Whiting Resident Wants Serious Look At Aquaculture

The recent letter [in The Ouoddy Tides] in support of industrial-scale aquaculture presents only part of the picture. It emphasizes jobs but leaves out important questions about scale, risk and long-term impact.

No one is dismissing the value of steady employment or the role companies can play in a community. Those matter. But Eastport is not being asked to consider a small, local operation. It is being asked to consider the long-term presence of indus-trial-scale aquaculture in waters that have supported Maine's heritage fisheries for generations. That distinction matters.

As someone from a neighboring coastal community, I am paying close attention, because decisions made in Eastport do not stay in Eastport. They affect surrounding waters, working waterfronts and regional fisheries.

We can support jobs and still ask whether this is the right scale and the right place.

We can value economic opportunity while also protecting the working waterfront that already exists. Those are jobs, too.

The letter suggests that larger companies step in when smaller operations fail.

That should give us pause. If failures are common enough to require cleanup, then the real issue is not who fixes the problem, but why the system allows those failures in the first place and who ultimately bears the risk when they occur.

Tasmanian salmon farms blocked from using antibiotic florfenicol after detection in wild fish 10km away

Regulator suspends permit due to ‘unacceptable risk’ antibiotic poses to other species in move welcomed by environmental campaigners

Regulator suspends permit due to ‘unacceptable risk’ antibiotic poses to other species in move welcomed by environmental campaigners

 Australia’s veterinary medicines regulator has suspended the use of florfenicol in salmon in Tasmania because of the “unacceptable risk” the antibiotic poses to other species.

The Bob Brown Foundation said the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority’s (APVMA) decision was an “indictment of the industrial fish farm companies and their complete disregard for the marine environment”.

The APVMA granted an emergency permit in November 2025 to allow the industry to use florfenicol to treat outbreaks of the bacterial disease piscirickettsiosis in fish farms in southern Tasmania, which had caused mass salmon deaths.

Aquaculture’s role in the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is often described as a “silent pandemic”. Unlike a fast-moving viral outbreak, AMR spreads gradually with bacteria evolving and adapting until the medicines we rely on no longer work. The consequences are profound. AMR contributed to an estimated 4.95 million deaths in 2019. These numbers are expected to increase to 8-10 million deaths by 2050. AMR now threatens routine surgery, cancer treatment, and infection control.  

Human activities, including the widespread use and misuse of antibiotics in human medicine, livestock production, and aquaculture, have dramatically accelerated AMR. In response, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has established the One Health initiative — linking human health, animal production and environmental systems. Aquaculture sits squarely within that nexus. 

Home Rule is the Best Rule

For some, Maine’s dedication to home rule may defy logic, especially for those who have moved to the state. It may seem like a foreign concept that each organized municipality in the state, all 482 of them, has its own government, ordinances, procedures, and schedules, but we think it’s makes perfect sense.

Here individual voters form the legislative body and annually approve what the elected and appointed officials can spend money on and what level of decision making they can do without a further vote. Some native New Englanders might not know it, but in much of the rest of the country, municipal decisions are made at different levels of government and not directly by the people.

The Myth of "Sustainable" Aquaculture

For decades, industrial aquaculture has been framed as a win-win: farm fish to spare wild fisheries, reduce environmental harm, and meet global demand with a healthy, efficient protein. This narrative—popularized as the industry’s “Blue Revolution”—has profoundly shaped policy, conservation strategies, and institutional purchasing decisions. 

This report examines what that story leaves out: that, through greenwashing, aquaculture has brought factory farming from land to sea. Across five central claims that anchor “sustainable seafood” messaging, it shows how industrial fish farming has expanded at a scale that inherently drives ecological harm by intensifying pressure on wild fisheries, spreading disease and drug dependence, worsening climate impacts, and leaning on labels and certifications that often substitute for real accountability.

Lubec Board of Selectmen imposes vessel‑length limit at commercial pier after collision

LUBEC — Early Tuesday, Cooke Aquaculture’s Ocean Provider collided with Lubec’s newly rebuilt commercial pier, damaging three of the recently installed pilings.

A 14‑inch piling buckled under the impact, and two 12‑inch pilings cracked, according to Ralph Dennison, the harbormaster.

Dennison said Cooke Aquaculture has already agreed to pay for the repairs. The company did not respond to inquiries in time to appear in this article.

The Ocean Provider is a steel‑hulled boat about 80 feet long and owned by Cooke Aquaculture, which uses it to serve fish farms on both sides of the border in Cobscook Bay.

The pilings were damaged when the boat attempted to dock at the commercial pier at about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Anti-salmon farming groups win fight to maintain ban in Discovery Islands

Anti-fish farming groups in Canada have won a legal battle to maintain a ban on salmon farms in the Discovery Islands area of British Columbia.

The ruling by the Federal Court of Appeal upholds a June 2024 Federal Court decision which affirmed the ability of former Canadian fisheries minister Joyce Murray to refuse aquaculture licences in the Discovery Islands based on conservation concerns. Salmon farmer Mowi Canada West had appealed the 2024 decision.

Environmental law charity Ecojustice represented anti-fish farming groups the David Suzuki Foundation, Georgia Strait Alliance, Living Oceans Society, and Watershed Watch Salmon Society, and veteran anti-salmon farming activist Alexandra Morton, in the appeal.

Cushing Residents Speak Out on Industrial-Scale Aquaculture

CUSHING — A proposal for the town to acquire the first public access to the waterfront received a mixed reaction Jan. 15 with several residents and out-of-state property owners of Pleasant Point Road voicing concern about the impact from added traffic.

But the harbor master and a longtime town official said they did not expect those would be impactful issues.

This town currently has no municipal-owned public access to the water.

Residents will get to vote on the articles by secret ballot at the polls on March 16. The in-person town meeting will be held at 6 p.m. March 17.

Dead Fish and Statehouse Battles: Fighting Fish Farms in Maine

As Keith Decker assumed the role of CEO of American Aquafarms in 2021, the firm was seeking to build a massive salmon farm off the coast of Acadia National Park. The first order of business was damage control. It wasn’t just the bad press about his predecessor, who had been convicted and jailed on fraud charges in Norway a decade before. There was also growing public resentment toward the project.

It was meant to be the largest salmon farm in the world, with a 30,000-ton pen to grow the fish. The proposal claimed it would produce 66 million pounds of non-GMO salmon each year and make Maine the testing ground for mass-production aquaculture.

The farm would be situated in one of the poorer areas of the state, where job creation is a constant topic of interest. Locally, the company pitched the project as a job creator; more broadly, it said it aimed to curb the U.S.’s dependence on imported seafood.