Maineâs waters must be protected
By Keith Kennedy
Protect Maineâs Fishing Heritage Foundation (PMFHF) stands firmly in its support of Maineâs heritage fisheries and small aquaculturists along Maineâs treasured coast. PMFHF is a relatively young nonprofit and has supported legislation that will protect Maineâs waters. Our philanthropy recently worked to raise money to provide COVID relief to lobstermen. Our board is comprised of longtime lobstermen and concerned citizens. Our membership is expanding beyond the lobstering community to people who recreate along the coast and small aquaculturists who are concerned with what is happening with regard to the recent increased number of proposed and approved larger and inappropriately sited aquaculture farms. These small aquaculture operators are generally Maine residents concerned they may be competing with large-scale and industrial aquaculture owned in some cases by foreign investors. We hear often from supporter
American Aquafarms, an aquaculture start-up headquartered in Portland, has filed two draft lease applications with the Department of Marine Resources to begin development of closed-pen, ocean-based salmon operation in Downeast Maine.
The two proposed sites would be in Frenchman Bay, off the town of Gouldsboro to the east and Bar Harbor to the west.
Each site would be 60.3 acres. The pens at each site would take up about 6.6 acres.
Image
Courtesy / American Aquafarms, Ransom Consulting Engineers and Scientists
The rectangle at center represents one of American Aquafarms’ proposed lease sites in the water between Bar Harbor and Gouldsboro. A mooring system, to hold the pens in place, consists of two grid systems, each with two rows of four cages. All together, the mooring grid contains 15 pens and a waste barge.
Fri, 02/19/2021 - 3:30pm
The first edition of a new podcast, North by Northeast, focuses on Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation (PMFHF), with host Crystal Canney, who is also the foundation’s executive director.
In the podcast, launched by Knight Canney Group, Canney talks with Maine s former aquaculture program director, Jon Lewis, who is now a consultant to Protect Maine about the changing dynamic along Maine’s coast.
“PMFHF has been working for two years to have a bigger conversation around the rules and regulations involving how in water aquaculture leases are approved,” said Canney, in a news release.
This legislative session, PMFHF will support a bill that:
Proposed salmon farm sparks opposition
GOULDSBORO Opposition is mounting to a large-scale salmon farm in Frenchman Bay before the project’s backers have formally submitted an application to locate roughly 30 net-pens at two sites north of Bald Rock and The Hop islands. In a related move, a citizen’s group is calling for the Maine Department of Marine Resources to toughen its rules regarding aquaculture leases that range widely from mussel to oyster cultivation in coastal Maine. Applications for these enterprises have jumped threefold in just five years.
Early this week, American Aquafarms’ President and CEO Mikael Roenes still had not filed a DMR application for his company’s proposed ocean farm to raise Atlantic salmon and possibly cod in the northern-northwestern section of Frenchman Bay. From Norway’s southern coastal town of Grimstad, Roenes early last fall outlined his plan to raise the fish in floating net pens, fitted with polymer-membrane cloth sacks in which fi
Salmon farm sparks opposition
GOULDSBORO Opposition is mounting to a large-scale salmon farm in Frenchman Bay before the project’s backers have formally submitted an application to locate roughly 30 net pens at two sites north of Bald Rock and the Hop islands.
In a related move, a citizens group is calling for the Maine Department of Marine Resources to toughen its rules regarding aquaculture leases that range widely from mussel to oyster cultivation in coastal Maine. Applications for these enterprises have jumped threefold in just five years.
Early this week, American Aquafarms’ President and CEO Mikael Roenes still had not filed a DMR application for his company’s proposed ocean farm to raise Atlantic salmon and possibly cod in the northern-northwestern section of Frenchman Bay.