Millions of sleek, silvery Atlantic salmon swim daily in the cool waters of the Cobscook Bay--a deep maze of coves and passages that divides Northeast Maine from Atlantic Canada. That's many more salmon than the area has ever seen.
So why are the fish close to being declared an endangered species?
The answer is at the heart of a bitter scientific, regulatory and political dispute over not only the fate of a regal and tasty fish, but also the nature and future of offshore aquaculture.
All but a few of those Cobscook Bay Atlantic salmon are swimming in sea pens, born and raised in captivity to feed the fast-growing appetite of American consumers.
And as that population of caged salmon has ballooned, the number of returning wild salmon has dwindled from the thousands that once plied the rivers along Maine's northern coast. Last year, only several dozen returned to the area's eight key salmon rivers to spawn, and that number is expected to drop lower still when this year's run is counted.
Nobody is blaming salmon farmers exclusively for the decline. Decades of dam building, commercial overfishing, pesticide runoff and habitat destruction have contributed greatly to the historic collapse of Atlantic salmon runs. And nobody is calling for the industry to be shut down: Fish farming has led to a quadrupling of salmon consumption in the United States since 1992, and the price to consumers has been cut by more than half.
But the steep drop in returning Atlantic salmon during the 1990s has led federal officials to warn of an imminent extinction, and they believe fish farms are likely contributing to the decline. Hailed not long ago as an environmentally friendly alternative to animal farming, offshore fish farming is now being scrutinized as an environmental hazard.
"Of the threats facing the wild Maine salmon that aren't being addressed, we would now have to put aquaculture at the top," said Paul R. Nickerson, chief of the Northeast regional endangered species division of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service.
"We're worried about disease coming from aquaculture, and from the genetic threat and competition coming from fish farm escapees," he said. "There are millions of salmon in pens near the salmon rivers, and even relatively small escapes could overwhelm the wild stock."
This threat, as well as others, led federal officials to propose last fall that genetically unique Atlantic salmon in eight Maine rivers be listed as an endangered species--the first time that the wild version of a common consumer product would get that protection. The agencies involved have promised to make a final determination by Nov. 17.
The decision is being closely watched as an indicator of whether coastal aquaculture regulation generally will be increased. The nation's saltwater fish farms are located largely in Maine and Washington and bring in more than $100 million, mostly from Atlantic salmon.
But federal and private research into the farming of flounder, cod, haddock and other popular fish in coastal waters is far advanced, and some believe those industries could soon be growing as explosively as salmon farming has grown in the past decade. Federal regulators say they are trying with Atlantic salmon to work out guidelines that can better regulate that coastal growth in the future. Public hearings have also been scheduled to address potential fish farming in federal waters farther than 12 miles from shore.
If the Atlantic salmon is listed as endangered, it will be against the strong opposition of Maine Gov. Angus King (I), virtually all of Maine's elected officials, and the influential salmon growers, who employ more than 1,000 people in the state.
While these officials also rue the disappearance of salmon from Maine's rivers, they say that fish farming (which brings in $65 million annually) has nothing to do with the decline, which started decades ago. They complain that aquaculture has become the scapegoat for failed state and federal efforts to manage the Maine salmon, and that the fast-growing population of protected harbor seals is doing more damage to wild salmon than aquaculture is.
But their central argument is even simpler: A genetically distinct Atlantic salmon cannot be saved in Maine's rivers because it is already gone. More than 120 years of salmon stocking, King and others argue, has destroyed whatever unique Maine salmon may ever have existed.
"We have objected to the listing on the grounds that the actual existence of a distinct population has not been established. The science just isn't there," said Joseph McMonigle, executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Association.
"But beyond that, the impact on our industry would be enormous," said McMonigle, who has said his industry would challenge any listing in court. "Salmon farming is a very competitive environment worldwide, and some Maine operations might not survive a listing." Atlantic salmon imports into the United States totaled $629 million in 1998.
The need for new rules, critics and federal officials now say, flows from some unusual aspects of the aquaculture industry--which has been aggressively encouraged by government for most of its existence. Although the coastal farms are located in public waters and do produce substantial waste, they have been exempted from direct regulation under the federal Clean Water Act. Although the issue of salmon escaping their cages is central--in Maine and Washington, where farmed Atlantic salmon have mated with Pacific salmon--fish farmers don't have to report escapes and they do not.
But probably most contentious, Maine salmon farmers are using fish that are a hybrid of North American and European stock. Salmon from Europe in particular is believed to grow faster and better than North American stock.
That use, however, undermines an international salmon commission protocol, signed by the United States and enforced by Canada, that restricts salmon farm stock to local breeds. The goal is to protect the genetic stability of local wild salmon from the farmed salmon that inevitably escape. At the prompting of federal agencies, the U.S. Corps of Engineers--which issues permits for the coastal farms--has included language in its applications since the early 1990s forbidding the European strains.
But they are still widely used in Maine, and the state legislature even passed a bill that banned the importing of foreign salmon or salmon eggs, but left a loophole for the male salmon sperm, or milt. Federal authorities asked the state to close it, but the state declined, saying the European salmon sperm was needed to keep the Maine stock vibrant.
William Brown, science adviser to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, said the loophole remained a major point of contention. "Why on Earth would you have legislation to ban exotic fish and eggs but allow milt importing--unless you want to appear like you're recognizing an environmental problem, while implementing a loophole of the kind that back-door lobbyists are known for," he said.
The state's handling of its salmon population has also led the largest East Coast salmon conservation group, the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF), to lose confidence in protection efforts and to sue for the federal endangered species listing. The group was a strong supporter of aquaculture 10 years ago, when the commercial salmon fisheries were being closed to protect the wild salmon. Now it is far more critical of the industry both in Maine and in Canada's Bay of Fundy.
"We still believe that sustainable salmon aquaculture is possible, but it has to change," said ASF President William Taylor, who believes the industry needs the greater regulation that an endangered species listing would bring. "We have good reason to believe there is a connection between the growth of aqua culture and the most recent decline in wild salmon."
Few salmon farms are visible from land, but from the air above Cobscook Bay and Canada's nearby Passamaquoddy Bay, their rectangles and circles can be seen in every direction.
Scores of farms dot the coastlines of these bays--some within shouting distance of others--making it the most concentrated collection of salmon farms in the world. Norway and Chile have much larger salmon industries than the United States or Canada, but they also have much longer coasts with the protected fjords and bays that salmon farmers need. Maine got its first salmon sea cages in the mid-1980s; now it has 773 at 33 sites.
A few miles south of Cobscook Bay is the Cross Island farm of Atlantic Salmon of Maine (ASM), one of the largest producers in the state. The farm consists of 40 pens, most between 16 and 26 square yards; each of the larger ones can hold up to 25,000 mature fish or 70,000 young. The fish are fed pellets of fish oil and herring; soy and corn are piped to their pens by computer.
A June article in the journal Nature questioned the wisdom of large-scale salmon farming, reporting that it now requires more protein from wild fish than it produces in farmed fish. But Des Fitzgerald, president of ASM, said his industry is changing to meet new requirements, and he maintains the kind of zeal for aquaculture that the industry had at its inception.
"This is the most efficient way to grow animal protein in the world," he said. "If we're going to feed the population 20 years from now, we're going to have to find ways to expand, not to constrict, fish farming like ours."
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