resources without any benefit to the community.[53] The Island’s main business is lobster fishing, and anything that might negatively affect lobstering is a big problem. According to local environmentalists, finfish aquaculture introduces diseases, disrupts the ecosystem, and sometimes the aquaculture farmers even cut lobstermen’s lines.[54] The large amounts of fecal matter that the fish produce lead to harmful algal blooms, with huge mats of algae washing up on adjacent shores. Large firms would use Deer Isle “like a third-world country,” said Jane McCloskey, a longtime Island resident and a member of the the Eastern Penobscot Bay Environmental Alliance (EPBEA), “using our waters for their fish to s--t in.” [55]

            When an island resident like Danny Weed has an aquaculture business, that resident makes money from it, which benefits the island economy at least to that small extent, in providing a job and an income for one citizen. However, since aquaculture pens are mostly mechanized, they require very little human involvement, so they provide few or no jobs to Island people, thereby using the waters for the company’s own benefit without improving the local economy.[56] The Deer Isle economy is based on a culture of essentially self-employed fishermen and artists, whereas industrial agriculture is a corporation employing workers[57]. Unlike some other small coastal communities, Deer Isle has a thriving local economy based on lobstering, so the introduction of an outside firm does not make as much of a difference as it would to a poorer community. The opposite is the case in some towns in Canada where finfish aquaculture of this nature has been more successful where, Jane McCloskey says, “they are grateful to have the money that the business brings in.” This is not the case on Deer Isle; outside firms doing aquaculture are unnecessary and detrimental in the eyes of the island community.

The time when the application for finfish aquaculture in the form of salmon pens off Little Deer Isle was being considered significantly shaped public opinion on Deer Isle. The EPBEA coordinated an effort, led by Jane McCloskey, to collect signatures on petitions and educate the community to oppose the permit in the form in which it was submitted, and to tighten environmental controls. McCloskey found that:

In Little Deer Isle, Stonington, and Brooksville, people supported a tightening of environmental and other controls on aquaculture by a margin of about [twenty-five] to one. In Deer Isle, the numbers were less spectacular, as fewer people had been following the issue, but still about two thirds of those asked to sign the petition wanted more controls on aquaculture. Other towns reporting in later also found high percentages of people supporting tighter controls.[58]

 Although the petition and community opposition were not the deciding factors in the withdrawal of the proposal – it was economic competition from Chile and insufficient current, as discussed above – this effort succeeded in convincing a large proportion of the island that there should not be any aquaculture on or around Deer Isle, and this sentiment has endured ever since.[59]

            Although aquaculture will produce much more food per acre than open-sea fishing, people on Deer Isle see no reason why it must occur on their island.[60] Aquaculture provides a protein source, but seafood has always been plentiful on Deer Isle, and it is clear that with its huge amount of lobster, crab, and oyster exports, Deer Isle exports many times as much protein in the form of seafood products than it imports in the form of chicken, beef, and other types of protein.[61] Thus, none of the arguments for aquaculture in general provide compelling reasons why it must occur in the waters off of Deer Isle.

            To the government that seeks to promote aquaculture, environmentalists and the public argue that finfish aquaculture confers only negative effects upon the island, in the form of a disrupted ecosystem, without even an economic benefit. Neither the island residents in general nor environmental groups in particular have a problem with shellfish farmers or the government’s efforts to promote shellfish aquaculture; in fact, Jane McCloskey of the EPBEA recently invited Danny Weed to be on their board.[62]

Individual shellfish aquaculture farmers

            Although shellfish aquaculture has very little impact on the ocean since shellfish are filter-feeders and thus do not add material to the water, islanders who wish to farm shellfish have encountered opposition from the community by association with finfish aquaculture, which received such negative publicity several years ago.[63] One might think people would have less bias against shellfish aquaculture farmers because they tend to be from the island, but as Robin Alden pointed out, in an aquaculture lease,

…you are giving a property right to someone for an area of the ocean, and the person you give it to may be a local guy and you think he has good morals, but it's a property right, and that is transferable, and at some point it may be owned, as the salmon leases [would] have been, [by] really big international companies that have no idea what they're working with.[64]

As a case in point of this bias, Danny Weed, who lived on Deer Isle all his life until recently, had a three-year experimental aquaculture lease for oysters that came up for renewal and application for a 10-year, non-experimental lease just as the salmon pen controversy came about.[65] According to Weed, people tended to group all aquaculture together, not realizing that there was a difference, and associated the serious concerns that the EPBEA had raised about finfish aquaculture with shellfish aquaculture. It took lots of community education, including Weed’s giving a talk and a boat tour of his site each summer, to convince the community that while finfish aquaculture might harm the environment, shellfish aquaculture was much less objectionable, because filter-feeding shellfish barely affect the ecosystem, if at all.[66]

            Danny Weed believes that since his business does not harm the ecology of the ocean habitat, there is little reason for the community or any other group to oppose it.[67] Indeed, no one said anything negative at his public hearing, and the riparian owners even spoke in support of his project.[68] Thus, if aquaculture is to be encouraged in Maine, and in particular on Deer Isle, it would seem that this is the best form of aquaculture to promote.

            Finfish aquaculture businesses may legitimately complain that Deer Isle favors shellfish aquaculture at their expense, but shellfish farmers can easily argue that their aquaculture is better for Deer Isle. For one thing, as previously mentioned, the low water temperatures around Deer Isle in the winter make the island unsuitable for salmon farms, making it a natural choice for the local government to discourage these endeavors.[69] Additionally, because finfish farms harm the environment by adding nutrients that cause algae to grow, their negative effect upon the island ecosystem is much greater than that of shellfish aquaculture, which does not add nutrients to the ocean.[70] Though environmental groups may also be concerned about the effect of aquaculture on the island ecosystem, shellfish aquaculture is probably the least intrusive form of aquaculture that could occur on Deer Isle. Because it introduces a native organism (shellfish) that does not add anything other than the animal itself into the water, it does little to alter the preexisting habitat, and thus it is a much better choice for the island than finfish aquaculture.

Conclusion

            There are currently only two aquaculture sites off Deer Isle, Danny Weed farming oysters and Ed Hutchinson farming blue mussels. These projects have not encountered any problems with the community or government. However, nearby communities have other kinds of aquaculture, including a salmon farm off Swans Island about ten miles from Deer Isle, and thus the issue is still very current in the Deer Isle area.[71] As the state and community increasingly promote aquaculture, it is likely that more companies, both individuals and larger firms, will apply to do aquaculture off the coast of Deer Isle. Just this coming summer, Robin Alden and her husband Ted Ames will launch a production-scale hatchery raising lobsters to release into the bay. [72] While this is not aquaculture per se, it is an introduction of immature organisms similar to the methods in finfish and shellfish aquaculture, and it will certainly have an ecological impact.

            Of the two kinds of aquaculture, finfish and shellfish, shellfish aquaculture is currently a better choice for Deer Isle, as it has less effect on the environment, benefits the local economy by providing jobs, and is better suited to the cold water than finfish aquaculture. Since research shows that Deer Isle waters are unsuitable for salmon farms, it is unlikely that there will be any further applications for finfish aquaculture on the island.[73] Shellfish aquaculture appears to be a viable industry considering the ecological conditions of the water, and the extant fishing infrastructure on the island.[74] Thus, if Deer Isle wishes to diversify its economy away from just lobster to other kinds of seafood, it should continue to promote shellfish aquaculture, through research grants and community education about the industry.