Written by Crystal Canney, Executive Director of PMFHF
If anyone still wonders whether the aquaculture industry is working alongside Maine’s traditional fishing industry, a recent fight over federal lending offers a telling example.
On October 13, the National Aquaculture Association (NAA) urged lawmakers to oppose a Farm Bill provision that would extend access to certain U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) operating loans to commercial fishermen. The provision would help fishermen finance the purchase, operation, and repair of their vessels. The NAA argues that these resources should remain reserved for agricultural and aquaculture producers.
The NAA’s president, Sebastian Belle, is also executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association whose board of directors includes representatives of Cooke Aquaculture—the New Brunswick-based seafood corporation with extensive international aquaculture operations, including salmon net pens in Maine’s coastal waters. Cooke has faced loads of accusations over environmental, animal welfare, and other issues concerning its aquaculture operations worldwide, and the Conservation Law Foundation is pursuing litigation alleging violations of the federal Clean Water Act at Cooke’s Maine salmon farms. Owner Glenn Cooke, meanwhile, has acknowledged publicly that his company earns $4 Billion a year.
These connections matter because the NAA’s position raises a fundamental question: Whose interests are being advanced when an industry association seeks to deny American seafood producers access to federal financing?
For years, Maine lobstermen have reported concerns to Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation about escaped farmed salmon, fish die-offs, and noxious odors near some Cooke-owned net pens. Now, many are understandably frustrated by an industry association’s effort to prevent commercial fishermen from accessing a federal loan program that could help sustain their businesses.
In his letter opposing the Farm Bill provision, Belle wrote that aquaculture farmers “grow a renewable crop that they own and manage from start to finish,” while commercial fishermen “harvest a wild, public trust resource that they do not own, cultivate, or replenish through their own labor or capital investment.”
That characterization is both dismissive and misleading.
First, Maine’s lobster industry is built on generations of investment, knowledge, and stewardship. Lobstermen and women invest in vessels, gear, licenses, and their communities. They also participate in conservation practices, including v-notching egg-bearing female lobsters and returning them to the water, as well as measures designed to protect the long-term health of the fishery. It is a livelihood that depends on maintaining a productive fishery for future generations.
Second, the fact that Maine’s wild fisheries depend on a public trust resource does not make the people who harvest it any less deserving of access to government financing. Nor does the fact that aquaculture operations cultivate a crop give them a superior claim to public support.
Finally, the NAA frames this as a competition for a limited pool of money, arguing that allowing commercial fishermen to access USDA loans would leave less support for farmers and aquaculture businesses. But limited funding does not justify categorically excluding an entire class of American food producers. If the concern is that existing resources are inadequate to meet demand, the answer should be to address that shortfall. At a time when significant public funding is being invested in aquaculture research and development, it is particularly troubling that the industry’s national association is working instead to shut commercial fishermen out of a federal lending program.
At public hearings throughout Maine, Protect Maine has heard the aquaculture lobby speak about the importance of being good neighbors. Yet good neighbors do not insist that shared resources and public support belong exclusively to them. Maine’s waters are a public trust, and the people who earn their living from them deserve a fair opportunity to participate in programs that support American seafood production.
Maine’s fishing heritage was built by independent fishermen and fishing communities, not by multinational seafood corporations. Maine should not accept a vision of the future in which industrial aquaculture is prioritized over traditional fishermen who are told that the public resources they steward and the financing they need to work are not meant for them.
Maine’s identity, economy, and coastal communities have been built over generations on the hard work of lobstermen and women. Our state’s fishing heritage is rooted in independent fishermen and the communities they sustain, not in a foreign corporation headquartered in Canada. State and federal policies should honor that legacy and protect the livelihoods that have defined our coast for generations, rather than allow the interests of industrial aquaculture to come at their expense.
Crystal Canney
Executive Director
Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation