Keep Johnson Bay Clean
Posted 06/12/25
When I was a toddler, circa 1950, I stood on the bank of a small tributary to the Klamath river in Northern California and watched in amazement as my Grandpa Charlie scooped out a big, beautiful fish from a stream teeming with migratory salmon. We had a good dinner that night. In Maine, there is an effort underway to bring back the wild Atlantic Salmon to this area. We have just witnessed the successful regrowth of the alewife population in Maine and that return was much celebrated at the Alewife Festival in Pembroke on the Pennamaquan river. It is a beautiful sight to see so many fish swimming free and unbound, healthy and eager to return to their traditional spawning grounds.
* * *
ATTENTION: Cooke Aquaculture is actively looking to put up more salmon pens in Johnson Bay and other local waters. These industrial level fisheries in the close confines of our tidal waters threaten the estuaries and coastal habitats of many fish and shellfish species. These fisheries produce far more ocean polluting nitrogen than the limits which are placed on our waste-water facilities. If these additional pens are permitted to operate within the Cobscook Bay area, that will increase the output of nitrogen to ~9000lbs/day, equivalent to the nitrogen nutrient discharge from a city of one-million people. The science is in and information is out there, but it is not making much headway into the general population because of faulty modes of communication.
We have had two recent meetings at the Lubec Town Hall regarding these plans by Cooke Aquaculture. The first was barely discovered two days ahead of time by an alert citizen who stays tapped into the DMR schedules (thanks, Anna). Once alerted, people showed up and the majority voiced their opposition to these re-leases. (the areas in question, one a thirty-six-acre parcel of ocean abutting the north-east portion of the Rodger’s Island bird sanctuary had, unknown by most folks in Lubec, already been leased and unused for ten-years by Cooke Aquaculture)
The last “informational” meeting was scheduled but, again, unannounced for June 6 at six PM. Again, it was not broadly disclosed to the public that this was taking place and, the few people who heard, and showed up for the meeting with Cooke’s planners and shakers, were disappointed because, curiously, the meeting time had been changed to 5 PM, again with no notice. It was revealed following the session, that the standard method for notifying the public about these scheduled meetings was for Cooke Aquaculture to inform the Lubec Harbormaster, who in turn passes the information along. There has been no timely passing on of that information. When a large, global corporation does business with a small town, tight-lipped town government, people get itchy about the goings on.
In addition to these new, unhealthy, sources of nitrogen, the salmon pens are also surrounded by a host of large buoys filled with Styrofoam pellets. Many of these have escaped from Cooke’s current fish farms and broken up to release their toxic and irretrievable pellets (nurdles) into the waters of Downeast Maine to drift for hundreds of years, being ingested by all filter feeders (baleen whales among them) and many small fish and birds. Currently, an estimated 23,000 tons of these non-regulated bits of Styrofoam go into the ocean every year. (see, The Guardian: Nurdles)
I call attention to this as an unbridled attempt on the part of many marine industries to protect, at the cost of the very environment they exploit, the use and production of toxic substances which are strictly banned and controlled by onshore entities. When Styrofoam was finally recognized as a hazard to the health of living beings, it was largely banned across the country. That’s exactly when the Styrofoam filled buoys became the rage from sea to plastic-bound sea on a global level. The DEP considers it “trash,” therefore not a concern of theirs. Likewise, nitrogen releases from a waste-water treatment plant are regulated and carefully monitored, but wastewater from a salmon farm, many times higher in nitrogen content, polluting sensitive coastal waters that produce over 70 percent of all commercial and recreational fish and shellfish, is not regulated. This is the madness of modern business enterprise at its apex.
These sea-pen fish farms have been banned from every state on the west coast, from the Baja peninsula to the Arctic Circle, and British Columbia in now phasing out all coastal salmon farms. This is not done for nothing to a corporation taking in over 200 million dollars annually. There have been massive die-offs, the cause often being attributed to a low-content of oxygen in the water (precisely what a high nitrogen content causes) and major problems with lice and other diseases which can be passed on to the wild population of fish in the area. We are trying to help the wild salmon recover. These fish-farms are not helping and are seriously jeopardizing this project and the many other aquatic denizens of our beautiful, estuarine waters. While Maine is certainly far from first in rejecting this eco-” unfriendly” form of aquaculture, Lubec can be the first to say, “No More,” to these attempts to increase the farmed salmon population in Cobscook bay and other local waters.
I am sure that I will never scoop an Atlantic salmon out of a cascading stream for my grandchildren. But, if we work together, protect and clean up our oceans, rivers, and streams I am equally sure that my grandchildren can become the Grandpas and Grandmas that show their much beloved toddlers how to scoop a large salmon from a cascading stream teeming with healthy, migratory fish. And make a good meal of it.
CA Kniffen