November 16, 2021 — The issue is heating up this week in Gouldsboro, a town of 1,700 on the bay. At a special townwide meeting last night, more than 200 voters showed up and overwhelmingly approved a six-month ban on all aquaculture development.
The tensions in this corner of Maine mirror the national debate in Washington and across the country, where supporters view fish farming as a way to improve U.S. food security by producing more locally grown food but opponents worry the cost will be too high for the environment.
Local critics in Gouldsboro have found an ally in the National Park Service, which voiced its objections to a project so close to Acadia. Park officials fear the huge fish pens could chase away visitors, with more noise, damaged air quality and a rise in ocean acidification.
Acadia National Park Superintendent Kevin Schneider, a leading opponent, said the 120-acre project would bring “an industrial factory just 2,000 feet from the park’s boundary.”
“This is a park that’s been here for 105 years,” he said. “The park generates 6,000 local jobs and $400 million that our visitors spend in the local communities here, and so our product here in many respects is the scenery. People are coming for these amazing vistas that you can see from Park Loop Road and from the north ridge of Cadillac that look out to Frenchman Bay, this incredible idyllic location.”
Schneider outlined his complaints in a letter to the Maine Department of Marine Resources, telling state officials that “the scale of the development — the equivalent of 16 football fields — is unprecedented in the United States and incongruous with the existing nature and setting of Frenchman Bay and surrounding lands.”
But Dana Rice, harbormaster and chair of the Gouldsboro board of selectmen, countered he sees promise in the proposal by American Aquafarms. He believes it would revive the town’s waterfront, with the company wanting to use an abandoned sardine plant to process its farm-raised salmon.
“I’m all about economic development,” he said. “And if there’s anything we can do to bring in good jobs, I view it as my responsibility to look at that. It’s a big deal area-wise and economic-wise.
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